[GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts

[R Losey]

For me, since my salary, bank, and credit cards are in USD, even when I
spend EUR or CAN or AUS, I normally wait until the credit card expense
shows up in USD and enter the USD value.  Often, I will put the actual
local expense on the 2nd line (I don't remember if that is called
Description or Memo in Gnucash).

I said that to say that I think the proposal would generally be useful only
if you actually have bank accounts, credit cards in multiple currencies.


On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 4:19 PM David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
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-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8