Transactions involving different currencies

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 21, 2015, at 4:27 PM, Miguel Guedes <miguel.a.guedes at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Thank you for the reply, John.
> 
> On 18/12/15 03:45, John Ralls wrote:
>> We know this is confusing. The way you enter multiple currencies is
>> different when you have trading accounts enabled from when you don't:
>> With trading accounts you enter the amount in the split account's
>> currency, without you enter the amount in the transaction's currency.
>> The last will be the currency of the register in which you first
>> created the transaction.
>> 
>> Another complication is that when you're in split view you're
>> responsible for inserting the right amount into each split. GnuCash
>> won't adjust the split amounts, it will only create a balancing
>> split.
> 
> This was the only way I found of making it work -- by editing the
> trading split amounts manually.  I found it confusing because GnuCash
> prompts for the exchange rate when tabbing out of the split of the
> register account so the assumption I made was that it would
> automatically populate the right amounts in the trading splits.
> Shouldn't it do so?  Is there any reason it doesn't?

It *does* populate the trading splits correctly. What it doesn't do is populate the "foreign" currency split. You have to do that yourself and it has to balance in the transaction currency with the other split.

Borrowing your example, you should have entered

Assets:Current Assets:GBP        100.00
Assets:Current Assets:EUR                    138.89

And told the transfer dialog either that the amount should be 138.89 or that the GBP->EUR rate was 1.3839. GnuCash will take care of the trading accounts, you don't need to do anything.

If you had trading accounts turned off then the way you entered it (without the trading accounts) would have been correct and when you looked at the EUR account's register you would have seen both splits showing 138.89.

Regards,
John Ralls