[GNC] Feature request: Stock currency setting

[rsbrux]

@Wm
Thanks for your patient explanation!

>>
Don't use the orphans for long, *always* move the tx to an appropriate account unless you are the sort of person that throws all their financial documents in a drawer and sorts them out only when they have to.
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I was unable to use (e.g. move) the transactions which I orphaned, because they were in the wrong currency.  I used the orphaned transactions as models from which to manually transcribe the needed information into new transactions in the correct currency.  Once this was done, I deleted the orphans.

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gnc rewards building a good CoA, it is all to do with double entry and good practice, if you come from a single entry finance world it can be more formal than you expect.
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As a layperson, I have no doubt oversimplified.  My securities accounts are directly under Assets:Inversments:Bank  presumably I should have added a currency layer in between.

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Anyway, in the real world stock ABCD bought in two currencies is almost certainly actually two holdings of that stock not one *unless* there was a currency exchange before the purchase, in which case why not reflect that in your accounts?
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In my case, it was simply an incorrect interpretation on the part of GnuCash, because the security was linked to the wrong currency.  How it could have changed is beyond me.

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A parallel is people owning stock ABCD in a retirement account and an investment account, same stock, two separate holdings, gnc recognizes the separation even though you may not acknowledge it.
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Provided the account hierarchy is properly set up ;-)

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In general, use a CASH or BANK type account of CURRENCY CCC to buy a commodity priced in that currency, I do something like this.

ASSET mixed stuff below GBP <-- or whatever your book currency is
    \ USD account
	\ shares, etc in USD
    \ EUR account
   	\ shares, etc in EUR

It isn't really limiting, all you have to do is put a "plain" account on top of the more complex underlying asset, that way most transactions and reports will work as expected.
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Indeed, this is what I learned from the wiki article which I cited in another post.

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And if you think about it, gnc is reflecting reality, when you buy a RUB asset using CHF there are two exchanges, CHF => RUB => commodity.
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Indeed, this was the source of my problems, because the bank started out by buying the (USD-denominated) security in CHF, then corrected the transaction after I asked them to make future purchases out of my USD account.  Instead they retroactively changed the first transaction, which I had already entered in CHF, instead of making the conversion explicit, as you suggest.  Your approach would have saved me a lot of pain, as it took me over a year to figure out how to do it right ;-}