Expense accounts should not be single currency

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Quoting jgombos <nabble.forum.jog at spamgourmet.com>:

>
> Suppose there exists an expense account "electronics".  GNUCash forces all
> transactions in an expense account to be in the same currency.  So buying a
> PDA in the US and then buying a cellphone in Finland isn't an option.  The
> two purchases should be treated as the same type of expense, but gnucash
> limitations seem to force two separate expense accounts in this situation:
> electronics-usd, and electronics-euro.
>
> How do you folks deal with this?

Use Subaccounts.

Expenses:Elelectronic:USD
Expenses:Electronics:EUR

> It appears the available hacks are to create duplicate expense accounts for
> each currency, or translate purchase prices outside of gnucash (which means
> the amount printed on the sales receipt doesn't match what is entered in
> gnucash).

Yep, those are your choices.  Accounts in GnuCash hold one and only one
commodity.  Doing otherwise would be hell in a hand basket and make the
UI significantly more complex.  You'd have to enter the transaction
commodity on every transaction manually.  And you couldn't get a single
account running balance.

The current method is significantly more agile, simple, and clear.

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available