Question on multi-currency and trading accounts

Karl Van Nieuwenhuyse vannieuwenhuyse.k at gmail.com
Tue Mar 14 03:51:16 EDT 2017


Dear all,

I am a new user of GNU Cash and have a question on a entry making use of 
multi-currency and trading accounts.

I am involved in setting up a company in Zambia, I myself am from 
Europe.
When I fly from Europe to Zambia, I pay the flight ticket from personal 
funds.
I would need to book that ticket as an expense and credit my Notes 
Payable account, for refund later on.
Zambian Legislation requires me to present my books in Zambian Kwacha, 
so I need to convert.

I have set up accounts as follows:

Expense account for the flights:

Travel:Flights:Flight Euro ; Where Travel and Flights are in Zambian 
Kwacha (ZMW) and the Flight Euro account is in EURO

Liability account:

Long term Liabilities:Notes Payable to owner: Karl Van Nieuwenhuyse ; 
all in Zambian Kwacha

The Trading Accounts are set up, with currency accounts in Euro, Zambian 
Kwacha and USD

When I book a flight cost on the Flight Euro account (debit) and assign 
the credit side to my Liability account, GNU Cash gives me the pop-up 
for currency exchange.
After I fetch the exchange rate and confirm, GNU Cash generates the 
Trading Account splits and the Liability account is credited in Zambian 
Kwacha, but without actual conversion of the amount.
So when I book a flight of 800 Euro, the liability account is credited 
with 800 ZMW, and not the exchanged amount (which should be around 8000 
ZMW). There is also an imbalance in Euro and a leftover in the Euro 
Trading account

The header accounts 'Travel' and 'Flights' are adapted correctly, 
however.

The only way I can get this to work right now, is to manually put the 
correct amount in Zambian Kwacha on the credit side of the transaction 
(my Liability Account).

Is this how this functionality was designed or am I doing something 
wrong?

I have attached screen shots of the different accounts for reference.

All help is highly appreciated,

Many thanks in advance,

Kind regards,

Karl
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