Split Transaction

[Mike Alexander]

--On February 21, 2011 10:05:59 AM -0800 "David T." 
<sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am pretty certain that you cannot have multiple currencies in a
> single transaction. Your splits have to be one currency.

You may have multiple currencies in one transaction.  Each transaction 
has a base currency and each split in that transaction has a commodity 
(which may be a currency, often the same currency as the transaction's 
currency), an amount (which is the number of units in the split's 
commodity), and a value (which is the value in the transaction's 
currency).

The values of the splits in a transaction must sum to zero.  If you 
turn on the trading account feature then the amounts in the splits must 
sum to zero in each commodity used in any split.  If all the splits are 
in the transaction currency these two conditions are equivalent and in 
each split the amount and value are the same.

The most common use of multiple commodity transactions is when you are 
buying or selling one commodity (a stock, a currency, etc.) in another 
currency.  However it should be possible to construct much more complex 
transactions if that is useful.

      Mike