QC Great, I'm looking forward to hearing how it works out for you!

Kevin K. While I'm not 100% certain I understand your use case, I think this tool might work for you.  Instead of having four budgets, you just have one budget with its currency set to the "reference currency."   Add all your accounts to it, and tag any that are not in the reference currency with <CODE> (e.g. <USD>).  Add "difference accounts" for each of the non-reference currencies, and this tool will make sure these difference accounts always contain for the difference in value from the reference currency, so your net worth and reports will be shown in the reference currency (with other currencies having been converted using an exchange rate accurate to within 24 hours).

Give it a try, and let me know how it goes!

I tend to split by setting the Payee on the parent transaction and leaving them blank on the sub-transactions. I can easily change this behavior, just thought to mention it. Is there a special reason for not defaulting to the parent?

There's no special reason, it just uses whatever the payee is on the split so if the payee is blank it uses a blank payee.  I usually set payees on splits, so I never noticed.   I can't think of a reason not to default blank split payees to the parent's payee, so that's a change I'd be happy to make.  Would you mind opening an issue on the issue tracker for this?

If my "home currency" changes, I could just edit my settings and set this up on that base-currency budget, yeah? I'm assuming the tool segments the data by budget ID or something, such that this wouldn't cause issues

Yes, the tool does separate data by budget ID, so it's safe to use with multiple budgets and each is treated completely independently.

Do you find that you have a pretty good handle on how much to keep in each physical account with this approach?

It seems to work for me.  I do tend to keep a pretty good buffer in the accounts of each currency I use most frequently, and keep an eye on my account balances and make sure I have enough to cover typical spending.  And if I'm buying something bigger than usual, I'll check the account balance first and move some money if need be. 

Purple Mill Awesome, thanks for letting me know.  Very glad to hear my solution is working for someone else too!

James Rose All that matters is that "<EUR DIFFERENCE>" appears somewhere in the account's nickname or notes, but you can add other text as well, so you could call it "<EUR DIFFERENCE> Tracking", for example.  I'll have to clarify that in the documentation.

Eniariom I'm thinking I might add a few testimonials to the home page.  Would you mind if I use your words?

Cornflower Blue Door What happens when you try to run it?

Cornflower Blue Door It looks like you're trying to run it by double clicking on it.  Unfortunately this tool doesn't have a graphical user interface, only a command-line interface (CLI) intended to be run using Windows' Command Prompt application.  As is normal for CLI applications on Windows, if run without any command-line arguments (which is what double-clicking it does), a terminal window briefly pops up with the CLI usage information and then closes immediately.

I'm (slowly) working on a Web interface for the tool, so eventually it'll be possible to use from your web browser.

Javier Gonel Thanks for your kind words!  Every time I get a comment like this it is a big motivation to continue working on the web version (getting there... functionality is all in place and now it's a matter of refinement.  i.e. the first 90% is done, and now I just have the other 90% left).

Javier Gonel I'm thinking I might add a few testimonials to the home page.  Would you mind if I use your words?

James Rose Thanks for the kind words!  Some of the most "fun" to get right were edge cases like two transactions getting matched (or unmatched), and single transactions turning into splits (and vice-versa).

James Rose I'm thinking I might add a few testimonials to the fca4ynab home page.  Would you mind if I use your words?

Navy Blue Lion I've made a change that should now let it get exchange rates for transactions older than a year, so hopefully this will help.

• why did you chose to use the daily rate for the operations instead of the today's one everywhere

I want the converted amount I spent on a given date to reflect how much that actually cost on the day it happened.  Exchange rates fluctuate so by anchoring a transaction's rate to the date it actually happened is more accurate, since otherwise the rate picked will happen to be the rate on the date when it was processed rather than anything tied to the transaction itself.  But maybe for your use case this is less desirable; if so I'm interested in understanding it, and could potentially make this behaviour optional if there's sufficient demand.

• How do you manage old operations

For the most part, I'd recommend not trying to process old transactions since that may mess up past budget category amounts. 

• I currently can't change anymore the date to start the foreign currency transactions.

If you'd like to adjust the start date, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] with your budget URL and I can make that change for you. There are some implications to changing it that may be unexpected which is why I didn't make it possible from the UI yet. Be aware that, after doing this, any previously processed transactions from before the start date will not be re-processed if they're modified. Also, changing the start date to an earlier date won't retroactively process pre-existing transactions.

flohjoe Did you follow the instructions on the transactions help page under the Transfers between currencies heading?