Zeroing conversions end of year

[Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)]

Hello, kind folks.

As many of us experience life with multiple currencies, we are probably all familiar with the virtual Equity:Conversions account that we see on Beancount and Fava reports.

The question I have is this:

How do I go about making sure this account is net zero at the end of my fiscal / tax year period?  I don't want to track each currency conversion as if the currency I held was at cost (I tried that with Ledger in prior years and it's too much work).  All I want to do is enter a single transaction (per currency pair) that zeroes out the transaction, including its Income/Expense:Realized-Gains/Losses, so it all zeroes out at the very last day of the fiscal period.

A related question: how do I get Fava or a Beancount report to show me the actual transactions involved in the tally of the Conversions fake account?

Thank you in advance.

-- 
Rudd-O
    http://rudd-o.com/

[Martin Blais]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 12:51 PM Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) <rud...@rudd-o.com> wrote:

Hello, kind folks.

As many of us experience life with multiple currencies, we are probably all familiar with the virtual Equity:Conversions account that we see on Beancount and Fava reports.

Unfortunately. It's my fault. (Well, it was one way to solve the problem.)

 

The question I have is this:

How do I go about making sure this account is net zero at the end of my fiscal / tax year period?

You can't.

This transaction is auto-inserted by the reporting code in order to make the full balance equal to zero.

https://github.com/beancount/beancount/blob/master/beancount/ops/summarize.py#L464

Its insertion could be made optional if you prefer, but then summing up all the transactions wouldn't yield an empty inventory.

(Maybe it doesn't matter that much.)

I don't like it either--it smells funny--so in v3 Beancount will implement the currency accounts method, so no magic transaction at zero cost gets inserted.

Now, it won't be perfect, this means that every single transaction will post the currency conversion to equity accounts, but at least it won't be a special insertion that has to be made for reports, simply selecting a subset of transactions will /always/ balance in aggregate.

See here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qPdNXaz5zuDQ8M9uoZFyyFis7hA0G55BEfhWhrVBsfc/edit#heading=h.rs49kcml7cjx

 

  I don't want to track each currency conversion as if the currency I held was at cost (I tried that with Ledger in prior years and it's too much work). 

Indeed, that would be a shit-show (I tell this to crypto users sometimes, who try to do that, that's one way for me to repress my regrets not getting into the bandwagon for years), that's why Beancount treats price conversions distinctly than cost basis.

 

All I want to do is enter a single transaction (per currency pair) that zeroes out the transaction, including its Income/Expense:Realized-Gains/Losses, so it all zeroes out at the very last day of the fiscal period.

But then your full balance will not sum up to zero. Is that what you want?

 

A related question: how do I get Fava or a Beancount report to show me the actual transactions involved in the tally of the Conversions fake account?

Hmm, that's not obvious. It's the subset from the list of transactions selected in making the report which also happen to have a price conversion.

Thank you in advance.

-- 
Rudd-O
    http://rudd-o.com/

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[Manuel Amador (Rudd-O)]

Thank you very much, Martin, both for your diligence in answering my question, and for the magnificent piece of software you have gifted the world.  Eagerly looking forward to Beancount v3 stable!

On 25/11/2020 06.19, Martin Blais wrote:

Unfortunately. It's my fault. (Well, it was one way to solve the problem.)

[...]

You can't.

[...]

-- 
Rudd-O
    http://rudd-o.com/