Trial balance failed!

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>
>In my opinion, a buying or selling a currency should be handled the
>same as buying or selling a stock, bond, bar of gold, or any other
>commodity. If special exchange accounts aren't needed to properly
>account for stock trades, then they aren't needed to properly account
>for currency trades either. (Perhaps the author would reply that they
>*are* needed for stocks, I don't know.)
>
>In any case, it seems to me that in order to avoid breaking the trial
>balance, GnuCash needs to force users to properly account for capital
>gain/loss entries whenever a trade is done between commodities, be it
>stocks, currencies, whatever.
>
>.02
>
>-Charles
>  
>
I think it's not so simple -- and that this is an accounting/legal 
question, not a GnuCash question. If you are TRADING in foreign exchange 
as if it were a commodity then yes, your solution answers the question. 
But it's not so simple where you have a business doing business in 
multiple currencies, owing taxes at certain times in various currencies, 
etc. The date at which the gain or loss (one currency relative to 
another) is to be recorded is not necessarily when the original 
transaction took place --- or at least that is far from clear.

Before deciding what GnuCash should do need to see how this is normally 
handled in old fashioned pen and ink on paper accounting.

Michael