Split entry/edits Not Workable with Trading Accounts Enabled

[Mike Alexander]

--On February 16, 2014 7:00:04 PM -0800 pete.dickson at gmail.com wrote:

      <snip>

>
> A big loss here is that we no longer see each side of the transaction
> denominated in its respective currency. Both sides of the transaction
> now show the splits in mixed currency, which imo is not a very
> intuitive display.

Yes that's the way it works.  Every split has two values, an amount in 
the split's commodity and a value in the transaction's currency.  If 
trading accounts are off the register shows the value for each split in 
the expanded view.  If they are on it shows the amount and identifies 
the commodity or currency if it isn't the same as the transaction 
currency.  When I implemented that I was hoping the new register code 
would be ready soon which would allow both values to be shown. 
Unfortunately this didn't happen.  Given that it can only show one of 
the two numbers, it seemed better to show the amount so you could see 
which commodity was out of balance more easily.

> Another change of behaviour is that if I want to adjust an existing
> transaction split -- let's say I change one of the dollar amounts in
> the split -- when I tab out of that line, it does not populate the new
> imbalanced amount on the bottom line like it does without Trading
> Accounts. So we seem to lose the
> auto-calculation-of-remaining-imbalance functionality when doing an
> edit.

This depends on which split you change.  If you change a split that is 
in the transaction's currency, then you will get the imbalance split 
populated.  If you change a split that uses a different commodity, you 
won't.  I'm not sure why this is.  It probably should be improved.

>
> BUT the the BIGGEST LOSS of functionality is that Gnucash no longer
> calculates the resulting CAD amounts for me when entering the known
> USD values. Actually it's worse: even though I am in a USD account
> register, GnuCash is expecting me to enter CAD values for the splits
> for any CAD accounts. It seems I now have to calculate the CAD values
> first and enter those in order to "reverse-engineer" the USD number
> which I already knew, and without Trading accounts I could just enter
> directly.

If you are entering simple transactions with only two non-trading 
account splits, it will probably work better if the register is in 
"Basic Ledger" view.  In that case you will get something closer to 
what you want.  If splits are expanded, they show the split's amount as 
stated above, and that's what you have to enter.

              Mike