Three trading accounts in one transaction

[Anton Lindström]

Den Fri, 22 Aug 2014 14:26:25 -0400
skrev Re: Three trading accounts in one transaction:

> --On August 21, 2014 at 9:59:40 PM +0200 Anton Lindström 
> <anton at antonanton.com> wrote:
> 
> > After reading through the discussion in the link below and
> > fiddling around I think the problem is that I am in a commodity
> > account, entering a stock purchase, and if I try to set the exchange
> > rate it says that this register doesn't support editing exchange
> > rates.
> >
> > There are two currencies and one commodity involved, so I can set
> > the price of the commodity in the currency it's denominated in, but
> > I can't set the exchange rate between this currency and the other
> > currency (the one of the brokerage account).
> >
> > The workaround I've found is to save the transaction anyway, which
> > makes gnucash assume an exchange rate of 1:1 and create an
> > imbalance-split, then open up the same transaction from the
> > brokerage account, manually calculate the exchange rate and set it
> > there, then I'm able to get rid of the imbalance.
> 
> You're right.  GnuCash should let you set the exchange rate on those 
> splits.  Please file a bug report and I'll see if I can fix it.
> This seems like a very strange situation and I'm not surprised it
> isn't handled correctly.  I've never heard of a broker account that
> deals in two currencies in one transaction.

I have created a bug report now:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735769

I don't think it's a strange or unusual situation.
I have since found this use case described in the documentation here:
http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/currency_purchase1.html
Section 10.4.3. "Purchasing foreign stock with a domestic account"
Might be more or less common depending on the country you're in.

> > Unfortunately the Advanced Portfolio report (if that's the English
> > name?) doesn't deal with this the way I'd like but that's another
> > issue. :-)
> >
> 
> In what way is it not handled correctly?  I tried this and it looked 
> plausible.

When the report is created it seems all calculations are made in the
currency the stock is denominated in (CAD in my example), and then when
the report is displayed it's converted to the currency chosen for the
report (SEK in my case) at the exchange rate of the time chosen for the
report.

So, if I use 1000 SEK to buy a CAD denominated stock,
I expect "Money in" to show 1000 SEK in my report.
What happens though, is that this value fluctuates depending on the
exchange rate at the date chosen for the report.

Gnucash seems to convert the 1000 SEK to CAD according to the exchange
rate a the time I bought the stock, which is fine, but then when this
is going to be shown to me in SEK in the report, it gets converted back
again at the exchange rate of the report date, instead of at the
exchange rate when the purchase was made.

Same thing happens with the other columns in the report.

Anton