[GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts

[David Carlson]

This is interesting and it might be an optional configuration for the
automatic account creation wizard, but not for most users who use a single
currency in their accounting.  Also, this is not the usual place to propose
enhancements, but it would be a good place to refine a concept prior to
making an actual proposal.

What do others think?

On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 3:54 PM Anton Tsyganenko <anton-tsyganenko at yandex.ru>
wrote:

> Let's take a look on accounts that are created in gnucash by default.
> Generally most of the accounts may be multi-currency, i. e. not bond to
> a specific currency: you may have cash in multiple currencies, your
> opening balances may be in multiple currencies, you may have incomes and
> expenses in multiple currencies. Bank accounts generally have only one
> currency, but there are some banks that offer multi-currency cards and
> deposits. These surely can be considered as just a few different
> accounts, but it may be more convenient to group them together.Now I
> solve that by creating sub-accounts for each currency I need for each
> account where I need it. It looks like:
> Expenses:Dining:USD
> Expenses:Dining:EUR
> Expenses:Dining:CAD
> Expenses:Transport:USD
> Expenses:Transport:EUR
> Expenses:Transport:CAD
>
> It's very painful to create all of them. I know that I may have only one
> account in my _main_ currency, but I prefer all currencies to be equal
> and not perform redundant currency conversions, for example when I spend
> CAD cash for dining in Canada.
>
> So my proposal is:
>
> All accounts that user creates are "multi-currency", like placeholder
> accounts without any specific currency. Sub-accounts for each currency
> are created automatically, when the first operation in this currency in
> this account is made. If a multi-currency account is deleted and
> operations are moved to another account, operations in all the
> subaccounts are moved to the corresponding subaccounts of the second
> account. Balances can be shown as a sum of (non-null) amounts in
> different currencies (but sometimes can be converted to one currency).
> In a multi-currency account's view (basic ledger) there should be just
> an additional column -- currency of an operation (editable as a
> drop-down menu). So user opens account "cash" and sees something like:
>
> Date | Description | Transfer | Debit | Credit | Currency | Balance
>
> 2022-10-18 | Dinner in a restaurant | Expenses:Dining | | 25 | EUR | 100
> USD + 55 EUR
>
> That operation is a transfer of 25 EUR from Assets:Cash:EUR to
> Expenses:Dining:EUR.
>
> I would be happy to discuss the concept.
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-- 
David Carlson