[GNC] Stock "split" exchanging shares of different currencies?

[Jim DeLaHunt]

On 2020-05-15 12:35, John Ralls wrote:
> Jim,
> Use plain text with a fixed-width typeface to be sure that the formatting survives the list server.

Thank you for the tip. Here are my three examples from my original 
message of 14. May 
<https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2020-May/091160.html>.

The transaction I entered was this (simplified a bit from my actual numbers):

Account                   Shares  Price    Buy         Sell

Brokerage CAD:ETF:DLR      200    14.00    2,800.00
Brokerage USD:ETF:DLR.U   -200    10.00                2,000.00


That is, move out 200 shares of the US-dollar DLR.UR, at the share price at which I bought them,
and bring in 200 shares of the Canadian-dollar DLR, at the share prices they were at when I
bought the DLR.U.  That's pretty much what the real-world journal transfer of shares in my
brokerage account was like.

I expected that GnuCash would add in TRADING:FUND splits to balance the quantity of DLR and
DLR.U shares in the transaction. I expected to see:

Account                   Shares  Price    Buy         Sell

Brokerage CAD:ETF:DLR      200    14.00    2,800.00
Trading:FUND:DLR.U         200    10.00    2,000.00
Brokerage USD:ETF:DLR.U   -200    10.00                2,000.00
Trading:FUND:DLR          -200    14.00                2,800.00

What I got was that, plus a Trading:CURRENCY:CAD split that was not motivated by anything,
and then an Imbalance-CAD split to balance the Trading:CURRENCY:CAD split:

Account                   Shares  Price    Buy         Sell

Brokerage CAD:ETF:DLR      200    14.00    2,800.00
Trading:FUND:DLR.U         200    10.00    2,000.00
Trading:CURRENCY:CAD                         800.00
Brokerage USD:ETF:DLR.U   -200    10.00                2,000.00
Trading:FUND:DLR          -200    14.00                2,800.00
Imbalance-CAD                                            800.00

[Hopefully those examples get through clearly on the list.]

On 2020-05-15 12:35, John Ralls wrote:
> GnuCash only knows how to balance transactions in currency so there's always a currency involved, it's the one for the account that you start from or if that account has a non-currency commodity like a stock, it's the currency of the first parent account that has a currency.
GnuCash does know how to balance transactions in multiple currencies if 
they start from a banking or credit card account. It does that all the 
time when recording my travel expenses.  This confirms my suspicion that 
the underlying problem is that GnuCash can't handle a _stock_ 
transaction in multiple currencies.
> For a transfer between commodity accounts you use only the currency of the account you start in. The price doesn't really matter, it's just there so that GnuCash can make sure that the transaction is balanced… so start in split view and create the two splits *using the same price for each*.…

OK, I can see this as an effective workaround. Using the same price for 
each means the same amount for each split. When GnuCash treats all 
splits as in the same currency, even though different splits have 
different currencies in their parent accounts, having the same amount 
means the splits balance. The drawback of this workaround is that the 
transaction will have a misleading share price and amount for one or the 
other split.

What I take from this is that it is time to file a bug report in GnuCash 
asking for support of multi-currency stock transactions. I may even look 
at the source and see if I can figure out how to fix it.
> Regards,
> John Ralls

I always appreciate your helpful support on this list, on top of all the 
development you do. Thank you, John.

Best regards,
      —Jim DeLaHunt, software engineer, Vancouver, Canada

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