Multiple Currencies: Budgeting

[Scott A. Nichols]

Hello,

Everything about Ledger is perfect for me accept managing a budget with multiple currencies. The issue, for me, is that I spend money in two different currencies. For example, while living abroad I will spending in "Expenses:Restaurants" but sometimes I will use my credit card to pay (USD) and sometimes I will use the foreign currency. If my budget for Restaurants is $600 USD how can I manage this in ledger if sometimes I use a foreign currency and sometimes I use USD?

Note: Everything else works perfect for me in ledger using multiple currencies (data input, running reports, and so forth), the only thing I'm struggling with is budgeting. I want it to work exactly (or at least very similar) to the "budget" command in Ledger.

Thanks for your help/advice,

Scott

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "SAN" == Scott A Nichols <scni...@gmail.com> writes:

SAN> Note: Everything else works perfect for me in ledger using multiple
SAN> currencies (data input, running reports, and so forth), the only thing
SAN> I'm struggling with is budgeting. I want it to work exactly (or at least
SAN> very similar) to the "budget" command in Ledger.

When the budgeting feature was designed, I just never took multiple currencies
into account. Does it help if you use -V or -X <commodity>, in order to report
things in one currency or the other?

John

[o1bigtenor]

Part of the issue is that double entry accounting was designed for the
describing of things AFTER they
had already happened. Its a great system but now when it comes to
budgeting - - - well you are
working on describing future events.
Here everything gets converted to my 'home' currency - - - and I
purchase in at least 2 others.
For forecasting - - - part of the rub is going to be exchange
variations - - - trying to account
for those - - - that's going to be a lot of work.
I find that the credit cards will list the amount in the currency you
purchased in first followed
by your exchange rate and then what you paid in your 'home' currency -
- - - dunno if it will
help - - - just treat your foreign cash as another credit card and
convert your transactions.
That's more work but I've used that for my record keeping (but not for
budgeting!!).
Dunno if that helps.

Regards

[Scott A. Nichols]

ok, thanks for the responses. I don't want to stop using ledger because it's the only program I have ever enjoyed and I've tried many. My work around (in case anyone ever has this problem in the future) is I created an excel file with the same formatting as ledger's budgeting system. The excel file will automatically calculate the exchange rates from my base currency to the foreign currency.

In ledger I run ledger -f ledgerfile.ledger bal expenses -p "this month"

I transfer the expense categories into my excel file and I immediately see my budget in my base currency in all categories. It's a tiny bit of extra work but it works and more importantly I can keep using ledger using this method.

[o1bigtenor]

The issue that I ran into was the rather common currency fluctuations
and when they moved a lot, you know an election
here or there or whatever made the forex weenies get their knickers in
a twist - - - well then I had to keep pretty close
track to have some idea what was going on. I used to use Oanda's
online historical calendar but they made it so that
it only works one month backwards - - - oh well - - - I haven't been
doing as much travelling so haven't worked on
finding more 'solution' - - - - your's is a pretty good solution so I
just might use some of it for at least forecasting.

HTH

[Scott A. Nichols]

Still playing around with this.

When I run this command:

ledger file.ledger balance --budget -p "this month" --exchange USD 

I receive the amount remaining available for the month but it doesn't show the percent remaining. Can you show me how to do this? if it's possible?

I tried using awk but it made things very messy. I would just like to see something like this:

$1000.00  50%  Expenses
$500.00   25%        Mortgage
$500.00  80%         Restaurants

Right now I just see this:

$1000.00   Expenses
$500.00       Mortgage
$500.00        Restaurants