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 <jra...@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 <karlsawatzky...@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 <jra...@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 <karlsawatzky...@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 <hell...@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@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 <karlsawatzky...@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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