[GNC] Setting currency on share accounts

[Phillip Duff]

Hi,

Thanks for your responses. 
Leaving aside the semantics of whether the real-life situation is that the stocks are held in brokerage accounts or otherwise, I see the way this is done. It is not of course obvious that child accounts take on the currency of the parent. I would certainly like to see something in the solution which indicates this. The security currency field should be two separate fields (there is plenty published that one field should never be used to represent two different artefacts), for the simple reason that the use of the field can never be intuitively determined.

Then what we would see is, that the currency field for a child account would show in a read-only field the currency of the parent, making it intuitive. The security field should then be used as it is today.

That would solve the problem. The best documentation is no documentation wherever possible, and this change would resolve it.

Thanks for your responses. Its easy to change what I have done already

Cheers Phil

> On 28 Apr 2022, at 18:43, john <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
> 
> Not quite, on two points.
> 
> Not all securities are held in a brokerage account. Until a few years ago companies would issue paper certificates to share holders who held stock directly but nowadays those shares are tracked by clearing houses such as State Street Bank. The latter is common for stocks held in company-run dividend reinvestment programs.
> 
> The other is that it's possible to have stocks denominated in more than on currency in a brokerage account. Non-currency commodities derive their trading currency from the first parent account t denominated in a currency. For example one might have the following structure:
> 
> Assets
>    Investments
>        Charles Schwab
>              Stock-USD
>                   AAPL
>              Stock-CAD
>                   RY.TO
>        BKE Stocks-USD
>             ABBV
> 
> Where the two accounts Stock-USD and Stock-CAD are of type ASSET denominated in the currencies indicated in their names. GnuCash will try to price AAPL in USD and to price RY.TO in CAD. The BKE Stocks-USD has stocks that aren't in a brokerage account. BKE stands for for book-keeping entry, the term used in US investment circles for shares whose ownership is tracked by a clearing house. The term for stocks in a brokerage account is "held in street name" because the brokerage is the shareholder of record and takes care of passing through dividends and shareholder proxy votes to their  customers.
> 
> Regards,
> John Ralls
> 
>> On Apr 27, 2022, at 8:56 PM, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Securities (stocks) are held in brokerage accounts which reside under
>> assets.  The brokerage account determines the currency for it's securities
>> and transactions.  GnuCash assumes that a given brokerage account deals in
>> only one currency, so another brokerage account is needed for an additional
>> currency.  The same security can be held in multiple brokerage accounts.
>> See the help and tutorials for examples of accounts and transactions.
>> 
>> Prices get entered into the price data by several means including actual
>> prices from transactions, prices downloaded from the Internet or imported
>> from a file, or even manually entered into the database.
>> 
>> Reports can pick prices out of the price data by different algorithms
>> depending on your choice.  If there is no price for a given report date
>> GnuCash will use the method you choose to pick or calculate a price for the
>> report.
>> 
>> I am deliberately not being detailed because there is a huge universe of
>> choices depending on your needs.  If you have specific questions ask them
>> here to get specific answers.
>> 
>> On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 10:12 PM Phillip Duff <phil.duff7 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I cannot see where you set the currency for a stock account. I have stocks
>>> in multiple currencies, but the currency/secuity field seems dual purpose,
>>> therefore assumes the stock is in base currency, which is not always the
>>> case.
>>> 
>>> Anyone know how to do it?
>>> 
>>> Also, I can’t fund in the documentation whether the system uses the latest
>>> price/currency in the price database or does it require the price to exist
>>> for the day on which it is being calculated. Example: If the latest price I
>>> have in the price database is on 14-MAr will the system use this price to
>>> calculate value on the 31-Mar
>>> 
>>> Cheers Phil
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>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> David Carlson
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>