question on currency conversions

Jack ostroffjh at users.sourceforge.net
Sun Jul 30 19:07:58 BST 2023


This is related to the question at  
https://discuss.kde.org/t/scheduled-transaction/3210 but of a more  
general nature.  These are really theoretical questions for me, as I  
only have accounts in a single currency (USD.)

When a transaction includes splits using different currencies, a  
conversion is needed.  You can obviously calculate the conversion rate  
used, by examining the amounts in each split.  However, I don't see  
that the transaction or the splits has any information about which  
conversion rate was used.  I wonder if this is something to consider  
adding in the future (perhaps a new KVP?)   Would there be any reason  
to want to know if a conversion was made based on a published (and  
downloaded) rate or entered to reflect that actual rate used by the  
bank?

It looks to me that when you create a new transaction requiring  
conversion, it uses the most recent available conversion rate.  (This  
is for currency conversions, although stock prices act similarly.)  If  
you manually adjust the rate, that rate then gets stored as "user  
specified."

 From the Discuss question - a scheduled transaction will be entered  
using the conversion rate implied by the different currency amounts in  
the transaction.  Would it be useful, when that transaction is entered,  
to allow for the most recent know conversion rate to be used as the  
default, rather than the implied rate when the scheduled transaction  
was originally created?  I could imagine this might help for more  
volatile conversion rates, such as crypt tokens.

A separate issue is that conversion rates between two currencies can be  
(and often are) stored in either direction: USD -> EUR or EUR -> USD.    
These "should be" perfectly equivalent.  Is that close enough to  
reality to store them in only one direction, and display them showing  
both directions of conversion?

Final question for now:  when a transaction is entered involving a  
currency conversion, how does KMM choose which currency to use for the  
transaction?  I need to do more careful testing, but I think I have  
seen a transaction's currency switch when the transaction was edited to  
alter the conversion rate.

Again - no high priority for any of this, but I'm definitely curious  
about the possibilities.

Jack


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