[GNC] Selling a currency with a Split Transaction Scheme ?

[David Cousens]

Hi Long,

The response has been a bit slow because of a problem we encountered with
the upgrade to v3.9 and a few of us have been fairly busy investigating it
and discussing the implications.


> It is possible when you manually enter the value without help from "Price
> Database", Right ?

Yes, you can just enter values being transferred in the register e.g. to
transfer 100VND from a VND account to A USD accoount, in the VND account
register you enter a transaction crediting the VND account  and then tab to
the next line and  select the USD as the target account. GnuCash will
automatically fill in the amount as 100.
                                          Dr             CR
Asset:Bank_VND                                 100
Asset:USD                          100

When you press enter, GnuCash will recognize that the accounts have differnt
currencies and bring up a dialog Transfer Funds in which you can enter the
exchange rate at which the transfer is made. 

You can use the Fetch Rate button which will get the current market exchange
rate but if you are doing a transfer through your bank, this may or may not
be the rate they will use if they apply an exchange fee. If you know the
exchange rate you can just type it in. 

When you press OK in the dialogGnuCash will apply the exchange rate.  If you
then look at the transaction in the register for the VND account then it
will appear as shown above i.e. because that account has a VND currency, the
register for it displays all amounts in VND. Now if you swap to the USD
account register (double click on it in the accounts tab if it is not
already open) and it will display the same transaction as

                                         Dr                Cr
Asset:USD                         33.33
Asset;Bank_VND                                 33.33

i.e. all amounts in the Asset:USD account register are displayed in USD and
the exchange rate is added to the price database.


> Because, if you transfer from currency "A" to currency "B" with "Price
> Database", you are transferred the right value at that time and when you
> transfer more value from "Income" to "B", it will not balances.
> 
> Example :
> If you transfer usd to vnd when the rate are higher you bought. 
> 1 usd = 3 vnd
> So in register, you enter transaction :
> Credit usd : 1
> Debit vnd : 3
> => it's balanced now.

Wrong. What you see depends upon which register you view the transaction in. 
See above answer.

>Maybe, that guide is used for Captain Gains chapter, like selling a house
or
>painting. Because that asset doesn't used "Price Database".

Yes in this case you are not making a capital gain on a commodity which is
routinely traded on a continuous basis in an open market. There is nowhere
online you can look up the price on a painting that is not up for sale in a
gallery, so you generally cannot track its current value. 

In principle you could presumably setup a pseudo commodity which represented
the painting and if you obtained regular valuations of the painting you
could track it with a price in a trading account. AFAIK this is possible but
I have never done it, so I am not all that sure of how you would do it.
Trading accounts are designed around tracking shares, commodities like gold,
silver etc.


David



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David Cousens
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