I have deep personal financial connections to two countries, with different currencies. (They happen to be Canada/CAD and USA/USD, but I don't think that's material.) I have multiple bank and investment and credit card accounts in each currency. I make currency conversions several times a year between the currencies. I would like my personal accounting records to treat both currencies as peers, rather than have one be dominant and one subordinate. I want to be able to see in reports the effects of exchange rate flux, e.g. as one currency is worth less relative to the other, I want to see my net worth as expressed in the second currency decline.
What is a good way to record bank accounts and especially currency conversions in personal bookkeeping software so that I come close to achieving my goals? For what it's worth, I use GnuCash 2.4.10 for Mac OS, but a good answer would be one that's general enough to apply to any sufficiently sophisticated personal accounting program.
GnuCash makes it easy to assert that one bookkeeping account is in currency A and one is in Currency B. It makes it easy to record a currency conversion as debiting the one account and crediting the other. It doesn't make it easy to compute a net exchange rate over several conversion transactions, or to make a composite net worth in one currency. I'm not satisfied with how it makes my foreign exchange risk visible.
Come to think of it, what accounting goals should I have for a multi-currency personal finance situation? Is it realistic to want to treat both currencies as peers?
I have the impression that bookkeeping in multiple currencies is easier if one currency is always primary. I'm not willing to simplify my finances in that way. Some times one currency is primary, other times the other one is.
Update: I'm hoping the method extends easily to multiple currencies, and isn't limited to just two. I'd also like for the method to cover the case where I travel in a third country, make multiple ATM withdrawls to the third country's currency, and incur expenses in that currency; I'd like to be able to calculate a net exchange rate in the main currency which I used for that trip.