[GNC] Balances of sub-accounts included in higher-level accounts

[Adrien Monteleone]

> On Jun 20, 2020 w25d172, at 9:00 AM, Peter Bowers <pbowers at pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> I am a renewed user of gnucash (used it 10-15 years ago) for my personal
> use and am setting up my account list.
> 
> I use multi-currency primarily for 2 currencies: ALL and USD. My primary is
> USD.
> 
> I want to set up my expense accounts like this:
> 
> Expenses:Auto:Fuel-USD
> Expenses:Auto:Fuel-ALL
> Expenses:Groceries-USD
> Expenses:Groceries-USD:Groceries-ALL
> 
> Then when I enter something in Fuel-ALL or Groceries-ALL *I'd like to
> automatically see this in the corresponding (parent) USD account*.

Why do you want this? If just for informational (reporting) purposes, just record the transaction using the actual funds involved. When you run reports, you can specify a currency.
> 
> I recognize that with changing currency values this is an inexact science
> (unless gnucash is smart enough to use an exchange rate from the date of
> the transaction?) but since I'm using it for tracking personal expenses
> it's not too big a deal to me.

Yes, when you enter a transaction involving two currencies, GnuCash will create an entry in your price database for your non-home currency. (so ALL in this case)

You can also fetch a rate through the ‘Get Quotes’ feature.

> 
> My difficulty is that "automatically see this in the corresponding (parent)
> USD account". I'd like to be able to do this in transaction reports, budget
> reports, etc AND in the register (with a running balance) if possible.

Unless those transactions contain splits in the other accounts, that won’t happen. But like above, I’d ask why you want this. You don’t need the extra entries if just for reporting purposes.

> 
> As another use case of these sub-accounts being shown in the parent
> account...
> 
> In our savings account we have several "virtual" accounts for longer-term
> savings (saving for car insurance, saving for car repair, etc.). Sometimes
> we want to see the bank account with these sub-accounts excluded (we don't
> want to spend the money that we have intentionally set aside) but other
> times we want to just see a normal register with ALL transactions in that
> bank account.
> 
> Is there any way to switch this on/off?

You can create subs and treat the parent as a placeholder, or in this case, treat the subs as ‘virtual’ segregations of the parent.

If you want to toggle seeing the total with or without those subs, you’d need to switch the parent to a placeholder, make another sub as the remainder that isn’t segregated, and then in reports, choose to only show the desired accounts. You can then also choose to show just the parent and ‘roll-up’ the subs into it.

Regards,
Adrien