Foreign currencies

Your books keep one company currency, fixed when you make the company. Multi-currency lets invoices, bills, payments and bank accounts be in another currency. Rates are typed in or loaded from a file. Nothing is looked up on the internet.

Not available on screen yet

There are no screens for foreign currencies in the app today. The engine works and is tested. The steps below describe what it does, not buttons you can press.

What it does

• A list of 160 currencies is built in, with their decimal places. Yen has none, and dinars have three.
• You switch on the currencies you use. The company currency is always on. A currency in use cannot be switched off.
• Rates are kept by date. You type one at a time, or load a CSV or Excel file with the columns date, currency and rate. A load is all-or-nothing and starts as a dry run.
• The engine uses the closest earlier rate. If there is none, it tells you to type one.
• A rate typed on a document beats the table.
• When you issue a foreign invoice or bill, the rate is fixed and the amount in your own currency is booked. The foreign amount is kept beside it.

Payments, gains and losses

• A payment can go through a bank account in the foreign currency or in the company currency.
• The difference between the booked value and the value at payment goes to "Exchange gain or loss (realised)". The account is made the first time it is needed.
• If the bank charged a fee, the charge goes to the expense account you choose.
• A part payment takes its share. The last payment takes the remainder, so no tiny leftovers stay on the receivable.

Revaluation

• A preview lists every open foreign invoice, bill and foreign bank account, what it is booked at, and what it is worth at the day's rate. Nothing is saved.
• Posting it books the difference to "Exchange gain or loss (unrealised)". The next day a reversing entry is posted. One revaluation per date.

Reports

Aging, statements and the general ledger show the foreign currency and amount beside your own. A currency exposure report shows receivables, payables and bank balances by currency.

Not handled yet

• Foreign-currency credit notes are not handled. See credit-notes.
• Reconciling a foreign bank account still compares the statement with the amounts in your own currency.
• Manual journal lines on a foreign bank account carry no foreign amount, so revaluation ignores them.
• Bank charges on bank-import matches are not passed through yet.
• When you recode a foreign bank line with a tax split, the foreign amount has not been carried across.
• Tested with worked examples, not with real bank statements.