Hi everyone! You all appear to have a good handle on GnuCash, but I am a brand newbie!!!
My environment is: Local Currency: Australian Dollar (AUD) Exchange Rates required for: == USD == GBP (UK) == EUR == SEK (Sweden) - and are usually purchases that I pass through Paypal (no balance in Paypal, at all) => buy with AUD and currency conversion made by Paypal into seller's currency All my investments are AUD Computer info: --- Windows 10 Home version x64-based PC 10.0.19045 Build 19045 --- apparently Strawberry Perl (5.40.0.1-64bit) --- apparently GnuCash Version: 5.6 Build ID: 5.6+(2024-03-30) --- and while "Finance::Quote: " appears in my "About GnuCash" help window, I can not see the version I downloaded the "gnucash-5.8.setup" installation executable from the Windows component (https://www.gnucash.org/download.phtml). As I was hoping to initiate the automatic updates for Banking balances, stock prices and currency rates, I followed the instructions and ran the AqBanking Setup, but nothing happened as I could not get the Help button to operate in GC === terminology between the US and Australia is significantly different so I could not figure out the corollaries between my understanding of Australian banking terms and what appears in the AqBanking window (Ids and Bank Codes, etc.) I moved on to Finance::Quote (F::Q) and followed the instructions to set up Quote Retrieval ( https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-manual/finance-quote.html) in the "Procedure 11.3. On Windows" the instructions stated to "run the program Install Online Price Retrieval for GnuCash" which I found in my installation data under "C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\bin\install-fq-mods.cmd". Guidelines indicated a long installation process: 20-30 mins. The first run took 45 mins and did not work at all as I interrupted it. The second run took 55 mins and terminated with a 'success' message but when I ran the module within GC I received a "finance::quote not installed properly" message. Apparently I have to uninstall and reinstall the entire package... Question 1: how do I uninstall all of this stuff? Question 2: What else do I have to do? Question 3: Can I not just reinstall over top of what I have already done? I have used Quicken and Quicken Home & Business for over 25 years, so I am very used to that data structure. I spend something and one account goes down in value and I acquire an asset - a coat, for example. I understand that GC is a double-entry bookkeeping program, each transaction has an accompanying transaction in another account. However, I am very unsure where in the account register the transaction should be put to "buy" the coat = in Quicken it is a Debit (out of my pocket) in the Debit column of the Banking account. Question 4: Which perspective should I adopt when looking at a transaction? I stand in my account and pay out using the Debit column, or I stand in the Coat account and use the debit column (correspondingly, the bank account is the credit column)? Further to this last, as I said, I use Paypal as a pass through conversion channel- my Aussie bank account is used to pay for an item in a US market (NOT an investment/shares/stocks) - say, a 'Reference Book'. I know that I have to have 3 entries in a transaction: origin (Aussie Bank account), into Paypal as AUD, conversion by Paypal to USD, payment to US company for my 'Reference Book'. Referring to Question 4 :- Question 5: which of the columns in the transaction should host my Aussie bank? Debit column or Credit Column? Question 6: which of the columns should reflect AUD into Paypal? Question 7: which of the columns should reflect USD from Paypal to the Book company? Question 8: which of the columns should reflect the Book company receiving my USD? Question 9: should I bypass Paypal completely and just use my bank account and the Book company? Question 10: how often do I need to update my GC install? - am I notified of a new release or do I just watch this channel? Question 11: how often do I need to update Strawberry Perl? and where do I find that? Question 12: do I need to anything else regularly with respect to GC and the 'subroutines' used within it (F::Q, etc.)? Question 13: how is the update process managed? How do you do an update to GC? Download and run a new version? Thanks so much for taking the time to read all this... Megan in Sydney, Australia _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
