Porfolio and the Euro "big bang"

Porfolio
The Euro "big bang".
(last update 10 Jan. 1999)

From Monday, January 4th 1999, all shares quoted in the eleven countries of the Euro zone (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) are quoted in Euro, no more in the local currency. Several users of Porfolio have asked how this significant change is taken into account in their preferred application. Here is the answer.

For the Series 3a/c version, I propose a little utility which will allows changing the currency of quotation of any share in the Porfolio database (obviously the historical quotes are also converted, at the same fixed exchange rate). As it must run only once, this utility is not part of the application itself. It is a separate program. Click here to download it. It works in 3 steps:

select one existing currency as the Euro.
select the shares, which will be quoted in Euro.
(optional) change the home currency to Euro.

On the Series 5 and Epoc version, it is possible to change the currency of quotation of any share at any time. This is done from the redesigned "Update quotes" screen (command Ctrl+Q, then Shift+Ctrl+E to change the currency for the share highlighted).

Is is also possible to change the base currency of an account (command "Currency" in the menu card Account, from version 5.05b). The principle: if OLD is the old currency, and NEW the new currency, all past transactions in OLD are converted into NEW at "today's" exchange rate, while transactions in other currencies are not converted. The whole account (average purchase prices, capital gains,...) is recalculated in the NEW currency. Note that a cash line in OLD is converted to a line in NEW, while cash lines in other currencies are left unchanged.

This may cause undesired effects, such as making it impossible to reconcile older transactions with bank statements (which will not be converted). My advice if one wishes to have the Euro as base currency of one or more accounts and still keep older records in their original currency, it to keep the original accounts as they are, create new account(s) with Euro as base currency, and transfer shares to this account(s) (with the command "Share transfer" in the menu card Transaction). The full process is as follows:

create a EUR currency.
adjust all exchange rates.
press Ctrl+Q from any account to display the whole list of shares.
go down the list and press Shift+Ctrl+E to change the currency of quotation where needed, share by share.
create one or more new account(s) with EUR as base currency.
open the "old" account(s)
select share by share and transfer it to the "new account", with the command Transaction > Share transfer.
use the same "Share transfer" command to transfer cash or share options to the new account(s).