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Hi Elax,

I've just spoken to our accountant - and your patch seems to be closer to what should happen.  If there is an overpayment or an underpayment when paying a foreign exchange invoice then this should go into the foreign exchange gain/loss account.

I'm just looking into it further now.

Thanks for the patch.

We've been thinking about this whole issue - here's where we've gotten to.

There may be an issue with your patch approach.  That is that FA holds a single rate for each day/date - what happens if there is more than one foreign exchange transaction on that date.  I know it works out the amount on the fly for each transaction but the amount may not match the rate stored for that day.  No biggie of a problem - but it may confuse the story of what's happening.  Also, it may make the Foreign Exchange gain/loss amounts incorrect.

So - this is our current plan.

We run our accounts in GBP.  We get an invoice in a foreign currency amount (EUR 200.00) - we add an exchange rate (from exchange rate historical records online) for that invoice date (say 0.75) - enter the invoice - expenses get increased by the equivalent amount in our local currency (GPB 150.00).

So far so good.

Several days later we then pay the invoice using online payment.

Now - we look at the bank statement/online banking and see the exact amount deducted in our local currency - say it comes out as a payment of GBP 161.00.

So, this is how we enter it on FA.

We look up the exchange rate for the payment date - say 0.8.
We enter that rate in the exchange rate table for the payment date.
We create a payment to that supplier for GBP 161.00.

OK so far - the payment of GBP 161.00 will match perfectly on the reconciliation screen.

Now we go to allocate the payment to the original EUR 200.00 invoice.

FA uses the payment date rate of 0.8 to figure out that is needs GBP 160.00 to fully pay the invoice.  This leaves GBP 1.00 of the payment as unallocated.

NB - it could be the other way depending on the rates - i.e. it may result in an invoice which is not fully paid.

(It's important to note that the exchange rate we enter for the payment date will hardly ever match the exact rate which was used when the bank made the payment.  Rates fluctuate during the day so an exact match is highly unlikely).

The important point to note is that at this point we have an overpayment or an underpayment.

We are going to treat this like any other overpayment or underpayment.  We may have a customer who pays us slightly too much - or one who pays slightly too little.  If they are a private customer they may not be interested in correcting the payment - and it's not worth our time to chase a small underpayment.  I've put up another post at https://frontaccounting.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=3982 to work out how to deal with over/under payments.

Please note - if the invoice date and the payment date are the same day then there is no foreign exchange loss or gain as the exchange rate is the same.  Any difference between the amount FA calculates for the invoice/payment and the actual payment made will be treated as an over/under payment.

The main point is this.  Foreign exchange losses/gains occur due to exchange rate differences between the invoice date and the payment date.  Differences in the actual amounts on the allocation screen should be treated as under/over payments.

Did anyone get to resolve this?

Basically, the copy from live to training is a complete copy of the web application - source code and database.

This means we can set the training copy up as a separate vhost i.e. accounts.example.com and accounts2.example.com which makes it easier for the users.

It also means that I'm more confident about the backups working - since the training copy is built up from the backup files it means they work.  This means it is easier for us to get extra copies set up on our secondary server.

BTW - the change to the background works really well.  It makes it very clear for the users which copy they are on - and in fact we already refer to 'Try it out on the red copy first' when we come up against something we're not sure how to enter.

I'd like to copy the live copy to the training copy every night via cron.

What I've done is to add

sed -i 's/285b86/ff0000/g' /home/frontacc2/public_html/themes/default/default.css

to the script which makes the copy.

I've added the script to the wiki - it's at the end of:

https://frontaccounting.com/fawiki/index.php?n=Main.Installation

To reply to my own post...

It needed a restart of Apache to enable the copy site to work without the error.

For reference here's my script which makes a copy of a site - I'll try to find somewhere on the wiki where it might be useful.

NB - The server runs Apache ITK so all files are owned by a single user.

#!/bin/bash

# copy_accounts_to_accounts2

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# This will take a copy of the live Open Atrium site and copy it to a training copy.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Logging setup
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# These lines have been copied from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3173131/redirect-copy-of-stdout-to-log-file-from-within-bash-script-itself
# and will send the script output to a log file.
##mkdir -p /var/backups/sbin
##mkdir -p ~/logs/pullpush
##DATE_TIME=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`
##logfile=~/logs/pullpush/pulldevfrombeta_${DATE_TIME}.log
##mkfifo ${logfile}.pipe
##tee < ${logfile}.pipe $logfile &
##exec &> ${logfile}.pipe
##rm ${logfile}.pipe

DATE_TIME=`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "Backup primary site..."
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Here we will create backups which are datetime stamped to be able to go back to a previous 
# version if necessary.
mkdir -p /home/frontacc/backups
mysqldump frontacc > /home/frontacc/backups/${DATE_TIME}_frontacc.sql
tar --create --file=/home/frontacc/backups/${DATE_TIME}_frontacc.tar /home/frontacc/public_html

# Here we will make a backup to a standard location so that it is backed up by backup scripts.
mysqldump frontacc > /var/backups/frontacc.sql
tar --create --file=/var/backups/frontacc.tar /home/frontacc/public_html

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "Load the backup into the site..."
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mysqladmin --force drop frontacc2
mysqladmin create frontacc2

mysql frontacc2 < /var/backups/frontacc.sql

rm -r /home/frontacc2/public_html/*
tar -x --file=/var/backups/frontacc.tar --directory=/home/frontacc2/public_html --strip-components=3 

# We need to change ownership to openatriumcopy for the files just unzipped and need to change permissions
# on the files/ directory.
chown -R frontacc2:frontacc2 /home/frontacc2/public_html

# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "Set up the settings.php file..."
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sed -i 's/Freeway Projects Limited/Freeway Projects Limited2/g' /home/frontacc2/public_html/config_db.php
sed -i 's/frontacc/frontacc2/g' /home/frontacc2/public_html/config_db.php
sed -i 's/firstsitepasswd/secondsitepassword/g' /home/frontacc2/public_html/config_db.php




# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "Setting up the copy site with a different appearance from the live site..."
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
## Todo


# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "A restart of Apache is needed for the copy site to work..."
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
apache2ctl restart


# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo
echo `date`
echo "Finished"
# -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------