GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 304687
Split transactions do not handle multiple currencies
Last modified: 2018-06-29 20:52:13 UTC
Please describe the problem: A simple split transaction where money comes out of one currency and goes into two accounts in another currency does not work. It must be split into two separate transactions in order for it to work. Steps to reproduce: Working assumptions: the exchange rate is 0.8USD to 1.0CAD; the CAD bank charges 125CAD to wire the money to the USD bank. 1. launch gnucash --nofile 2. Create 3 accounts as follows: a. cadbank, a bank account in Canadian Dollars (CAD) with an opening balance of 6000CAD$. b. usdbank, a bank account in US Dollars with no opening balance. c. usdcosts, an expense account in US Dollars. d. cadcosts, an expense account in Canadian Dollars. 3. Transfer the money from cadbank to usdbank *with a transaction cost of 100USD or 125CAD*, with an exchange rate of 0.8USD == 1.0CAD. e.g. in the cadbank account register, create a transaction "transfer", then hit "split". a. split 1, enter cadbank, withdraw 6000CAD b. split 2, enter usdbank, deposit 5875CAD c. split 3, enter cadcosts, "deposit" 125CAD. d. hit <enter> Actual results: GnuCash does not ask for an exchange rate. The "money" disappears from cadbank, but usdbank stays at 0. (Could there be un-exchanged CAD in the USD account(s)?) Expected results: In one split transaction, it should be possible to get either one of these results (which one is desirable obviously depends one one's report currency): A. cadbank gets 6000CAD subtracted usdbank gets 4700USD added cadcosts gets 125CAD added. B. cadbank gets 6000CAD subtracted usdbank gets 4700USD added usdcosts gets 100USD added But neither of those work; it is as though the concept of exchange rate hasn't made its way to multi- account transactions?? I would expect the appearance of an exchange rate editing dialog. In order for it to work, one MUST have two separate transactions: AA cadbank 5875CAD to usdbank 4700USD BB cadbank 125CAD to usdcosts 100USD (or cadcosts 125CAD). This is highly undesirable. The entire purpose of split transactions is to group related money transfers together, and this bug defeats that purpose. Does this happen every time? Yes. Other information: There are two similar bug reports that were rather unclear, and they might have been talking about pretty much the same thing: 144885 and 166610. This is 1.8.9 on Mac OS X 10.3.9 (fink distribution build)
Yes, the User Interface for multi-currency transactions still has some problems. Each "multi-currency transaction" internally has one "transaction currency" into which each split's amount is exchanged. Currently it is impossible to see or change that "transaction currency" -- I think it is implicitly taken from the account's currency where you enter this transaction. This means that the transaction's behaviour will be different depending on the account register from which you enter such a transaction. And this is clearly a bad thing... however, we still haven't come up with a better idea about how a multi-currency transaction GUI should look like. As a workaround for your problem, you should try to enter the transaction from an account of the other currency. Does this change the problem?
I tried that too, but it also failed. The only workaround I found was to enter it as two separate transactions.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 139651 ***
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. This bug has been copied to https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304687. Please update any external references or bookmarks.