It's been rumoured that Graham Leggett said:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I have been trying to work out if it's possible to do a transfer from a
> bank account of one currency to a bank account of another currency, just
> as you can at a bank.
>
> According to the docs, this is not possible - you have to transfer the
> money to a currency account first, then transfer out of the currency
> account into the destination account. Is there an accounting reason for
> this? I'm not an accountant, and enquiring minds need to know. It would
> be really nice if it were possible, as it would make it correspond with
> the original accounts.
Well, there are several replies, but you might not like any of them.
First, I don't beleive the currency trading stuff was ever fully debugged,
so I can't say there aren't any surprises waiting in store for you.
Next, if yu are working with only two currencies grand total, then simply set
up one of the bank accounts as a 'currency' account, and that should work.
If you are dealing with three or more currencies, then what you describe is
the only way.
When moving money, assets, anything from one account to another, the 'engine'
checks to make sure that what is being moved is of the same type (US$, or FF, or
a stock symbol, etc) and if not its supposed to prevent the transfer ...
unless its to/from a currency account, in which case you get to record an
exchange rate. In that sense, a currency account behaves a lot like a stock
account: what really counts is how many 'shares' of that currency you have,
and not the 'price' at which you bought it.
Unfortunately, the type of the currency is stored with the account, not with the
transaction, which is why you can't mix three or more different currencies in
one account. Maybe we should change this someday ....
--linas
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