Purchases in a foreign currency

[Mike Alexander]

--On April 6, 2010 4:08:36 PM -0800 "Paul A." <abrahams at acm.org> wrote:

>
> I more or less understand how GnuCash handles accounts in different
> currencies, but I still wonder how to handle individual transactions
> in different currencies.  My Visa account is denominated in USD, and
> I want to keep it that way.  If I travel to France, say, and pay for
> a hotel bill with my Visa card, I know what I paid in euros.  But is
> there any easy way to enter that transaction in USD?
>
> An extra complication: exchange rates vary with time, so I need the
> exchange rate at the time of the transaction, not as of today.  Can
> GnuCash help me with that?

See <http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html> and 
<http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/gnucash.html>. 
Something along the lines of what the second document suggests is 
implemented in the 2.3.x GnuCash releases under the name "Trading 
accounts".

            Mike