Managing stocks in foreign currencies

Roman Decker roman.decker at gmail.com
Sat Oct 8 12:18:43 EDT 2016


Hello,

I'm trying to add a stock in a different currency than my default currency
into my gnucash portfolio. I've consulted the manual (
https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/currency_purchase1.html) but
I'm confused.

In 11.4.1, the manual shows an example of a simple foreign currency
purchase which I understand, the screenshots also look exactly like what
GnuCash shows me. However, in "11.4.2. Purchasing foreign stocks" - the
part I'm interested in - the screenshots now show a "Chart of Accounts"
instead of "Accounts" with different columns than what I have.

Ignoring the screenshots - from the text alone I'm not able to understand
how to best record a purchase - here's my exact situation (fictional
values):

My default currency is EUR, but I have 1000 shares of the William Hill
Stock (WMH.L) which is quoted in GBP, not EUR. I now have added an extra
sub-account in Equity:Opening Balances which also uses GBP, to track where
the stocks came from (I've only just started using GnuCash and I've had the
stock for a while). I've already created the security for the WMH.L stock
and I'm able to fetch its current price via the price editor. What I would
like to have in my overview is the approximate current value of my shares
in EUR (calculated by the current stock price and the current EUR to GBP
exchange rate. Is this possible?

Thanks for the help - best regards,
Roman Decker


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