Long, Balance Sheet and Income Statement are attached for a simple test which involved a currencytransfer of 100 AUD to a USD account and then a transfer back from the USD account to the AUD with a different exchange rate that created a loss of 0.26 using trading accounts to record. I used the menu->Action->Transfer ( or the Toolbar-> Transfer button to create the transfer. I am using GnuCash 3.9. Trading_test_balance_sheet.png <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/t375329/Trading_test_balance_sheet.png> Trading_test_IncomeStatement.png <http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/file/t375329/Trading_test_IncomeStatement.png> .
1. If you are using trading accounts, i.e. you have used the File->Properties to get the book properties and selected the Use Trading Accounts checkbox in the Accounts tab as described in the wiki https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Trading_Accounts trading accounts will be created automatically whenever you do a multiple currency transfer if they don't already exist. You do not create them manually. You do not have to manually create the transactions to them when you do a currency transfer, they are automaticall created. These are special accounts and the user is locked out of editing transactions to them. While experimenting I had a situation where an incorrect value was created in a trading account and an Imbalance was created as a result. I was unable to edit the trading account value so the only way to fix it was to delete the transaction completely and then start again. 2. There is no need while using the trading accounts in GnuCash to transfer anything from the trading account balances to any sort of realized gains account or unrealized gains account. These amounts are calculated automatically for you in the Balance Sheet and Income Statement reports from the values in the Trading accounts as per the above examples. Selinger's article predates the setting up of trading accounts in GnuCash. While he illustrates the use of them in the painting sale AFAIK in GnuCash they seem only to be setup for currency transfers at this point although it is possible they may also work for other commodities (e.g.shares). I could be wrong on that but I don't have time to explore it fully at the moment and it is not a feature I currently use. You could also manually setup trading accounts rather than using the inbuilt GnuCash trading account type which is created automatically. In that case you have to create all the transactions for unrealized gains and losses and realized gains and losses manually rather than having them done automatically which was where we started in this discussion. GnuCash is very flexible and there are often different ways you can achieve the same objective which can sometimes be confusing for new users and even for those of us who have been using it for a relatively long time (~2010 in my case when I used it in case studies while doing a masters in accounting and I am also a minor contributor to the development and documentation). David ----- David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
