[GNC] NEw user assistance

Jim DeLaHunt list+gnucash at jdlh.com
Sat Jan 7 19:48:46 EST 2023 

Karl:

I understand your situation. I also keep my books primarily in Canadian 
dollars, but track investments in US dollars.

On 2023-01-07 09:56, Karl wrote:
> …If I purchase foreign stocks
> (foreign to Canada), my broker automatically converts my CAD "broker cash
> account" to USD to purchase the stock. There is no need for me to have two
> broker cash accounts (one for CAD and one for USD) - all my investment cash
> is kept in one account, in CAD.…

So you are saying that your broker does not show you as having a USD 
cash account, but also that your broker purchases these US stocks in US 
dollars, which are converted from your Canadian dollars. The broker 
holds USD on your behalf, even if it is only transitory.

So, I suggest that you reflect that in your account hierarchy. Have an 
asset account in CAD which corresponds to your CAD cash and all 
CAD-denominated securities, and another asset account in USD which 
corresponds to your transitory USD cash and all USD-denominated securities:

-CAD Investments (parent account)
    -Online Broker Cash Account (CAD)
     -"individual CAD stocks" (in CAD)
     -etc (in USD)

-USD Investments (parent account)
   -Online Broker Cash Account (USD)    # note: transitory cash holdings
   -AAPL stock (in USD)
   -AMZN stock (in USD)
   -etc (in USD)

Does your broker report the USD prices of your US stock purchases, e.g. 
N shares at X USD per share?  Than N*X = Y USD total purchase price, and 
your broker deducted Z CAD to fund the purchase, so that they are 
implicitly exchanging Z CAD: Y USD. Each time you buy or sell shares, 
the Online Broker Cash Account (USD) will see a cash balance from the 
purchase or sale, together with an offsetting USD:CAD exchange 
transaction which brings that Cash Account (USD) balance back to zero.

Best regards,
       —Jim DeLaHunt, Vancouver, B.C.

On 2023-01-07 09:56, Karl wrote:
> Thanks, John.
>
> I am a self-directed investor, using an online broker. My structure would
> be something like this:
>
> Bank account ---> transfer funds to ---> online broker cash account (all in
> CAD $) ----> all my investments
>
>
> I then use my single online broker cash account to purchase my investments
> (Canadian stocks, American stocks, etc.). If I purchase foreign stocks
> (foreign to Canada), my broker automatically converts my CAD "broker cash
> account" to USD to purchase the stock. There is no need for me to have two
> broker cash accounts (one for CAD and one for USD) - all my investment cash
> is kept in one account, in CAD.
>
> Does that make sense? Hopefully I'm being clear.
>
> So maybe I could set up my GnuCash Investment hierarchy something like:
>
> -Online Broker Cash Account (all in CAD)
>
> -USD Investments (parent account)
>
> -AAPL stock
>
> -AMZN stock
>
> -etc
>
> -CAD Investments (parent account)
>
> -"individual CAD stocks"
>
> -etc
>
>
> Would that work?
>
> Regards,
>
> *Karl*
>
>
> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 23:22, john <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>
>> GnuCash prioritizes direct prices over indirect ones, so if you have a
>> single AAPL-CAD price in your price database and a bunch of AAPL-USD and
>> USD-CAD ones the latter will be ignored when trying to price AAPL in CAD
>> and you'll almost always get the single direct price.
>>
>> Two more important considerations: Every transaction in GnuCash has a
>> single transaction currency and all prices created by that transaction are
>> to/from the transaction currency. The transaction currency is determined by
>> the account whose register has focus when you create it or by the From
>> account when using the Transfer Dialog.
>>
>> If you're going to do multi-currency trading you want to enable Trading
>> Accounts on the book. You do that on the first tab of File>Properties. One
>> of the side effects of doing that is that the register shows amounts in the
>> split account's currency instead of the Register account's currency. The
>> following example will be written that way.
>>
>> To avoid creating that AAPL-CAD price you need to create a possibly fake
>> USD cash account. If you purchase of US stocks involve an actual USD cash
>> account then use that. Once the accounts are in place, do the following.
>> For an e.g. to have numbers I'll assume a purchase of 100 shares of AAPL at
>> today's closing price of 129.62 and 1 USD = 1.34429 CAD. 100 shares of
>> AAPL, assuming a no-fee/no-commission brokerage and that the ask is the
>> close, will cost USD 12,962.00, which is CAD 17,433.24. If you do this part
>> from the CAD account you must use two transactions like so:
>>
>> 2023-01-06 Fund USD Cash for Purchase of 100 AAPL
>> Assets:Investment:Cash-CAD CAD 17,433.24
>> Assets:Investment:Cash-USD USD 12,962.00
>>
>> Now buy the stock in another transaction. Do this in either the AAPL or
>> USD register to ensure that the transaction currency is USD!
>> 2023-01-06 Buy AAPL 100
>> Assets:Investment:Stocks:Stocks-USD:AAPL 100 129.62 12,1962.00
>> Assets:Investment:Cash-USD 12,962.00
>>
>> If you start from the AAPL or Cash-USD account you can do it in a single
>> transaction because the transaction currency will be USD, but you still
>> need to do all four splits. Note that when you commit the transaction by
>> pressing return or tabbing out of the blank split the Trading Accounts code
>> will add 4 more Trading Account splits.
>>
>> A sell would be done the same way but in the other direction.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>>
>>
>> On Jan 6, 2023, at 1:45 PM, Karl <karlsawatzky419 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi there John,
>>
>> Thanks for the information. Very helpful! Perhaps I am setting up my
>> foreign (USD) investment accounts all wrong. I'm trying to follow the
>> instructions and examples in Chapters 9.5 and 9.6, but I can't
>> reconcile the instructions with your explanation.
>>
>> So if I set-up the account structure as you described:
>>
>> Assets
>> Investments
>> Stocks
>> Stocks-USD
>> AAPL
>>
>>   ... when I go to make an initial purchase of AAPL shares/stock, do I
>> enter the transaction in CAD or USD? For example, AAPL closed at $129.62
>> USD today, so if I bought 10 stocks, should my entry be:
>>
>> DR AAPL stock          1,296.20 (USD)
>>        CR Cash                             1,296.20 (USD)
>>
>> or should it be:
>>
>> DR AALP stock          1,736.91 (CAD)
>>        CR Cash                              1,736.91 (CAD)
>>
>> ???
>>
>> CAD-USD was at $1.00 USD = $1.34 CAD.
>>
>>
>> Ideally, when I run the "Advanced Portfolio" Report, I would like for what
>> I'm seeing to be in CAD. Is this possible?
>>
>> Thanks again for your help. As you can probably tell, I'm terrible with
>> computers, but not too bad with accounting! haha
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> *Karl*
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 13:12, john <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>>
>>> That's a very long-running discussion with another Canadian CPA, see
>>> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797796
>>> and https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798004.
>>>
>>> The simplest workaround is to set up an account structure that looks like
>>> Assets
>>> Investments
>>> Stocks
>>> Stocks-USD
>>> AAPL
>>>
>>> As long as you keep the priceDB updated with both CAD-USD exchange rates
>>> and AAPL prices the Stocks account will show the value of the AAPL shares
>>> in CAD. Unfortunately if you have several USD stocks and want to track them
>>> individually you'd need to do something like
>>> Stock-AAPL-CAD
>>> Stock-AAPL-USD
>>> AAPL
>>> Stock-GOOG-CAD
>>> Stock-GOOG-USD
>>> GOOG
>>>
>>> Which could be a bit tiresome. An alternative is to set things up as you
>>> would normally, i.e.
>>> Assets
>>> Investments
>>> Cash
>>> Stocks-USD
>>> AAPL
>>> GOOG
>>>
>>> and use the Advanced Portfolio Report to show the values in CAD.
>>>
>>> I don't understand what you mean by "the currency exchange function", but
>>> if you want to retrieve the CAD-USD exchange rate you need to get an
>>> Alphavantage API key. The issue in bug 798599 is resolved because
>>> Alphavantage put currency exchange rates back to being available with a
>>> free API key. F::Q version 1.53 switched to a different retrieval method
>>> that broke retrieving precious metal rates (e.g. XAU-CAD) so if that's your
>>> concern you need a F::Q version that isn't 1.53; the current release is
>>> 1.54.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> John Ralls
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 6, 2023, at 6:05 AM, Karl <karlsawatzky419 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello David and everyone,
>>>
>>> Thank you for your messages. A little background about myself: I'm a
>>> Canadian (born and raised), and a CPA. I have been using GnuCash for a
>>> while now, but am interested in delving deeper into its functions that can
>>> be useful to me. I use GnuCash only for personal and private use for my
>>> household, not for business purposes in any way.
>>>
>>> I am currently running Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (Build 19045) on my main
>>> machine at home, and am using GnuCash Version 4.10 with "Finance::Quote
>>> 1.54" and perl (v5.32.1).
>>>
>>> I am enjoying the Chapter 9 - Investments part of GnuCash and have
>>> successfully set up the Automatic Online Retrieval of Stock Quotes. What a
>>> great function!
>>>
>>> The trouble is, I can't figure out a way to have any foreign investments
>>> denominated in my local currency (CAD). For example, if I invest in, let's
>>> say, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), which is traded on the NASDAQ (a foreign
>>> market for me), the share(s) value only shows up in the currency of the
>>> market in which it is being traded (in this case, USD). How do I get
>>> GnuCash to denominate and show me my foreign investments in my local
>>> currency (CAD)?
>>>
>>> Not sure if this is related but, I also tried to set-up the currency
>>> exchange function, but it appears that this is no longer functional due to
>>> the API Key from Alphavantage. Is this true?
>>> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798599
>>>
>>> Thank you everyone. Happy to see that there is a supportive and
>>> collaborative community here!
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> *Karl*
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 5 Jan 2023 at 20:07, David H <hellvee at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Welcome to gnucash Karl.
>>>
>>> I think from memory Nabble went away during the pandemic about 12 months
>>> ago, so maybe forget that one :-)  If you have any questions, post them
>>> here to the gnucash user list (gnucash-user at gnucash.org) and you'll get
>>> all the help you need.  Also just a heads up do NOT use reply to reply to
>>> individuals, use REPLY ALL so that everyone benefits and can contribute to
>>> the question at hand.  Also if you subscribe to the digest version and
>>> reply to something, update the subject to something meaningful don't just
>>> leave it as "Digest ......." which is pretty meaningless and trim any
>>> extraneous cruft out of the reply.
>>>
>>> Also it always helps to include what version of Gnucash you installed and
>>> on what OS as things vary a little from Windows to Linux to MacOS - so
>>> lets
>>> start there, which is it ?
>>>
>>> Cheers David H.
>>>
>>> ps don't forget that "Reply All". :-)
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 6 Jan 2023 at 11:31, Karl <karlsawatzky419 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello there!
>>>
>>> I am a new user to GnuCash and am looking for some assistance. I have
>>> subscribed to the mailing list and am attempting to access the Web Forum
>>> (Nabble) for further assistance from other users.
>>>
>>> Specifically, I am trying to set-up the online pricing list for stock
>>> quotes.
>>>
>>> Please assist. Thank you for your assistance.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> *Karl*
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