[GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts

[William Prescott]

I have a somewhat more chaotic organization. Almost all my income is in USD and almost all my expenses are MXN. I have a top level Expense account for Pesos and another for Dollars with lots of subaccounts under them.

I have multiple bank accounts in both currencies and quite often have transactions with one side in one currency and the other side in the other currency. I transfer money between banks both within and across currencies. And occasionally I will spend money in one currency that is reimbursed in the other. GnuCash handles it all really cleanly, but it did take me a little time to figure out how it worked when I started.

Will

On 2022 Oct 18, at 10-18 19:45:56, R Losey <rlosey at gmail.com> wrote:

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
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