my trip to Austria...

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

FYI, what I do when I travel is I translate everything back to USD, even
when I use foreign cash.  I maintain a set of "foreign cash" accounts
that are all denominated in USD.  I keep track of the amount of foreign
currency (and exchange rates) in the transaction descriptions.

Sure, it makes it a bit harder for me to see at a glance how many EUR I
still have in my posession, but that's okay.  When I get back from my
trip I reconcile that account and manually enter another transaction
with the latest balance and exchange rate.

This process works for me.

-derek

Joshua Chambers <chambers.joshua at gmail.com> writes:

> 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 quite old, and some of it seems outdated.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
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available