Interesting. I'll have to have a play with that idea and see what I can come up with that makes sense.
>From my own accounting point of view the main requirements are: 1. My profit/loss must be in GBP, as that's the currency of the account and the currency I pay tax in. 2. The commodity price should be denominated in its native currency (USD) so that I can fetch prices and see my unrealized gains/losses (converted back to GBP at current rates if I so desire) over time. Regarding your point (a): My account is in GBP and I never see the USD as they are converted by my broker as part of the purchase/sale transaction (at the time of the purchase, their accounting reports didn't even contain the USD price) – but obviously, it's a USD-denominated commodity and it doesn't make sense to try and denominate it in GBP in my ledger. Accounting for the sale as two transactions is a very interesting idea. I'm struggling to mentally imagine how it would look (subject to my constraint 1 above), though maybe it will become clear if I play around with it a bit. Maybe I use an equity account for the temporary (imaginary?) USD holding? Where does the FX loss (or profit) get accounted for? At some point it needs to be offset against my P/L from selling the shares so I end up with the correct overall profit/loss in GBP. Do you think you could share an example of how you envisage booking this as two separate transactions? Thanks! > On 2 May 2021, at 02:15, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: > > Setting aside beancount for a second, > a) what cost currency was the commodity held in? I.e., what currency was it > purchased and sold against? > b) it seems like a good way to think about this sale is two transactions: a > sale of S_SQ, and a subsequent currency conversion. Do you think that's a > good model? If so, I'd recommend starting by splitting it into those two > transactions in your ledger, which should lead to clarity. > > On Saturday, May 1, 2021 at 1:59:37 PM UTC-7 [email protected] > <http://caesarschinas.com/> wrote: > I think I now understand what's going on here. > > It's actually simple: because the commodity is priced in USD, Beancount is > naturally calculating my profit in USD. > The result is 1338.43 USD – which, at the current exchange rate on the sale > date, is 1015.35 GBP. > > But because I actually made the transactions in GBP, and the exchange rate > has changed in the meantime, my actual profit is different (977.88 GBP). > > I'm not sure what the cleanest way is to resolve this. At present I can think > of two options: > > 1. Use a 'false' FX rate for the profit/loss leg of the transaction, such as > by using Beancount's @@ syntax. > Example: > Income:Investments:PnL -977.88 GBP @@ 1338.43 USD > At first glance this seems quite elegant, but one disadvantage is that it > will result in incorrect entries in the prices database for GBP/USD. > > 2. Add another leg for FX gains/losses (I'm not sure if Expenses is the right > category) > Example: > Income:Investments:PnL -977.88 GBP @ 1.31820 USD > Expenses:Financial:FXGainLoss -37.46 GBP @ 1.31820 USD > The problem with this is that it looks like I made a profit on the FX > difference, when I actually made a loss. I'm not sure how to resolve that. > > Does anyone have any better ideas? > > > On Sat, 1 May 2021 at 20:54, Caesar Schinas <[email protected] > <applewebdata://19658A9F-5B61-458C-8EF4-56710C154B0D>> wrote: > Apologies, I made a minor error in my last message – my arithmetic doesn't > add up because I omitted to account for the FX fee of 6.60 GBP. > The point remains: the much larger 'error' of 49.38 GBP is unaccounted for. > > On Saturday, 1 May 2021 at 20:46:45 UTC+1 Caesar Schinas wrote: > But that's the thing: my income wasn't 1015.34 GBP, it was 977.88 GBP. > That is the difference between the amount of 482.60 GBP that was debited from > my account when I bought the shares, and the amount of 1467.08 GBP that was > credited to my account when I sold the shares. > > So something else is amiss. But I can't work out what. (Unless it's totally > incorrect exchange rates from my broker. But their web interface shows the > same figures as the CSV from which I extracted the above data, and I'm loath > to 'massage' the rates just to make the numbers fit, without actually > understanding what's wrong.) > > > On Saturday, 1 May 2021 at 20:18:53 UTC+1 redst...@ <>gmail.com > <http://gmail.com/> wrote: > Sale 11 175.81 1,933.91 > Cost 11 54.135 595.49 > 1,338.43 > > Proceeds 1467.08 1.3182 1,933.90 > PnL (1,015.34) 1.3182 (1,338.43) > 595.48 > > So you should have -1015.34 GBP as your Income, not -977.88 > > Of course, you would need an additional posting to absorb rounding errors. > > On Wednesday, April 28, 2021 at 5:14:40 PM UTC-7 cae...@ <>caesarschinas.com > <http://caesarschinas.com/> wrote: > I've been using beancount for a while for my everyday transactions, but am > only recently getting around to trying to import my trading activity to my > ledger as it seems much more complex. > > I'm having trouble with accounting for profit/loss on shares which are priced > in a currency different to the main currency of my trading account. > > My trading account is in GBP, but I often buy shares priced in USD. My broker > handles the conversion, and charges me an FX fee as a percentage of the value > of the trade. > > Here is an example: > > 2020-03-31 * "Buy 11 shares of Square" > Assets:GB:Freetrade:GIA:Cash -482.60 GBP @ 1.23390 USD > Assets:GB:Freetrade:GIA:SQ 11 S_SQ {54.13456 USD} > > ; ... > > 2020-11-16 * "Sell 11 shares of Square" > Assets:GB:Freetrade:GIA:Cash 1467.08 GBP @ 1.31820 USD > Assets:GB:Freetrade:GIA:SQ -11 S_SQ {54.13456 USD} @ 175.81000 USD > Assets:GB:Freetrade:GIA:Cash -6.60 GBP > Expenses:Financial:Fees 6.60 GBP > Income:Investments:PnL -977.88 GBP @ 1.31820 USD > > All the figures are from my broker's reports, except for the profit > calculation. > For the profit I have simply subtracted the GBP purchase price from the GBP > sale price, as this is the actual amount of profit I made (the actual net > change in my account balance). > > However, the second transaction does not balance: > Transaction does not balance: (49.3832800 USD) > > I am struggling to understand where the extra 49.3832800 USD came from (or > went?), or how I can balance this transaction. > > I'm quite new to this. Can anyone give me any tips? > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google > Groups "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beancount/3Bp4ZgnqOvY/unsubscribe > <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beancount/3Bp4ZgnqOvY/unsubscribe>. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected] > <applewebdata://19658A9F-5B61-458C-8EF4-56710C154B0D>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/20b40ee8-50cd-436b-b402-e5e22e6ede11n%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/20b40ee8-50cd-436b-b402-e5e22e6ede11n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google > Groups "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beancount/3Bp4ZgnqOvY/unsubscribe > <https://groups.google.com/d/topic/beancount/3Bp4ZgnqOvY/unsubscribe>. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/f0c5845b-793b-440f-be43-ca858d30256en%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/f0c5845b-793b-440f-be43-ca858d30256en%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. 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