How do you track gold and foreign currency savings in your own currency?

Why record the quantity and not the value?

If you bought gold a year ago for 10,000 lira and wrote it down as 10,000 lira, that note cannot tell you what it is worth today. What stays the same is the quantity: 4 grams, 2 quarter coins, 500 dollars. Record the quantity and today's value can always be worked out at today's rate. What you paid on the day stays in the record as a separate fact.

The same goes for foreign currency. A dollar account holds dollars; its value in your own currency changes with the rate every day. Keeping the two apart is the first step to seeing how much your savings have gained or lost.

Grams, quarter coins and troy ounces

Gold is priced worldwide per troy ounce, in US dollars. One troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams. Divide the dollar price of an ounce by that number and multiply by the exchange rate, and you get roughly the price of a gram of pure gold. The price at a jeweller or a bank differs a little from this, because the gap between buying and selling prices and local market conditions are added on top.

Treat gold coins, such as the Turkish quarter coin, as a unit of their own. A coin's price cannot be worked out exactly from the gram price; the market sets its own price for it. So keeping coins as a count gives a more accurate result than converting them to grams and adding them up.

There is also the buying and selling price. A jeweller sells gold to you at the selling price and buys it back at the lower buying price. If you value your savings at the selling price, expect to get a little less when you actually sell.

Where do the rates come from?

In Türkiye the usual reference for currencies is the set of rates the Central Bank publishes every working day. For gold, people use the gram and quarter coin prices of the Turkish market, or a gram price worked out from the ounce price.

In Wiozen Ledger you choose the price source on the Rates page. With Türkiye, currency rates come from the Central Bank's forex selling rate and gold from the Turkish gold market's selling price. With Global, currency rates come from European Central Bank (ECB) data and gold from the international ounce price. Currency rates update once a day and gold prices once an hour, on their own.

When the Turkish gold source cannot be reached, the gram price is worked out from the ounce price and the Central Bank's dollar rate. The quarter coin price cannot be derived that way. If no coin price came in that day, you can type it into Today's rates on the Rates page; a value you enter by hand is kept for that day.

Step by step: an account for gold or foreign currency

• On the Accounts page, add a new account. For gold or cash you keep at home, choose Other (currency, gold box…) as the type; for a gold or currency account at your bank, choose Bank. As the unit, pick Gold (gram), Quarter gold coin, US dollar or Euro. If you need another currency, add it under Currencies in Settings.
• For the opening balance, enter the quantity you hold today: grams, coins or the amount of currency, not its value.
• When you buy gold or currency, record it as a transfer from your lira account to the gold or currency account. You enter both the amount sent and the amount received, and the rate follows from the two. Send 10,000 lira and receive 2 grams, and the record shows you paid 5,000 lira a gram.
• When you sell, make the same transfer the other way: grams leave the gold account and the money you got goes into your lira account.

Seeing the total and how it changed

Net worth on the dashboard adds up all your accounts in your main currency. Gold and currency accounts are converted at that day's rate. The Rates page keeps a rate history too, so you can see which day's price a figure is based on.

For an expense paid in a foreign currency you can type the amount in your main currency yourself. If you leave it empty, the last rate you entered is used.

What you paid is in the transfer record and today's value is in your net worth. The difference shows how much your savings changed in your own currency. Keep inflation in mind when you read that number: savings that grew in lira terms may buy no more than they did before.

Which plan includes this?

Pro includes foreign currency and gold accounts. Every new account gets 14 days of Pro without a card; after that Pro is $39.99 a year or $6.99 a month. The free plan has 1 account and 30 records a month. Details are on the pricing page. On the free plan, the account is in your main currency only.