[GNC] Switching to trading accounts in existing database

[Lukas Haase]

Hi,

I have been using gnucash for over ten years. My data contains all data (Sqlite database ~20MB). I have lived in four different countries and since the move never was a clear cut, I ended up having four separate Equity/Assets/Liabilities/Expenses/Income hierarchies, one for each. I made extensive usage of the multi-currency functionality (e.g., living in country A, paying with credit card from country B) which has an exchange rate for each transaction/split when the two accounts have different currencies.

Recently I stumbled into this problem: "Securities" (crypto currency) which I buy from different brokers in each country. So I have a broker in Canadian dollars, US Dollars, Euro. Now these "shares" (=Bitcoin) get transfered to my personal wallet. This personal wallet is represented as Stock account with security BTC and the sources of its transactions are the stock accounts of each trader with different currencies. Suddenly it gets messy ... the personal wallet account would mix different currencies in the same ledger (Price/Buy/Sell values represent 1:1 the values of the source accounts -- there is no currency conversion).

So I got recommended using trading accounts. But suddenly all my previous multi-currency transactions get a small grey box with a cross (hinting the transaction is inconsistent).

How do I best deal with this?
Is it possible to keep my old multi currency transactions as-is and use trading accounts only for securities/stocks?

If not, how do I migrate while ensuring my ten years worth of data does not suddenly get inconsistent?

Thanks,
Lukas