Continuing saga - multi currencies - now unrealized gain disappeared

[whwtan]

For bunk3m's case, just like him I would have expected him to have 
unrealised losses given the CAD has been growing stronger against the USD.
Am I mistaken?

At the risk of opening a new can of worms, I'd like to find out exactly 
what does the option "Use Trading Accounts" do.

GnuCash is the only solution out there in the world who takes multi 
currency in such a special manner I'm blown away; It allows you to 
decide which currency you would like to base yourself any time. [Even 
all the most popular commercial software prioritise IAS/GAAP and make it 
such that they lock you into one base currency]

However trying to understand how it works sorta breaks my head in. LOL

I understand from my own simple approach that if I paid for a product in 
USD using my AUD account on 1st Apr and the price is set, I should have 
zero trading when balanced out.
However, if I owned USD and AUD, I would be getting different trading 
depending on the day and depending on when I value my money. [Since 
currencies change in value against each other by the day]

Trading is used for unrealized differences between the currencies. I 
treat it as if you have bought shares in the stock market and the price 
fluctuates by the day but as long as you did not sell them everything is 
simply unrealised gains and losses.

William

On 5/4/2013 2:35 AM, bunk3m wrote:
> Ah Derek,
>
> Nope.  If only it had automagically made the appropriate transfers .....
> (big sigh)
>
> But that would have made gnuCash magical because it would have
> understood exactly how to translate [Increase in USD receivables, offset
> by USD Income] and converted it into something using a trading account
> like [Increase USD receivable balance against USD currency offset by
> increase CAD Income and balance against CAD Currency account.] etc. etc.
>
> That would have been truly astonishing and would have made my day! :-)
>
> Having attempted to redo transactions for one year using a fixed
> crossrate as an experiment, I can only say that the income statement is
> correct but because I have some left over receivables denominated in
> USD, I have an unrealized gain on the balance sheet where I know that I
> shouldn't have a gain.  Currency crossrate is set to 1.  Grrr!
>
> I'm not an accountant but what the ***explicative deleted***? This
> shouldn't be so complicated??  This multi-currency accounting could
> drive one to drink! (ROTFL)
>
> B.
>