Currencies and exchange rates

Your accounts are kept in one base currency. If you also buy, sell, pay or hold money in other currencies, turn on multi-currency: each document then keeps its own currency, and every amount is also stored in the base currency for your reports.

The base currency

• New companies start with IQD as the base currency and USD as a second currency, with a starting rate of USD → IQD = 1,500 dated the day the company was registered. Edit it or add a newer rate when the market rate changes. You choose the base currency in the setup wizard or under Settings › Organization › Accounting defaults › Base Currency (Company profile). It's there whether multi-currency is on or off.
• If your company uses only one currency, choose it as the base currency and leave multi-currency off. Documents then don't ask for a currency: everything is in the base currency.
• The base currency can't be changed once transactions or opening balances exist. Choose it before you enter any data.
• When you change it, the chart of accounts, customers, suppliers, employees, designations, salary packages and bonuses/deductions that were in the old base currency move to the new one. Amounts you already typed there (for example salaries) keep their numbers, so check them. Exchange rates are cleared; add them again if you use multi-currency.
• All reports, the dashboard, budgets and credit limits are in the base currency.

Adding currencies and rates

Go to Settings › Currency Setting (or /app/settings/currencies).

1. Add Currency: enter the Currency Code (for example USD), Currency Name and Currency Symbol. Tick Is Base Currency only for the base currency.
2. Add Rate: choose From Currency (the foreign currency), To Currency (the base currency), the Rate and the Effective Date.

Amounts are shown with the currency code (IQD 470,000, USD 314.00), never the symbol, so the currency is clear in every language and on printouts. A document's own amounts show its currency's code; base-currency values show the base currency's code.

The rate is how many units of the base currency one unit of the foreign currency is worth. With IQD as base: USD → IQD = 1,310 means 1 USD = 1,310 IQD.

• A rate is used from its effective date until a newer rate takes over, so add a new rate whenever the market rate changes. Old documents keep the rate they were saved with.
• Only one rate per currency per date is allowed; edit the existing rate instead.
• Rates support up to 10 decimal places.
• At least one rate must remain for a currency in use, and the base currency can't be deleted.

Turning on multi-currency

Turn on Show Multi Currency in Settings › Preferences (or in the setup wizard). Until then, documents use only the base currency, and using another currency gives "Enable multi-currency before using a foreign currency."

Using a currency on a document

On invoices, bills, payments, expenses, journals and vouchers:

1. Choose the Currency.
2. The latest effective rate is filled in. To use a different rate for this one document, tick Manual Exchange Rate and enter the rate ("Enter rate for this transaction").

On sales invoices, purchase bills, quotations and their returns (and, for the conversion and display, expenses, asset bills, income and outcome vouchers and journal vouchers):

• Item prices are in the base currency. On a document in another currency they are converted at its rate: an item priced 15,000 IQD comes onto a USD invoice at 1,500 as 10 USD. Variant, unit and batch prices are converted the same way.
• Changing the currency converts the lines: each keeps its base-currency value (15,000 IQD becomes 10 USD). Changing only the rate keeps the document's amounts; only their base value changes.
• Both currencies are shown: every line amount and the totals show the document's currency with the base-currency value under it ("≈ 15,000 IQD").

If no rate exists for the currency on that date you'll see "No effective exchange rate exists for ... Add a rate before using this currency."

Rules to know

• Customers and suppliers have a currency. Their opening balance is in that currency, and once documents use the record its currency can't change.
• Payments can be in any currency. A receipt or payment in another currency than the invoice or bill is converted through the base currency with today's rate of the document's currency (shown on the line, editable); the document clears in its own currency and the difference is an exchange gain or loss.
• Payments use today's rate. Receipts and payments (also Record Payment on an invoice or bill) fill in the latest rate, which you can change. The invoice or bill clears at its own rate; the difference in base-currency value is an exchange gain or loss, shown before saving and posted to the Exchange Gain or Loss account of Ledger Configuration. POS payments are taken with the sale and use the sale's rate.
• Bank and cash accounts can be in a foreign currency. A voucher posted to a USD bank account must be in USD; to change money from one currency to another, use a bank transaction.
• Revaluation: when rates move, the base value of foreign-currency bank accounts can be updated with Bank revaluation. The gain or loss goes to the exchange gain/loss account.