Multiple currencies

[CDB]

Does Ezi Accounting have any support for multiple currencies? I saw a review saying it did, but couldn't find it.

My clients need to be invoiced in their home country currencies and this is converted to my home country currency at the central bank exchange rate, the day AFTER I send the invoice. So each day I need to enter a new exchange rate list.

Same goes for my suppliers -- they invoice me in their home currency.

So I need to be able to set a currency for each client and supplier and have a method of maintaining exchange rates and sending differences in amounts received to either/both profit/loss on FX or banking fees.

This requirement seems to be the single reason that most small business packages are useless to around half the start ups in the world right now...

[sami]

There is some support for the exchange rates (only in purchasing), but its not recommended for what you describe, we are currently working on a total multi-currency solution to add to both RMan and Ezi Accounting, which will allow the user to enter as many currencies as desired and also the ability to change the exchange rate daily or even per invoice.

[CDB]

Thanks Sami,

I'll keep checking back as the start-up that I am thinking about will not be ready to go for a few months.

I think the key is to have a single base currency for each client which is entered once during client set-up. (multiple currencies per client is way too much trouble -- better create separate entities for clients like that). The most common and needed conversion is simply with a central bank list which is input manually each day and is linked to the transaction.

Automatic conversions are not useful for most businesses since GAAP in most countries requires conversion of foreign currency invoices on the day of issuing, and then when payment comes through it is converted to the base currency at the value of the day of payment. The conversion rates are different (according to the central bank rates) and the difference is booked as an FX profit/loss, and possibly banking fees too.

Online ecommerce systems have a different way of working in real time and differet set-up with quote/order/invoice/payment occurring simultaneously and probably linked with XE.com or Oanda.com

The other businesses I am involved in are much larger but I do come across the same problem all the time. It's probably reasonable to charge a premium for a multi-currency product (as Microsoft is doing with its Accounting Express package) but I actually am not clear why adding this functionality is so difficult!

It seems that there are few SME packages that offer such functionality but a lot of businesses that need it. In another company I use Netsuite which handles it well along the lines that I mentioned but of course that costs USD $30,000 per annum for a multi-user setup so is not for the same types of business that Ezi Accounting is targetting.

On the purchasing side, I have global suppliers which I need to pay in their currencies and it's the same thing with conversions being fixed to a date/transaction back and forth....

[sami]

Actually, the upgrade will work exactly as you described, so what will happen is you have a currency table which will have the currency names and conversion rates, this file can be edited on as needed bases, then when you create an invoice or purchase, the default is the local currency which you can change to any other currency in the currency table, once done, you will see the conversion rate (which you can accept or modify). But even after saving, you can always recall the invoice/purchase and modify the conversion rate to what it should be.