Setting Exchange Rates

How to set up exchange rates, and what to do when they change.

To see the Exchange Rates currently in place click Start > Configuration> Accounting > Exchange Rates.  The grid on the right shows:

• All the ‘foreign’ currencies that have been added to the Currencies tab on your Own Organisation record(s).
• The current rate of exchange between each pair of currencies (and the reverse rate). 
• The date from which the rate shown applies.

Setting Exchange Rates

To amend an Exchange Rate, click on the row that you want to amend, which will open a screen similar to the one shown below:

In this example, Exchange Rates have been set from March 29th onwards. The top row shows a rate with a ‘Valid From’ date of March 29th but there is no date in the ‘Valid Until’ field, i.e. this is the current rate. The Valid Until field will only be populated with a date if you add a new Exchange Rate period that has a Valid From date which is later than the current Valid From date. For example, if you add an Exchange Rate with a Valid From date of 1 December, Workbooks will auto fill the Valid Until the date on the top row with 30 November.

To add a new rate, click ‘Add Exchange Rate’ period and enter your rate and a Valid From date.

What happens when you change the Exchange Rate figure or date range?

It is important to understand what happens when you make amendments to either the Exchange Rate or the date range for which the rate applies.

Transaction Documents use the Exchange Rate in place that corresponds with the document date.  If the Exchange Rate for a time period is changed, any Draft documents with a document date in that period will also change.  Similarly, if you change the date range for the Exchange Rate, any Draft documents with a document date that falls into the new time period will adopt the Exchange Rate for that new period.

These recalculations are carried out in the background and could impact the performance of your database if you have a very large number of Transaction Documents affected by the change.  For this reason, we advise making any changes out of your usual business hours to minimise impact.