Gnucash has gained much with the new support for multi currencies. Currencies can now be handled in an uncomplicated and consistent way throughout Gnucash.
From what ever currency the user chooses as POV (report currency) other currencies are not different from other commodities he can earn trade or loose etc. But the very good job gnucash does with the currency subset of commodities seems to be limited only to currencies unnecessary. All commodities should be handled like currencies are handled now, but at the moment if one wants to account for another type of commody he is forced to use a special stock/mutual (what's the difference?) account and define an arbitrary commodity for it. Those stock/mutual accounts seem to be older than the currency support and can't be used in many ways. Just like the old not-to-be-used-anymore "currency account" type. Some aspects: o A silly example: You work in your garden and earn potatos. (Well, maybe it isn't silly at all sounds like a decent farming job.) The old GC way does not allow you to earn other commodities than your current (and assumed to be static) home currency. (Now, GC works fine with all commodies of type ISO-Currency) o With the current way of stock/mutual accounts it is not possible to transfer stocks from one booker to another without "selling" them in GC. (Just like it had to be done with currencies before) I would think the solution is to allow other commodity types than just currencies in general accounts. As Derek pointed out if one wants to see the value of a commodity (i.e stocks) in another commodity (i.e. USD/HKD) a report could be generated right away. Another possibility is a new "view in report currency option" for registers (like the old stock/mutual accounts) with both denominated commodity numbers and values in report commodity. I had this backwards before and on 19/01/2004 16:20 Derek Atkins wrote: > Registers are already denominated > in the account-currency. The only exception is stock/mutual accounts > which don't have a currency (so the "value" is denoted in whatever the > transaction is denoted). The accounts have a commodity! "Value" is always relative to another commodity. I don't think stocks are an exception of commodities. They don't need to be treated differnently. However no doubt that for some users reporting needs for stocks may be higher than for other commodities or vs. versa. Those are reporting needs on a level below the account-balance, based on transactions (buy/sell) and time. This ties in with the proposed support for "lots" in accounts and more complex transaction reports. http://linuxwiki.de/GnuCash/DevelTexts > This is because gnucash _does not support inventory_. > > FWIW, inventory accounts SHOULD be more similar to stock/mutual than > to Asset. You want to keep track of the number of widgets in your > inventory, and AT THE SAME TIME you want to keep track of how much you > PAID for those widgets. Stock/mutual accounts are exactly the right > abstraction. I think you always want your accounting program to keep track of those things for any commodity, even or especially for currencies. And it is done by recording the transactions (in the future optionally with lots in some accounts). However in some cases you might not want to always see how much you paid for each transaction "AT THE SAME TIME". Which is now the default behaviour. > We specifically limit it because we do NOT want to have (certain) > account types denominated in FooWidgets. The fact that certain > accounts are limited to currencies is NOT a bug. Ok, as I propose the old stock/mutual account types should go too, along with the currency type. If I take gold as an example for an arbitrary commodity: Some people do keep their gold nuggets in their pockets as cash, others prefer to bring them to the bank, or loan them out for a while (to a dentist maybe). Of course one could earn and spend gold and have a lot of gold from past accounting periods it is just a convention that we use USD gold or any other commodity. Christian _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.gnucash.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
