Gal,
Have you investigated using the Trading Accounts feature?
While I do have some multi-currency transactions in my book, I rarely
need to do so, but turning on Trading Accounts helped me make sense of them.
A caveat, as I believe Will noted: I enter exact amounts for each
currency because those are known at the time. But I could also enter one
currency and let GnuCash grab that day's exchange rate and enter the
other currency for me.
When you use Trading Accounts, foreign currency transactions (accounts
not in your 'book' currency) will have 2 splits for each debit and
credit that are designed to balance your book taking both currencies
into account. (so you will have a debit in USD, a debit in ISL, a credit
in USD and a credit in ISL)
This will essentially 'fix' those transactions to the exchange rate on
that day. (or whatever rate you used, so you'll have to make a point to
have it grab the rate if needed in the dialog box that will pop up when
entering the transaction)
Your reports should then make more sense and be complete.
As for the income question, now you're dabbling into the realm of
tax-implicated questions. Those should be answered by the relevant
certified professionals. (in each jurisdiction)
For your own informational purposes, I don't see why those transactions
couldn't be entered the same way.
Concerning the report option for choosing a price source, I vaguely
recall either a mailing list or Bugzilla discussion concerning the
complexities and that some of the options were not working properly
anyway, so rather than have a buggy report, it was decided to hard-code
a known working option (in this case price source) for now.
Regards,
Adrien
On 10/16/20 4:01 PM, Gal wrote:
Michael or Penny Novack wrote
Accounting is all about information. Maybe if you explained what
information was being kept for it would make more sense retaining both
in one set of books. Note that if there were some restrictions on
conversion, accounts in separate countries subject to such restriction,
I would probably suggest separate books.
The information is being kept for personal finance tracking.
I want to be able for example to compare an expense type between different
years.
I understand your point about needing to keep track of the original currency
only if you consider evaluation at other dates, but I still see no drawback
in doing so even if I only, currently at least, care about translation at
transaction date.
I do get the benefit of more convenient transaction entering + keeping data
at its purest original form.
With expenses it may not be so visible but what about incomes?
If my employer pays part of my compensation in forex, should I translate
that too? if not, why distinguish between incomes and expenses?
Regarding the translation by transaction date: the transaction report
mentioned by Christopher Lam was kinda helpful to achieve what I was looking
for.
It seems to implicitly choose "nearest in time" price source, as I couldn't
find a way to change the price source in its options menu.
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