Multi Currency

Single Currency & Multi-Business

Saasu supports the list of foreign currencies shown below but is currently single currency within any one business.

Saasu supports multiple businesses within one subscription and one user can also access multiple businesses within a subscription or across multiple subscriptions.

Multi-currency works in three ways. The transaction is created in:

1. Your base currency and you apply payment in a foreign currency.
2. A foreign currency and you apply payment in that same foreign currency.
3. A foreign currency and you apply payment in your base currency.

Saasu doesn’t support a Cross-Currency transactions model where neither the transaction or the payment are the same currency and neither are your base currency.

How do I activate multi-currency for my file?

1. Sign in to Saasu and go to the file you want multi-currency enabled for.
2. Select Settings > Multi-currency and tick turn on multi-currency for my file.
3. Repeat this for each file you would like to have this feature activated for.

What is the XE.com data feed?

Saasu uses xe.com data feed to provide foreign currency exchange rates (FX rates) in order to calculate the conversion of foreign currency amount transactions back into your base currency.
You will see that Saasu has a currency conversion widget in our transaction screen that allows you to enter your own FX rates or tick the XE.com checkbox to load a rate from a feed for the transaction date.

Why is there an FX rate on the transaction and the payment?

When you book a Foreign Currency transaction in Saasu, you capture the FX conversion rate. However, if customers are paying you later, the FX rate can differ as time has passed and FX markets have moved.

Example: You are a New Zealand business and the NZD dollar is at 1.25 to the USD. You enter a sale into Saasu for USD100.00. In this transaction, Saasu books two items to the ledger:

• NZD $100 to Income: XYZ (Local currency transaction amount).
• NZD $25 to Income: XYZ (FX conversion amount).

This allows us to control various reporting and display situations. It also enables accountants to isolate the FX conversion amount ($25) from the transaction amount ($100), amongst other things.

Later when a payment is applied to the transaction, the FX rate may differ to the initial one used on the transaction date. There are now two FX rates – One on the transaction date and one on the payment date. The difference between these rates is booked to the FX Gain or Loss account.

How close is XE.com to my banks Foreign Exchange (FX) rates?

XE.comis a very widely used service for FX data feed information. The rates are based on a set of Spot FX interbank two-way prices. We are confident XE.com is about as reliable a source as we could possibly provide to our customers without implementing measures that would be expensive for our customers (eg a direct feed from Bloomberg or Reuters).

Importantly, any one bank doesn’t make up the FX marketplace, so we can’t take a feed from a bank. Hundreds of banks make FX prices in the professional market every second, so aggregate data about interbank FX prices will tend to reflect market consensus over time. The FX market is much bigger than any one bank.

Your bank will also charge you fees and a spread (the difference between where they buy and sell a currency). So the rate you get will differ depending on how much they make in converting you money to another currency. This is where you will see money end up in the FX Gain and Loss account. For example, your bank may be indicating 0.75/0.79 for the Australian Dollar to the US Dollar but XE.com might indicate 0.77 – A rate which is much closer to where banks would trade FX with each other. When you apply a payment to your transaction and enter the exact FX rate, you will notice this FX Gain and Loss appear in your reporting.

What is an Exchange Account?

Saasu like most modern accounting systems uses a dual account method for multi-currency accounts.

When you create a foreign currency account Saasu creates an associated Exchange Account at the same time so that we can capture the foreign exchange differential back to your Saasu files base currency.

All accounts including your foreign currency account and it’s associated exchange account are in your base currency. However your foreign currency account when viewed by itself represents your foreign currency account as though it is in that currency.

Lets say you are a US company who’s Saasu file is reported in US dollars.

• You setup a EUR bank account with EUR100.00 in it.
• If the exchange rate for EUR to USD = 1.25 then you have USD125.00 in value.
• Saasu books USD25.00 to your exchange account and your EUR bank account will display USD100.00. Importantly however, if you are going to view this EUR bank account in isolation then you can regard this as being EUR100.00

Currently Supported Foreign Currencies List

Also known as the FX or Foreign Exchange currency list, Saasu is currently covering 43 currencies:

ARS Argentina Peso
AUD Australian Dollar
CAD Canadian Dollar
CGP Chilean Peso
CYP Cyprus Pound
DZD Dinar
MAD Dirham
VND Dong
AMD Dram
EGP Egyptian Pound
EUR Euro
HVF Forint
HKD Hong Kong Dollar
CZK Koruna
DKK Krone
EEK Kroon
ZMK Kwacha
LVL Lat
ALL Lek
BGN Lev
LTL Litas
MTL Maltese Lira
MXN Mexican Peso
RON New Leu
ILS New Shekel
NZD New Zealand Dollar
NOK Norwegian Krone
PKR Pakistani Rupee
PHP Philippines Peso
GBP Pound
ZAR Rand
BRL Real
MYR Ringgit
SAR Riyal
RUB Ruble
INR Rupee
IDR Rupiah
SGD Singapore Dollar
LKR Sri Lankan Rupee
TWD Taiwanese New Dollar
THB Thai Baht
USD US Dollar
JPY Yen
PLN Zloty

What sets the base currency for my file?

Each organisation file in Saasu has a base currency set by the Zone you have chosen. For example, if you chose the “United States” zone, the currency of your file will be in US Dollars.

How do I handle Foreign Currency Transactions?

Let’s say you have used your credit card to pay for something in a foreign currency. Quite often you won’t know what local currency amount you have paid until you receive your bank or credit card statement. One way you can handle this in Saasu is:

1. Enter the foreign currency amount in your purchase. This is temporary so that you have a record of the transaction and can attach the receipt to it. Later you will amend the transaction amount to your local currency that the bank or credit card converted the funds at.
2. Tick requires follow-up and enter amend transaction amount to be the local currency amount from credit card statement.
3. Later, when you receive or download your statement, it will have the local currency amount you need to use when amending the original transaction. You can now use the requires follow-upreport to quickly find transactions like this that need updating to the local currency amount which your account ended up being charged. Don’t forget to untick requires follow-up in the transaction when you are finished.
4. Attach the receipt to the transaction (if you haven’t already) and/or include the Foreign Currency amount in the Notes field. (You can migrate this information to a specific foreign currency field later in Saasu when it becomes available).

What is a foreign currency gain or loss?

Sometimes you might sell (or buy) products or services in a foreign currency that differs to your base currency (base currency is set when you select a zone for your Saasu file).

In such circumstances you may receive slightly more or less funds than invoiced because of exchange rate (FX) differences. In this example, you receive $102 for a sale that was $100, $2 being an exchange rate gain.

1. Set up accounts called:
   • Income:Foreign Currency Gain
   • Expense:Foreign Currency Loss
   • Asset:Clearing Account
2. Speak to your accounting advisor to establish what you need for your particular circumstances. In some situations this might be one Account called Expense: Foreign Currency Gain/Loss (example only).
3. Apply a $100 payment to the sale using the Asset:Clearing Account.
4. Create a new journal entry with the following entries:

	Account / Bank Account	Amount inc Tax
Debit	Asset: Sample Bank Account	$102
Credit	Asset: Clearing Account	$100
Credit	Income: Foreign Currency Gain	$2

Use the appropriate tax codes for your particular circumstance against the Income: Foreign Currency Gain line item in the Journal entry.

Workflow solutions…

• Multi-currency-bank-transfer