gnucash-user Digest, Vol 120, Issue 15

[Alex Aycinena]

George,

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: George Olson <grglsn765 at gmail.com>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Cc:
> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 14:37:13 +0800
> Subject: Convert foreign currency reports to USD
> I live in a foreign country and have many operating expenses in the currency of that country. However, the exchange rate with USD fluctuates significantly.
>
> Last year when I was preparing my taxes, I was able to make the reports come out in USD, even when my expenses were in the currency of that country. This is nice, because the conversion to the equivalent USD goes with whatever the exchange rate of the date at the time of that transaction.
>
> This year, as I am preparing my taxes, I am finding out that I cannot do the same as I did last year. Under the General tab under Transaction Reports, the Report Currency is grayed out and I am unable to select anything. It says USD, but the report is coming out in whatever currency the transaction was made in.
>
> I am using gnucash 2.4.11 under openSUSE 12.2.
>
> Is there a way to make my reports come out in USD? Otherwise there is a significant amount of extra work involved, having to export the report to a spreadsheet and then set up manual conversions based on the appropriate date.
>
> --
> George Olson
> Box #1: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | AMD Phenom IIX4 | 64 | ATI Radeon HD 3300  | 16GB
> Box #2: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.1 | AMD Athlon X3   | 64 | nVidia C61 GeForce 7025  | 4GB
> Laptop: 12.2 | KDE 4.9.2 | Core i7-2620M   | 64 | Intel HD Graphics 3000 | 8GB
> learning openSUSE and loving it
>

The Tax Schedule Report is designed explicitly for US Income Taxes and
will do what you are asking for. It can give you a complete audit
trail for every amount you put into every line item on every schedule
that it supports, including showing you the original amounts in
non-USD currencies and the details of the conversion. It uses the
actual exchange rate of the transaction, if available, otherwise it
gets an exchange rate from the price db. In the report options, you
specify 'Nearest transaction date' or 'Nearest report date' for prices
fetched from the price db.

To use it, though, there is some one-time setup that you have to do
first. Under Edit->TaxReport Options, you first specify a tax entity
type for your gnucash file: individual/joint, partnership, corp, etc.
Once that is done, you select an account category (say, Income) and an
actual account of that type that you want to include in the report,
tick the Tax Related box, then assign an entry from the TXF Categories
list. These correspond to individual line items on tax forms or
schedules for the tax entity type you specified.

What is tedious initially, is that you have to do this one-at-a-time
for each account you want to include in the report. Once it is done,
though, you only have to remember to keep it current as you add/modify
accounts. You can also display a column on the account hierarchy tab
showing the tax code assignments so that you can easily review the
accounts and make sure you haven't overlooked any or included some you
don't want (use the big arrow on the right of the headings to include
the 'Tax Info' column).

But you can try it with a few accounts initially to see if it meets
your needs. When you've set up a few accounts in the Edit->TaxReport
Options dialog, run the report, bring up the report options dialog,
select the from and to dates in the general tab, in the accounts tab,
if you do not select any accounts, all acconts will be considered, and
in the display tab select you currency conversion option and hit OK.

In the display tab of the report options you can specify more or less
detail in the report. You can use the report to prepare your own
taxes, give it to someone else if that is what you do, or, if you hit
the 'export' button, it gives you the coice to export the report data
to a 'TXF' file that can be imported to tax preparation software if
you use that.

If you find you need to assign an account to a tax category that is
not shown in the Edit->TaxReport Options dialog, then you have to
handle that seperately. There is currently only limited support for
capital gain reporting, which is explained in the Help Manual under
Customizing Gnucash, Setting Tax Report Options, code N673.

Hope this helps you.

Regards,

Alex