exchange rates... which one?

[David T.]

See below…

> On Jan 22, 2017, at 3:11 PM, Morgan Read <mstuff at read.org.nz> wrote:
> 
> Hello Folk
> 
> Exchange rates - gnucash seems very capable in this area.  However,
> there is a little matter I'm confused about.
> 
> I set up my accounts - I'm in the UK and I have a student loan from
> NZ...  (Any Kiwi expats out their will now roll their eyes skyward
> until only the whites show and then fall backwards from their stool
> and lie comatose on the floor.)
> 
> So, I've started everything from a year back - well, a year an 22 days
> by now.  I've entered the exchange rate for the opening balance at the
> time I've started, 01.01.16.  I've set up the auto-quoting of NZD in
> the Price Editor - the first entry 01.01.16 shows the source as
> 'user:xfer-dialog as, I assume, I entered that manually at the time of
> account creation.  The following, dated this month, show the source as
> 'Finance::Quote' indicating that they're auto-retrieved from an online
> source (v clever, impressive).
> 
> My question is, does the exchange rate used at the time of account
> creation stay stuck with the transaction of that date - that is what
> would have expected given when looking at that I'm looking at an
> historic transaction and would expect to be looking at the historic
> value of that transaction.

Each transaction has an exchange rate associated with it. That rate will not change for that transaction.

> If the above is correct, what exchange rate is applied to (periodic)
> transactions during the course of the year - for instance, penalty
> interest rates applied by our beloved Inland Revenue Department?  Do I
> have to update manually the exchange rate for every transaction?  If I
> then hit the 'Remove Old' on the Price Editor and those exchange rates
> are removed - what exchange rate is applied to the transactions which
> relied on the removed exchange rate…?

I am reasonably sure that each time you input a new transaction, you will be prompted to provide an exchange rate. I believe that it will be similar to a stock transaction, where you put in the amount of the commodity (in your case, NZD), and the local cost (again, in your case, pounds), and GnuCash will compute the exchange rate.

Prices in the price editor are not used in the transactions, so if you delete entries from your price db, it will not affect the transactions.

> 
> Many thanks for any insight.
> 
> Regrards
> Morgan
> 
> -- 
> Morgan Read
> P 07563-650.923
> E mstuff at read.org.nz
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