Three trading accounts in one transaction

[Anton Lindström]

On Sun, 3 Aug 2014 12:52:12 -0500, o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Anton Lindström <anton at antonanton.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have a transaction that won't balance, I hope someone can point out what
> > I'm missing.
> >
> > I'm buying a stock which is denominated in CAD. I'm buying it with money
> > from an account at my broker which is in SEK.
> > The commission is also in SEK.
> >
> > So, I enter three lines:
> > 1. The stock I'm buying: number of shares and price in CAD. (166 shares,
> > total price 4365.80 CAD)
> > 2. The commission in SEK. (274,17, entered in the "Buy" column)
> > 3. The currency account with the total amount (total price of stocks and
> > commission) in SEK. (30198.96 SEK, entered in the "Sell" column)
> >
> > When I hit enter Gnucash creates three Trading accounts and one Unbalanced
> > account:
> >
> > 1. Trading:CURRENCY:SEK in the Buy column, 29924.79 SEK.
> > 2. Trading:AMEX:Stock which matches the stock I bought, except it's a sell
> > instead of buy.
> > 3. Trading:CURRENCY:CAD in the Sell column, 25558,99 CAD
> > 4. Unbalanced-CAD in the Buy column, 25558,99 CAD
> >
> > 1 and 2 I understand but I don't know how 3 and 4 are created. The number
> > 25558,99 is equal to 29924,79 - 4365,80, both numbers are the price of the
> > stock in SEK and CAD. Maybe Gnucash is assuming an exchange rate of 1 CAD =
> > 1 SEK ??
> > I'm not sure but I think the transaction should contain two trading
> > accounts in CAD, one in the Sell column and one in the Buy column, but when
> > I try to put that in it's still not accepted. Maybe because the exchange
> > rate is "wrong"?
> >
> > I'm using Gnucash 2.6.3 (in Swedish so I might not have translated
> > everything correctly to English in my explanation).
> >
> > I hope someone can point out what I'm doing wrong...
> >
> 
> IANAA (I am not an accountant)!!
> 
> You need to move all parts of your transaction to one or the other currency.
> 
> If you are holding the stock in $CDN I would suggest:
> 
> 1. all transaction in $CDN
> so:
> 
> 1. you purchase stock in $CDN
> 2. you convert commission (plus anything else) from SEK (Swedish Kronor)
> into $CDN (include cost of conversion if there is one)
> 3. you now have everything on the transaction in one currency (purchase +
> commission + currency conversion costs)
> 
> Should now be straightforward (I think - - - (I hope!!!)).
> 
> Dee


Thanks for the suggestion, I think it would work. I do wish I didn't need to do that extra step where I buy currency separately. I still want the commission in the same transaction as the stock purchase (for the report to know it's a commission) so I would have to calculate what the commission would be in CAD. In any case it would be a bit more manual work.

I was using Gnucash 2.4 before and in that version this type of transaction was accepted, but after I upgraded to 2.6 this and many other transactions have become "unbalanced", and I can't seem to find any way to correct them (except taking the transactions apart like you suggest).

Anton