Foreign Currency results in non balanced balance sheet

c-a-l c-a-l at earthlink.net
Sun Mar 7 15:35:59 EST 2010


I've spent hours messing around with this and tried various ways to enter
these transactions, both in the GnuCash file I'm actually using, and in a
test file.

So far I have succeeded in entering all the opening balances for the Euro
accounts, but it did not go smooth.  I resorted to entering these one
"Opening" transaction at a time, in the Opening Balance section of the
equity account.  After each entry, I reloaded the Balance Sheet and ran it. 
Sometimes everything would balance, sometimes it would not, so I deleted and
re-entered the exact same transaction 3 or 4 times, saving after entering,
and then reloading the balance sheet until I could get the Balance Sheet to
balance.  

No rhyme or reason or pattern to how I entered these where it would or would
not balance.  It is not the same problem described in bug #410604, although
I have also run into that bug.  However, finally all opening balances are
in, and I have a balanced Balance Sheet with the Price Source Option
"Nearest in Time" so that today's account balances are properly listed in
the asset section.

I am now almost sure the problem is related to something in the program,
rather than anything I did incorrectly, since after re-entering a
transaction a few times I could get it to balance.

Now I need to accomplish two other tasks:

1. Enter transfers from the Euro accounts to the US accounts.  I have tried
entering these transactions using the "Transfer" button, as well as using
the method described in section 5 of the following document:
http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/gnucash.html  
Both methods result in an immediate imbalance on the Balance Sheet.  I'm
open to any ideas anyone has on how to accomplish either 1 or 2 and maintain
a balanced Balance Sheet.  Somehow I think there must be something obvious
I'm missing, as I don't see many posts with others having this problem.  

2. Enter Euro deposits in the Euro accounts.  These originate from Euro
income and interest and don't involve transfers.  The trick in GnuCash (in
order to not throw off the Balance Sheet) seems to be that the transaction
MUST originate in US dollars, from an account defined in US dollars.  So I
created a separate Income:Interest:Euro Interest account, defined as a US
dollar account.  I enter the transaction in US dollars in that account, with
the balancing transaction going to the Euro bank account, which brings up a
dialog box requesting the exchange rate.  I enter the exchange rate, the the
amount goes into the Euro account in Euros.  So far this seems to work, but
the steps to enter the transaction MUST originate in the account defined in
US dollars, or the Balance Sheet ends up with an imbalance.  Every few
entries I get an imbalance (same issue described above) and just delete it
and reenter the exact same thing and it balances.

Does anyone with in depth knowledge of GnuCash see any potential future
problems with how I am entering this?  Any advice regarding item 1 above
and/or the entries that don't balance but do balance when reentered?

Thanks
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