GnuCash setup for multi-country use

[Michel Drescher]

Hi,

I am using GnuCash 2.2.9 on Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala").

I would like to set-up and use GnuCash for the following situation
(haven't found anything useful in the docs and mailing lists yet):

I have been working all around several countries in Europe and therefore
left traces in those countries, including current accounts, credit cards
etc. The problem with that is that that involves multiple currencies
(not only the Euro as not all European countries use the Euro as
currency, e.g. the UK or Sweden).

The point is this: All those accounts etc. are active and generate
statements, expenses and incomes. And I want to keep it that way.

To keep things sane I created several different accounting "files", one
for each country, and within each, individual account hierarchies and
currencies. Otherwise the account hierarchy would explode and make it
next to impossible to keep an overview. (I do not have much cash flow

The problem is that certain features in GnuCash are global and affect
all accounting files I use, for example the default currency, report
currency, tax year settings, tax related accounts, etc. For example, the
UK tax year starts in April and ends in March the following year, while
the German, Dutch or Swiss tax year follows the calendar years (and the
US tax year seem to be completely different, too).

Is there any way to convince GnuCash to behave as desired, or at least
emulate it?

Also, with my current set-up I noticed that I cannot permanently
configure the default reports to my needs. For example, GnuCash is
currently configured with the EUR as default currency, but in my UK
accounts file, I obviously should use GBP as report currency. I can
change that in the report options, but GnuCash won't save this setting
so that I have to re-configure that over and over again. In fact, this
is true for *any* default report setting I wish to change.

I would be grateful for any help on this issue.

Cheers,
Michel