[GNC] asset discrepancy in change of year

[John Ralls]

> On Apr 9, 2021, at 9:37 AM, Andrea Borgia <andrea at borgia.bo.it> wrote:
> 
> Il giorno dom 28 mar 2021 alle ore 03:04 Christopher Lam <
> christopher.lck at gmail.com> ha scritto:
> 
> 
>> 
>> There is some discussion in an unusually detailed bug report
>> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797796 -- this originates in
>> GnuCash's transaction currency being permitted to be any currency. e.g. if
>> your home currency is USD, but transfer GBP to EUR, the UI will record only
>> GBP/EUR fx. The new method would enforce the transaction currency to be USD
>> therefore your GBP->EUR would require GBP/USD and EUR/USD fx rates. Thus,
>> w.r.t. USD, all fx gains/losses are recorded accurately.
>> 
>> To fix this would be an enormous amount of work and invalidate a lot of
>> code, but would definitely simplify and fix a lot of code too IMHO.
>> 
> 
> Does it apply also to mutual funds purchased in a foreign currency?
> For example,I operate in EUR, I change a given amount to USD and use it to
> purchase a USD-denominated fund.
> Will gnucash with the "trading account" option enabled record everything
> correctly or is it just the scenario mentioned in the bugreport?
> 
> 
> Also, by enabling trading account in the 2020 file, I managed to precisely
> account for the discrepancy in capital at end of year / beginning of year.
> Should I close this amount to my Capital:EUR account or can I just carry it
> forward in the trading account for 2021? I've tried entering a transaction
> in the trading account but it was left unbalanced, so I gave up.
> 

That's exactly the scenario discussed in bug 797796 except that the primary interlocutor's home currency is CAD rather than EUR.

You need to create a capital gains transaction as explained in https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_capgain.html.

Regards,
John Ralls