Stocks and Balancing Accounts

[Daniel Carrera]

Derek Atkins wrote:
> I do see the value in keeping track of the commodities.  HOWEVER, I
> still maintain that those commodity accounts (be them Income or Equity
> accounts) should be HIDDEN from the user experience...
> 
> My reasoning is that when I go to a bank and exchange $100 for
> €74.29 I don't mentally consider it a split transaction, and indeed
> as far as *I* am concerned it ISNT a Split transaction.

Ok, when you say "commodity accounts" you are talking about those 
"Currency::XYZ" accounts described here:

http://www.mscs.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/gnucash.html#5.

Correct?

I don't see any user-side problem with hiding those. As a user I would 
be happy either way as long as it all works.

> But after reading Peter's document I do agree that it is necessary to
> maintain that extra information somewhere, somehow.
> 
> So let's move this discussion over to -devel and discuss the best
> way to present this in the UI in a clear, consise way that doesn't
> bloat the UI or add lots of additional cruft.

You may not have to many any changes at all to the UI. I'll explain:

There is a 1-to-1 mapping between what GnuCash currently does and the 
Currency:XYZ system. If I convert 1.52 USD to 1.00 EUR with the current 
system, it is perfectly conceivable that an automated process would turn 
this into the split transaction method which goes through Currency::USD 
and Currency::EUR. Ditto for going the other way.

Therefore: The difference is really about how GnuCash thinks of the 
transactions. The other method does not actually carry any additional 
information.

Therefore: It is conceivable to switch to the other system without 
changing anything about the UI. You can imagine a future version of 
GnuCash that converts the transactions from older files to the new 
system without saying anything to the user. Because the Currency::XYZ 
accounts are invisible, the user would never actually notice that 
anything has changed. The transactions look the same, the accounts look 
the same, the UI looks the same.

The only thing that the user _would_ notice is that some REPORTS would 
look different. The trial balance would look a bit different, and it 
would balance. Some other reports might look different (more accurate).

What do you think?

Cheers,
Daniel.