[GNC] Strange display of share price

[John Ralls]

Flavio,

Your problem is that VT’s parent is IBKR and that’s denominated in CHF. GnuCash sets the currency for non-currency accounts using the first parent account that’s denominated in a currency. That has a couple of consequences, the most significant being that if you start a transaction in the VT register it will use CHF as the transaction currency that GnuCash will use to balance the transaction, so when you buy in USD you’ll have to price both the USD and VT into CHF, but if you start in the USD Cash account the transaction currency will be in USD and so VT will be priced in USD. Those prices will be reflected in the pricedb  If you use Finance::Quote GnuCash will ask it for VT prices in CHF.

That’s not a situation GnuCash handles well. For an excruciatingly long discussion see https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797796. One of the commenters on that bug is CDB-Man, a licensed accountant in Canada. He explains the formally correct way to account for investments denominated in currencies other than the “book” currency. 

You’ll have less trouble if you put your non-CHF securities in sub accounts denominated in the currencies they trade in, for example a USD-Securities account denominated in USD for VT and recreating all of the trading transactions so that they’re only in that currency. Make sure to get a price for the security’s currency in CHF for the same day so you can use the nearest-in-time price source to give reports the best chance of  converting things to CHF correctly—note that that doesn’t mean that they will. The rollup of values on the Accounts page will always be at the latest prices.

Regards,
John Ralls



> On Nov 10, 2024, at 08:46, Boniforti Flavio <boniforti.f at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Inma, thanks for your reply.
> Indeed I see now where you got the "VT bought in CHF"! I now tried to buy
> again 1 VT stock and looking at the price database, the new entry is also
> in CHF. What does this depend on? I think this is the first thing I should
> solve. Probably the fact that my VT purchases are registered in CHF, but
> taken from an USD bank account, leads to them not appearing in the "USD
> Cash" account in terms of numbers.
> 
> Regarding the screenshot you shared with 4 entries: what accounts are "USD"
> and "VT" there? I don't have these - I do have "Assets:Investments:IBKR:USD
> Cash" and "Assets:Investments:IBKR:VT".
> 
> Thanks again for your help,
> F.
>