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Define posting rules for currency account profit and loss

If you have security transactions that have settlement towards foreign currency accounts, you need to have a separate posting rule that captures the profit and loss on the account. These posting rules capturing the settlement side of security transactions should be defined as <Transaction type> + CURRENCY (Security base type) in the posting rules (Preference → Bookkeeping → Posting rule), for example Buy + CURRENCY.

This needs to be defined for all transaction types involved in security transactions that can have settlement to foreign currency accounts. Affected transaction types are typically:

  • Buy

  • Sell

  • Dividend

  • Coupon

  • Expiration

  • Expiration short

  • Cash flow in (FX Contracts)

  • Cash flow out (FX Contracts)

Example: Buy of a USD Stock

The situation is this: we have a portfolio with portfolio currency NOK. We have deposited USD 1000 000 into our USD account at a rate of 9,50. We buy 3000 Apple stocks for USD 1 000 000 with an FX rate of 9,70. There is no profit or loss on the stock, but there is a loss on the currency account of (9,50 NOK/USD - 9,70 NOK/USD) * USD 1 000 000 = NOK 200 000.

bookkeeping_currencyaccount_1.png

With this posting rule defined for transactions when buying stocks (Buy + STOCK):

bookkeeping_currencyaccount_2.png

the following postings are generated:

bookkeeping_currencyaccount_3.png

but that does not capture the loss on the settlement side. You need to have another posting rule to capture that. We define it as Buy + CURRENCY.

bookkeeping_currencyaccount_4.png

Now postings are complete, i.e. capturing the 200 000 loss.

bookkeeping_currencyaccount_5.png