On 05/20/2014 07:20 PM, John Ralls wrote:
On May 20, 2014, at 4:02 PM, Bob Gustafson <[email protected]> wrote:
No, I am not doing it in GnuCash - but I wish I could.
My comment is to encourage any effort in the direction of time and timezone
support and discourage attempts to close off that path.
I don’t think that that’s a direction we want to go. I can’t see many users
making the effort to include the time they wrote a check, or swiped their debit
card, or whatever. FWIW, one CC company seems to post everything at 1700. Every
transaction looks like
<STMTTRN>
<TRNTYPE>DEBIT
<DTPOSTED>20140121170000.000
Everybody else I use just reports posted dates.
As an example, here is a box of chocolates complete with timestamps..
viewspread13.27.csv:12345678 09/23/2013 -40.32 EINZUG
AUSLANDSLASTSCHRIFT|9208|CHF 49,50KURS1,2276000|KURS VOM 20.09.13
MAFD|ZUERICH-FL AM19.09.13 15.50| LINDT ZRH CHXR CHE| 10010000|
959566027| EC-POSMAGNET6 GEB.EU 0,00| 002|
I see two dates and one timestamp. The timestamp may or may not be useful;
there’s no way of knowing without detailed information from the bank about what
it means. Here’s one guess: You made a purchase for CHF49.50 at 1550 on 19 Sept
2013 in Zurich. It was posted to the seller’s bank on 20 Sept and to your bank
at $40.32 on the 23rd. That’s an effective exchange rate of $1.230/CHF.
The rates, according to
http://www.exchangerates.org.uk/CHF-USD-exchange-rate-history-full.html,
were
Monday 23 September 2013 1 CHF = 1.0979 USD
Sunday 22 September 2013 1 CHF = 1.0984 USD
Saturday 21 September 2013 1 CHF = 1.0987 USD
Friday 20 September 2013 1 CHF = 1.0987 USD
Thursday 19 September 2013 1 CHF = 1.0979 USD
The actual rate used by the banks could have been any of those, or something else,
but the spread is $.0008, or < 4¢ on the transaction out of the $4.25 the bank
charged you. Talk about sweating the small stuff. I don’t see how you gain
anything at all by knowing you made the purchase — or whatever actually happened —
at 1550.
Regards,
John Ralls
Pretty good analysis!
The exchange was into Euros, so the historical exchange rate would have
been:
Monday 23 September 2013 1 CHF = 0.8136 EUR or 40.2732 EUR
Sunday 22 September 2013 1 CHF = 0.8120 EUR or 40.1940
Saturday 21 September 2013 1 CHF = 0.8124 EUR or 40.2138
Friday 20 September 2013 1 CHF = 0.8124 EUR or 40.2138
Thursday 19 September 2013 1 CHF = 0.8115 EUR or 40.1692
The actual euros deducted was -40.32 and the CHF spent was 49.50 or an exch
rate of 0.8145
Picking the rate of 0.8124 gives a Euro deduction of 40.2138 - the actual
deduction was 40.32, so whatever exchange rate the banks used, they did not
lose money.
(The convenience of using a plastic card at the point of sale is certainly
worth 10 euro cents!)
-------
All of this analysis and reporting can be done without human keystrokes, as
long as the data is available. The fact that the transaction was done on a
Thursday at 15:50 and not reported until the following Monday rather increases
the time slop.
Suppose that the transaction was done at 12:50 and that was early enough to
make an earlier bank forex time window and the deduction could then be reported
on Friday 20 Sept (yes, unlikely..)
With enough transactions, some of these details of the forex mechanism could be
teased out of an otherwise very boring bunch of numbers.
Bob G
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