Re: [GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts
You say that having multi-currency accounts for income and expense is a bad idea, because the amounts will be shown in your base currency at the current exchange rate. But there are a few issues in this argument: - First of all, when you make a profit and loss report, for example, you have a few options of choosing an exchange rate, not only the "most recent". I'm not sure if it can take its own exchange rate, closest to the date it was made, for each transaction, but if not, that's just another feature request for the developers. - Information about the current value of transaction made in past in other currency may not be needed sometimes. For example, if I want to see, how much of its value the peso lost over the last years by comparing my expenses for the same dinner a few years ago and now. If I enter all the expenses in EUR, that is impossible. I would not say, that that's an often task, but anyway. - Think about people who live in Argentina and track their expenses. Should they track them in EUR, because peso changes its value over time a lot? The issue of money changing its value over time should rather be solved by discounting, than tracking all the expenses in a single currency. - Even if multi-currency accounts are added in gnucash, you still can convert all your expenses in your base currency. Any multi-currency accounts can be used just as a single-currency one. ___ 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.
Re: [GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts
So, can your proposal work with this kind of structure as well? Or mest the division into currencies happen at the lowest level of account? The division happens at the lowest level, however the proposal still can work with this kind of structure. In this case all the multi-currency accounts would just have 1 sub-account for the currency, which the assets are nominated in. How do you "make an operation in this currency"? Suppose I am entering a new transaction: what is the currency of that transaction? I think there is an answer possible, but it needs to be defined. The proposal is generally for the data structure. I don't have the full vision of the interface yet. Probably it would be a drop-down menu for currency in the ledger. It may look like this: https://i.ibb.co/wLDDTSx/Screenshot-from-2022-10-23-12-58-20.png Here I merged together splits for the same multi-currency account, but different sub-accounts for trading and cash exchange, so there is debit and credit in one line, but in different currencies. I'm not sure, that it should be done this way, but in this simple examples it looks good for me. > How do you enter a multi-currency transaction? e.g. I pay for a dinner > with a EUR price using my CAD credit card. The expense is in EUR, the > credit card is in CAD, and the card company automatically converts the > EUR charge to CAD and bills me in CAD. How would I enter that transaction? You can use either first or second "Paying for a dinner abroad" example from the screenshot above. It only depends on which currency you prefer this expenses would be tracked in. ___ 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.
[GNC] Enhancement request: multi-currency accounts
Let's take a look on accounts that are created in gnucash by default. Generally most of the accounts may be multi-currency, i. e. not bond to a specific currency: you may have cash in multiple currencies, your opening balances may be in multiple currencies, you may have incomes and expenses in multiple currencies. Bank accounts generally have only one currency, but there are some banks that offer multi-currency cards and deposits. These surely can be considered as just a few different accounts, but it may be more convenient to group them together.Now I solve that by creating sub-accounts for each currency I need for each account where I need it. It looks like: Expenses:Dining:USD Expenses:Dining:EUR Expenses:Dining:CAD Expenses:Transport:USD Expenses:Transport:EUR Expenses:Transport:CAD It's very painful to create all of them. I know that I may have only one account in my _main_ currency, but I prefer all currencies to be equal and not perform redundant currency conversions, for example when I spend CAD cash for dining in Canada. So my proposal is: All accounts that user creates are "multi-currency", like placeholder accounts without any specific currency. Sub-accounts for each currency are created automatically, when the first operation in this currency in this account is made. If a multi-currency account is deleted and operations are moved to another account, operations in all the subaccounts are moved to the corresponding subaccounts of the second account. Balances can be shown as a sum of (non-null) amounts in different currencies (but sometimes can be converted to one currency). In a multi-currency account's view (basic ledger) there should be just an additional column -- currency of an operation (editable as a drop-down menu). So user opens account "cash" and sees something like: Date | Description | Transfer | Debit | Credit | Currency | Balance 2022-10-18 | Dinner in a restaurant | Expenses:Dining | | 25 | EUR | 100 USD + 55 EUR That operation is a transfer of 25 EUR from Assets:Cash:EUR to Expenses:Dining:EUR. I would be happy to discuss the concept. ___ 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.
