[GNC] Accounts columns currency

[Sébastien de Menten]

The default currency story has always puzzled me a bit in gnucash (a.o.
when working on piecash) but with your last emails John, now it makes sense
to me!

There is a "Book currency" (the ROOT account currency) that is used to
display the summary information at the bottom of the gnucash main window.
It is set once at book creation (the description of this choice in the 2nd
screen of the wizard is misleading as it says "choose the currency used for
new accounts", probably a documentation bug) and cannot be changed
afterwards via the GUI.
And there is the "default currency for new accounts", which is used when
creating new accounts in a book and can be changed via the gnucash
preferences.

Is that correct ? According to my tests (gnucash 2.6.21), yes but happy to
get an extra confirmation.


On Sun, Apr 15, 2018, 00:18 John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
>
> > On Apr 14, 2018, at 3:10 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> On Apr 14, 2018, at 1:13 PM, Alen Siljak <alen.siljak at gmx.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I think that the currency offered on the accounts page is the currency
> of the root account. That’s set when you create a new book with File>New
> and its default is the default currency in Preferences. Once it’s set for a
> book it can’t be changed in the GUI.
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks for the info, John. I was hoping it was that easy. But... Here
> are a few interesting details:
> >>
> >> - I wanted to convert my XML book to SQLite and modify the root-account
> currency. However, I see no other book format options besides xml. GnuCash
> was installed from the default OpenSuse repo.
> >> - Checked one of the SQLite backup files and the root account is
> already in EUR commodity.
> >> - The summary line at the bottom of the Accounts window is showing all
> the amounts in Euros, respecting the default currency setting, it seems.
> >>
> >> But the list of columns that can be added to the Accounts window still
> only contains the locale currency (GBP).
> >> Changing the system default language also had no effect on the currency
> displayed here.
> >> I was going to check the config directory but I see no
> ~/.config/gnucash.
> >
> > Having only the XML backend indicates that you haven't installed either
> libdbi or the dbd driver packages.
> >
> > Language and locale are separate. Currency, numeric separators, time
> formats, etc. are locale settings. If you launch GnuCash from the command
> line you can set the locale for it with e.g. LANG=de_DE gnucash. If you use
> a desktop icon it's easier to set it in /usr/share/etc/gnucash/environment.
> It's about halfway down and says # LANG = nl_BE. Remove the # and set it to
> your locale of choice. If you want the same language just uncomment the
> following line. If you want a different language, uncomment the following
> line and replace {LANG} with a comma-separated list of two-letter language
> codes in order of preference, e.g. fr,de,en.
> >
> > Is this 2.6.something or 3.0? For 2.6.something the config directory is
> ~/.gnucash.
> >
> > Are you sure you selected the Choose radio button in
> Preferences>Accounts>Default Currency?
>
> Oh, and I just noticed the tooltip for that radio button says "Use this
> currency as the default for new accounts", so I'm likely mistaken and it
> does less than I thought.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
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