Accounting for Realized gains/losses

[mrskhris]

Hello fellow gnucash users,

I'm currently very confused about one of the features of gnucash - namely,
trading accounts. Our business has assets in CAD and USD, and our main
currency is CAD. I've turned on trading accounts and saw that gnucash
successfully added all necessary splits - and that's what I expected. Now,
the year end is here. When I open Balance sheet, I see an entry Trading
Losses at the very end of the report, and this is also something I expected.
Now, very helpful tutorial by Peter Selinger
(this one - http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html)
mentions (quote):
A currency trading account reflects currency exchanges made in the past, and
in an ideal situation where exchange rates never change, its balance is
supposed to be zero. However, as the exchange rate fluctuates, so does the
value of the currency trading account, and such fluctuations correspond
exactly to currency gains and losses. *At the end of an accounting period,
one may move the actual ("realized") gain or loss to an income or expense
account denominated in the reference currency.*

So, here is my question. How exactly do I do that? I already have Foreign
exchange gain/loss account and it's mostly supplemented by transactions
arising from currency fluctuations between creating invoice for a customer
and closing that invoice.
But how do I account for realized losses/gains? Do I add extra transactions
to Trading accounts? I tried, and it doesn't seem to be the case, since
every effort to add transaction to security trading account (USD)
immediately results in offset splits appearing - and that's logical, because
I'm trying to do transfer between two accounts in different currency. So,
what's the right way? Does anyone have an enlightening idea?




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