4.ledger

; Selling Commodities and Realizing Gains
; =======================================

; Sometimes you want to sell a commodity and
; realize your gains.  Normally, you need to
; declare capital gains in your taxes, so it
; is pretty important to capture them.

; Here are the price lines we set originally

P 2015/01/01 CAD 100 JPY
P 2015/01/01 GBP 200 JPY

; Here are the assets that we started with

2015/01/01 Opening CAD Balance
  Assets:CAD      10.00 CAD @ 100 JPY
  Equity:CAD

2015/01/01 Opening GBP Balance
  Assets:GBP       5.00 GBP @ 200 JPY
  Equity:GBP

2015/01/01 Opening JPY Balance
  Assets:JPY       1000 JPY
  Equity:JPY

; GBP has gone up quite a bit.  We can probably buy
; some daifuku (a type of Japanese sweets) with the
; profits from selling our GBP, so let's do it!

; Ledger automatically sets the price of commodities
; based on the price you last bought/sold them.  If you
; have to buy or sell something at a price other than the
; exchange rate, you will need to move the P lines
; after that transaction (or duplicate them).

2015/01/02 Sell GBP and realize sweet profit
  Assets:GBP                   -2.00 GBP {200 JPY} @ 240 JPY
  Assets:JPY                     480 JPY
  ; I have to pay the exchange commission in GBP, but tax
  ; law in Japan forces me to claim the expense at the
  ; buy price, not the sell price.  Your country may do it
  ; differently.
  Assets:GBP                   -0.10 GBP {200 JPY} @ 200 JPY
  Expenses:Commissions            20 JPY
  Income:Capital Gains

; In this example, I have paid the exchange commission in GBP.
; Remember that you *must* always specify lot from which you
; spend the GBP.  Which lot you choose depends on how you
; are calculating capital gains (either LIFO or FIFO).  Since
; we only have one lot, the choice is easy.

; Important note: If you are calculating capital gains using
; average cost, you must do this very differently.  I will
; provide an example later.

; We've moved the prices here since we sold the commission
; expense at the buy price rather than the sell price.

P 2015/01/02 CAD 110 JPY
P 2015/01/02 GBP 240 JPY

; Here are some interesting reports you can do:
;  ledger -f 4.ledger --lot-prices bal
;  ledger -f 4.ledger -X JPY bal
;  ledger -f 4.ledger -X GBP bal
;  ledger -f 4.ledger --cost -X JPY bal
;  ledger -f 4.ledger --cost -X GBP bal

; Probably the only thing interesting here is that we have
; Realized 80 JPY of our profit, so the balance report
; only shows an unrealized profit of 220 JPY rather than
; 300 JPY