[GNC] lost balancing a USD bill with AUD bank account

[David Cousens]

Andrew,

Unless you have a lot of business in USD it is not generally worth setting up a
separate USD account. I usually do the occasional purchase totally in AUD with a
note in the description of the USD->AUD conversion rate. In this case the
transaction looks like:

Bank Account   Cr AUD value of USD purchase + AUD Transaction Fee
Expense:Purchases  Dr AUD value of the USD purchase   (could also be an asset
account if a capital purchase)
Expense:Bank Fees  Dr AUD Transaction Fee.

If you maintain funds in a USD account for such purchases as you might in a
business situation where purchases are regular then the situation is different.

David Cousens
On Sun, 2023-11-19 at 12:22 +1100, AP wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've a bill in USD that has been paid with an AUD bank account and I
> can't, for the life of me, figure out how to link the bill with the
> withdrawal in gnucash.
> 
> The biggest hassle, I believe, is that the withdrawal comes as one
> transaction but contains payment for two bills:
> 
> 1. the USD bill
> 2. the bank's foreign transaction fee
> 
> I believe that I can kludge it by pretending the transaction fee
> doesn't exist and accounting for it in the exchange rate but then I
> lose information about how the fees are hitting me. I'd really like to
> account for that.
> 
> I tried creating bills for the transaction fee (AUD) and the vendor's bill
> (USD) but I (believe that I) need to put them in separate account payables
> (due to the differing currencies) and gnucash wont allow me to link the
> withdrawal to the two bills as a payment as they're in different accounts.
> 
> I thought of creating a "fake" bank account and buying USD at the right
> rate and then using that to pay off the USD bill (leaving the real AUD
> account to pay the transaction fee) but that seems a little kludgy and
> a bit of a pain. Also not sure if it'd work. :)
> 
> I /can/ put in manual transactions for each bill (from memory)
> but whilst that balances the books it means that the payments aren't
> linked to the bills and so information is lost (and bills stay unpaid
> in gnucash). Again, a little kludgy.
> 
> I read https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html but
> I don't believe it quite fits my situation and so it wasn't as helpful
> as I hoped it'd be.
> 
> I went to
> https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_currency.html
> but it's not helping either. :( This could be because I'm new to this
> accountancy shin-ding.
> 
> I did get the sense that somewhere in all this Trading accounts may well
> feature but at a loss as to how.
> 
> I am getting a sneaking suspicion that a Trading account and the "fake"
> bank account idea may be the correct path.
> 
> Help/Guidance eould be appreciated. It IS doing my nut in. :) :(
> 
> Andrew
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