Trading accounts - when do they make sense?

[whwtan]

Hi all,

I do apologise for all those silly questions.
I finally "get it". Thank you all...

I was having a lot of problems with transferring money between accounts 
because i didn't use the "Transfer" dialog box and went ahead like a 
normal transaction [i.e. Withdraw from AUD account, pay to USD account, 
provide exchange rate], I was getting imbalance money popping up and 
couldn't make head or tail of what was happening.

I restarted a whole new file, created 3 current assets in USD/AUD/SGD 
and fiddled with moving money around the accounts.
Every end of the month, I will simply use the Price Editor to do an 
update of the 2 other currencies against the AUD [Australian Resident] 
to find out my unrealised gains and losses.

If I am interested in changing reference currencies, I will go into 
options and change default currency.

Will play around with expenditures next to familiarise myself more, but 
really appreciate all the guidance and help you've all given.

Warmest Regards,
William
> If you truly have no country that you consider your country of 
> residence then I don't know what you do.  In my case I am 
> unambiguously a US resident but spend time in other countries. The 
> primary currency of my Gnucash file is USD, but I have income and 
> expense accounts in various other currencies.  When entering 
> transactions in foreign currencies I use an income or expense account 
> which is in that currency.  This seems to work well.  When I am in the 
> UK and using my GBP bank account everything is in GBP.  The only time 
> trading accounts enter the picture is if I move money between 
> currencies, for example use a USD credit card to make a purchase in 
> GPB or EUR or something else.