[GNC] Exchange rate of income statement report

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Sat Oct 17 20:14:27 EDT 2020


Gal,

Have you investigated using the Trading Accounts feature?

While I do have some multi-currency transactions in my book, I rarely 
need to do so, but turning on Trading Accounts helped me make sense of them.

A caveat, as I believe Will noted: I enter exact amounts for each 
currency because those are known at the time. But I could also enter one 
currency and let GnuCash grab that day's exchange rate and enter the 
other currency for me.

When you use Trading Accounts, foreign currency transactions (accounts 
not in your 'book' currency) will have 2 splits for each debit and 
credit that are designed to balance your book taking both currencies 
into account. (so you will have a debit in USD, a debit in ISL, a credit 
in USD and a credit in ISL)

This will essentially 'fix' those transactions to the exchange rate on 
that day. (or whatever rate you used, so you'll have to make a point to 
have it grab the rate if needed in the dialog box that will pop up when 
entering the transaction)

Your reports should then make more sense and be complete.

As for the income question, now you're dabbling into the realm of 
tax-implicated questions. Those should be answered by the relevant 
certified professionals. (in each jurisdiction)

For your own informational purposes, I don't see why those transactions 
couldn't be entered the same way.

Concerning the report option for choosing a price source, I vaguely 
recall either a mailing list or Bugzilla discussion concerning the 
complexities and that some of the options were not working properly 
anyway, so rather than have a buggy report, it was decided to hard-code 
a known working option (in this case price source) for now.

Regards,
Adrien

On 10/16/20 4:01 PM, Gal wrote:
> Michael or Penny Novack wrote
>> Accounting is all about information. Maybe if you explained what
>> information was being kept for it would make more sense retaining both
>> in one set of books. Note that if there were some restrictions on
>> conversion, accounts in separate countries subject to such restriction,
>> I would probably suggest separate books.
> 
> The information is being kept for personal finance tracking.
> I want to be able for example to compare an expense type between different
> years.
> 
> I understand your point about needing to keep track of the original currency
> only if you consider evaluation at other dates, but I still see no drawback
> in doing so even if I only, currently at least, care about translation at
> transaction date.
> I do get the benefit of more convenient transaction entering + keeping data
> at its purest original form.
> 
> With expenses it may not be so visible but what about incomes?
> If my employer pays part of my compensation in forex, should I translate
> that too? if not, why distinguish between incomes and expenses?
> 
> 
> Regarding the translation by transaction date: the transaction report
> mentioned by Christopher Lam was kinda helpful to achieve what I was looking
> for.
> It seems to implicitly choose "nearest in time" price source, as I couldn't
> find a way to change the price source in its options menu.



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