Posting Costs with --exchange --historical

[Henry Mitchell]

Hi,

When recording expenses in a foreign currency, I want to see how much I had spent in my base currency (USD) as of the date of the transaction. If I record the price at which I want the foreign currency valued and use `--historical --exchange USD`, it gets what I want for the most part. However, credit cards have their own rate and I would like to have the ledger reflect that, but I can't seem to figure out how to do so correctly.

Consider:

P 2025-01-01 00:00:00 USD 150.00 JPY

2025-01-01 Should be 10.00 USD
  Assets:Cash    -1500 JPY
  Expenses:Food   1500 JPY

2025-01-01 Credit Cards Use One-Off Exchange Rate
  Liabilities:Credit     -11.00 USD
  Expenses:Food           1500 JPY @@ 11.00 USD

2025-01-01 Should still be 10.00 USD
  Assets:Cash       -1500 JPY
  Expenses:Food      1500 JPY

$ ledger --file /tmp/test.ledger --price-db /dev/null register Food --exchange USD --historical
2025-01-01 Should be 10.00 USD                        Expenses:Food  11.00 USD  11.00 USD
2025-01-01 Credit Cards Use One-Off Exchange Rate     Expenses:Food  11.00 USD  22.00 USD
2025-01-01 Should still be 10.00 USD                  Expenses:Food  11.00 USD  33.00 USD

If I set the posting cost as above, it creates a pricedb entry that affects the cash purchases. If I use a virtual posting cost using (@@), the pricedb entry doesn't get created, but `--historical --exchange USD` seems to ignore the explicit posting cost, so all 3 postings get valued at 10.00 USD. Is this intended behavior? If so, how can I have it show the Cash transactions as 10.00 USD and the Credit transaction as 11.00 USD?

Thanks,

Henry

[Igbanam Ogbuluijah]

The way I've done this in the past is to see the 11 rate as 10 + 1. Now, I can record the 1 as cost of the transaction somewhat, and the 10 continues as the normal rate. Could this work for your case?

Igbanam

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[Henry Mitchell]

I can workaround this or not even bother (I just leave the foreign currency as a comment). But what I'd like to know is if this is even possible with ledger or if I misunderstood what virtual posting cost and --historical were supposed to do here.

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[Tavis Ormandy]

On 2025-08-16, Henry Mitchell wrote:
> If I set the posting cost as above, it creates a pricedb entry that affects
> the cash purchases. If I use a virtual posting cost using (@@), the pricedb
> entry doesn't get created, but `--historical --exchange USD` seems to
> ignore the explicit posting cost, so all 3 postings get valued at 10.00
> USD. Is this intended behavior?

I think it does makes sense, because you're effectively just ignoring it.

> If so, how can I have it show the Cash
> transactions as 10.00 USD and the Credit transaction as 11.00 USD?
>

I *think* you don't want the historical value (the fair market value of
the commodity at the time you purchased it), you want what you *actually*
paid (regardless of any discounts or fees to the fmv)... so you want the
basis, no? So just --basis instead of --historical?

Tavis.

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/\\ _o) _o) $ finger tav...@sdf.org
_\_V _( ) _( ) @taviso

[Henry Mitchell]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 2:53 PM Tavis Ormandy <tav...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 2025-08-16, Henry Mitchell wrote:
> If I set the posting cost as above, it creates a pricedb entry that affects
> the cash purchases. If I use a virtual posting cost using (@@), the pricedb
> entry doesn't get created, but `--historical --exchange USD` seems to
> ignore the explicit posting cost, so all 3 postings get valued at 10.00
> USD. Is this intended behavior?

I think it does makes sense, because you're effectively just ignoring it.

> If so, how can I have it show the Cash
> transactions as 10.00 USD and the Credit transaction as 11.00 USD?
>

I *think* you don't want the historical value (the fair market value of
the commodity at the time you purchased it), you want what you *actually*
paid (regardless of any discounts or fees to the fmv)... so you want the
basis, no? So just --basis instead of --historical?

Thanks Tavis. I think --basis does what I expected. I kinda sorta understand why. Maybe it'll become clearer to me as I try to make use of this flag for what I would like to do.

 

Tavis.

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 /\\  _o)  _o)  $ finger tav...@sdf.org
_\_V _( ) _( )  @taviso

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