On Jul 30, 2010, at 5:41 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:
> But then we come back to the line in your first mail, "Reflecting on
> this, it seems that Income/Expenses are by nature final categories,
> while Assets/Liabilities are open." Which is deeply embedded in the
> whole double bookkeeping system already, and also how ledger work
> already. You can track assets and liabilities in various currencies
> (or commodities) and convert to one final valuation at reporting time,
> while income and expenses are valuated at the time they are incurred
> ('fixed').
>
> I've (briefly) looked for transactions where assets would be 'fixed'
> or income would not be, but I can only come up with contrived examples
> like future incoming cash flows for which the price is fixed through
> an option. But again that's finance not accounting.
Another possibility is adding a -H <COMM> flag, which is exactly like
-X <COMM>, except that it converts values using the day of the
transaction, rather than today. This just means you can't have an
"all-in-one" balance report. Rather, you'd need to reflect the
difference between final and open accounts thusly:
ledger bal assets liab -X EUR
ledger bal income expense -H EUR
John
