Hello / Beginner question

[Alexander Lazarević]

Hello!

I'm at my third attempt to try accounting with beancount. Many things in accounting are new to me. So I try to do the actual accounting as well as I know for now and learn as I move.

I guess one beginner's question is how to deal with currency conversion in transactions.

Take this fake example. Transferring  money from a European bank to Wise in EUR and then to another bank in XXX. So Wise gives the information for the transaction like this:

Transaction details
| You sent      |     100 | EUR     |
| Our fee       |    5.67 | EUR     |
| We converted  |   94.33 | EUR     |
| Exchange rate | 12.3456 | XXX/EUR |
| You received  | 1164.56 | XXX     |

What I did now was to enter this transaction like the following in beancount:

1972-08-17 * "" "Transfer"
  Assets:EU:Wise:Transfer                    -100.00 EUR
  Expenses:Financial:Fees:Wise                  5.67 EUR
  Assets:AU:Bank:Checking                    1164.56 XXX @ 0.0810005184033 EUR

I guess this works, but I'm not sure if I should invert the conversion rate every time for transactions like this? Or is there another/better way to do this?

Again, sorry for the basic nature of the question.

Alex

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Alexander Lazarević <alex...@lazarevic.de> [2023-10-24 07:14]:
> | Exchange rate | 12.3456 | XXX/EUR |

>
> 1972-08-17 * "" "Transfer"
> Assets:EU:Wise:Transfer -100.00 EUR
> Expenses:Financial:Fees:Wise 5.67 EUR
> Assets:AU:Bank:Checking 1164.56 XXX @ 0.0810005184033
> EUR
>
> I guess this works, but I'm not sure if I should invert the conversion rate
> every time for transactions like this? Or is there another/better way to do
> this?

You could write:

Assets:AU:Bank:Checking 1164.56 XXX @ 1/12.3456 EUR

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/