My answers are interspersed with your questions (well, some of your questions)
On Mon, Sep 9, 2024 at 5:09 PM Megan Tilley <megan.til...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi everyone! > > My environment is: > Local Currency: Australian Dollar (AUD) > Exchange Rates required for: > == USD > == GBP (UK) > == EUR > == SEK (Sweden) > - and are usually purchases that I pass through Paypal (no balance in > Paypal, at all) => buy with AUD and currency conversion made by Paypal into > seller's currency > All my investments are AUD > I have a similar setup, but in USD. I just do everything in USD - when I purchase something that is 39.99 AUD, once it gets charged to my bank account or credit card, it will be in USD, and I enter it that way, usually with a note in the Memo about what I paid in the "other" currency. I don't know that I can add much to the other responses. > As I was hoping to initiate the automatic updates for Banking balances, > stock prices and currency rates, I followed the instructions and ran the > AqBanking Setup, but nothing happened as I could not get the Help button to > operate in GC === terminology between the US and Australia is significantly > different so I could not figure out the corollaries between my > understanding of Australian banking terms and what appears in the AqBanking > window (Ids and Bank Codes, etc.) > I used this back when I used Quicken, and it was handy, for those institutions that supported it. It seemed more complex to get going in GnuCash, so I decided not to use it... that was 7 years ago, and I have not missed this feature. > I moved on to Finance::Quote (F::Q) and followed the instructions to set up > Quote Retrieval ( > https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/finance-quote.html) in > the > "Procedure 11.3. On Windows" the instructions stated to "run the program > Install Online Price Retrieval for GnuCash" which I found in my > installation data under "C:\Program Files > (x86)\gnucash\bin\install-fq-mods.cmd". > This is something I've tried to get working on my Windows machine and on my iMac; the only machine that has done this simply and easily is my Linux machine (Ubuntu 22.04). I have been able to get them working for a while on Windows and/or iMac, but then something breaks. I finally decided that I can get by just fine without this feature... the places I have investments have tools to show good price history. I have used Quicken and Quicken Home & Business for over 25 years, so I am > very used to that data structure. I spend something and one account goes > down in value and I acquire an asset - a coat, for example. > I understand that GC is a double-entry bookkeeping program, each > transaction has an accompanying transaction in another account. However, I > am very unsure where in the account register the transaction should be put > to "buy" the coat = in Quicken it is a Debit (out of my pocket) in the > Debit column of the Banking account. > I'll probably get accused of heresy by the GnuCash faithful, but, to be honest, I didn't really see a difference (from the user perspective) in entering transactions in Quicken and GnuCash. Every transaction in Quicken needs a "category" to record the income or expense. GnuCash isn't that different, but they use accounts instead of categories. A simple transaction, such as purchasing a coat on a credit card is the same in both: Your credit card balance (what you owe) goes up and the Expenses:Clothing account (GnuCash) / category (Quicken) increases by that amount. (I know that categories and accounts are different; I am talking about what is done to enter a transaction appears to be very similar in both GnuCash and Quicken). Question 4: Which perspective should I adopt when looking at a transaction? > I stand in my account and pay out using the Debit column, or I stand in the > Coat account and use the debit column (correspondingly, the bank account is > the credit column)? > If you find the Debits/Credits labels confusing, you may went to go into the Preferences (maybe Settings?), go to the "Accounts" area and UN-check the "Use formal accounting labels" All accounts have DEBITs and CREDITs in that order. For the coat transaction above, it is a DEBIT (first column) to the Expense:Clothing account and a CREDIT (second column) to your credit card (or bank account, if you used a debit card or check). Further to this last, as I said, I use Paypal as a pass through conversion > channel- my Aussie bank account is used to pay for an item in a US market > (NOT an investment/shares/stocks) - say, a 'Reference Book'. I know that I > have to have 3 entries in a transaction: origin (Aussie Bank account), into > Paypal as AUD, conversion by Paypal to USD, payment to US company for my > 'Reference Book'. Referring to Question 4 :- > As I noted above, I just enter the transaction as if I'd made it in AUD, with (usually) a entry in the "Notes" as to what I paid in the other currency. -- _________________________________ Richard Losey rlo...@gmail.com Micah 6:8 _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
