my trip to Austria...

[Joshua Chambers]

Hello!  So, I've been using gnucash for a number of years now keeping
detailed track of all my holdings and expenses.  I've got a pretty good
system worked out, however recently I took a six-week trip to Austria,
and of course exchanged money into Euros...

I am having a very hard time really understanding how best to deal with
this in gnucash!  I have indeed read a lot about this on the web, and
I've noticed that a lot that's out there specifically about gnucash is
quite old, and some of it seems outdated.

I understand there may be multiple ways to do this.  The currency
exchange dialog comes up and yet I can't understand how to use it
properly, and I've read that it's better to ignore it and exchange
manually with these "TRADING" accounts... and I try to do that, and
frankly... I'm just a bit lost.

Then, for expenses... should I re-translate currencies again for each
expense (at the same rate I changed that particular money at) and just
use my existing set of expense accounts... that would be cleanest from a
"what did I spend?" question.. or do I make a new set of "travel
expense" accounts for each currency I use?

Here's one odd transaction that's got me a bit stumped... so, I've got
my asset accounts arranged (in simplified form) like this:

Assets
	-Holdings
		--Cash
			---Dollars
			---Euros
		--Checking
	-Exchanges
		--Benjamin
		--Seth


I use "Exchanges" accounts when buying things for other people or asking
them to buy things for me, or when I loan or borrow money.  So, Benjamin
borrowed $300 from me and $200 from Seth, so he owed $500, but my
Benjamin account showed only $300 of it and was positive (money I'm owed).

When I was in Austria, Benjamin was there, and he paid me back for both
those loans, so I'm taking on a debt to Seth... and this is all no
problem.  However, where the problem comes in is that Benjamin paid me
back in Euros of course, and at the time the exchange rate was about
1.1, so he paid me EUR 450.

So now my Benjamin account should read 0, my Seth account should read
$200 and my Euros account should read EUR 450... what do you think is
the best way to do that?  A little guidance is appreciated.

Thank you!
--Joshua