Purchases in a foreign currency

[cognitive.libertarian+ml at gmail.com]

It would be useful if the software enabled you to enter both the
market/wholesale FX rate, and the retail exchange rate -- but it
doesn't, and my bug/enhancement report was rejected iirc.

So I do this manually, because it's interesting to see what the bank
is siphoning off for profit, and you might like to have a record of
how lossy the transaction itself was.

If this interests you, it's more complicated.  You must create an
expenses:forex account.  I initially enter the transaction, right
click, and "edit exchange rate", then enter the market rate, or
something very close to it.

Later when the statement comes in, switch it to a split transaction,
and make sure that the difference between the market rate and the
retail exchange rate gets recorded in a split for expenses:forex.
It's a little tricky because you must decide what currency to record
the FX costs themselves in.  In the end, you see how much you're
wasting, and from that decide whether to open a bank account in that
other currency and trade at a better rate.  

This site may be useful for the calculations if you want detail
records: 

http://www.xe.com/ccc/ 
http://www.xe.com/tec/table.shtml