[Kmymoney] Currency Troubles

[Thomas Baumgart]

Hi,

On Saturday 03 November 2012 10:35:49 Doug Brown wrote:

> I apologize if this is answered elsewhere, but I must admit I was unable
> to figure out how to search the list archives.

Not sure if that ever came up, but anyhow your question needs an answer.

> I have recently moved countries, so want to change my base currency.
> Which I have done. But it seems categories have a currency associated
> with them. I don't understand why that is, as it seems to me categories
> should just be attribute of a transaction and unrelated to currencies,
> but whatever.

Well, that is easy: categories are in fact accounts. They are handled a bit 
differently UI wise, but under the hood they are and need to be just accounts.

> I have an existing kmy db in CDN$, but am now entering data in AUD$. I
> have changed my base currency to AUD, and added new AUD accounts.
> Because my existing category hierarchy was constructed when my base
> currency was CAD, all existing categories have a currency of CAD, and I
> apparently can not change this. This means every transaction I enter in
> my new currency requires a currency conversion.
> 
> This is not what I want. I want to enter AUD transactions into my AUD
> accounts without fx complications.
> 
> What options do I have? I don't want to start with a fresh kmy file as I
> have a history of transactions I want to keep, and I still have assets
> in Canada that I would like to include in reporting. I could create a
> whole new category hierarchy with AUD, but that is rather messy and
> would make data entry error prone.

Well, that's exactly what you need to do. As with other accounts you created 
afresh, you need to setup the category hierarchy in the new currency. One 
cannot simply change the currency of an account because that would influence 
your existing transactions and reporting will yield all kinds of crazy 
results.

UI wise I agree, it could be error prone during data entry, since you now have 
two entries  for each category and I don't know if you can distinguish between 
them easily. Interesting use case: 'change location to different base country 
while keeping full history'. Never thought of this one (I did my moves before 
I started working on KMyMoney ;)  )

If anyone else has an idea, please let us know.

-- 

Regards

Thomas Baumgart

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