By default, the setting for your Exchange Rates is "Use Dynamic Currency Conversions". This uses the current market exchange rates when creating a project that uses items of a currency different from your operating currency.
If you are an Enterprise user and want to establish your own exchange rates for the various currencies you use in relation to your operating currency, you can enable the "Use Company-Defined Conversions" option to manually set your conversion rates for different currencies.
Setting up Your Defined Rates
Go to Settings > Company > Currency/Tax and select the "Use Company-Defined Conversions" checkbox. The list of available currencies will automatically populate based on your selected purchasing currencies in your office(s).
Additionally, you can add new currencies by clicking on the currency text box at the end of the list and selecting a currency.
Then make sure to define the desired conversion rate and click the "Update Exchange Rates" button.
Now the new currency is part of your defined conversions list.
You can also delete rates by hovering over the name and clicking the red trash icon.
Seeing The Rates in a Project
When you create a project and add items to that project that are of a different currency from the project's currency, you will see the rates that you defined by going to Project Details > Exchange Rates.
When you click "Exchange Rates" you will see a window with the currencies in the project and their defined conversions.
Please note, if you create a project and make edits to the defined conversion rates in your Company Settings after the project is created, you will need to click the blue "Import" button for the manually defined conversion rate to populate, then click "Save and Update Item Prices."
IMPORTANT FINAL NOTE:
If you are creating a project in a currency that's different than your operating currency, you will need to ensure there is a common base rate for the exchange for the manually defined conversion rates to calculate correctly. If there is not a common base rate for the exchange, then the exchange rate that imports will be from the online market price (i.e., as if you were using "Dynamic Currency Conversions") for that currency since there isn't a company defined rate of exchange. However, if there is a common base rate for the exchange then it exchanges to that common base rate.
EXAMPLE:
Your company's operating currency is USD.
The project you just created is in EUR.
And you add items in CAD, GBP, and USD currencies to the project
Then in your company settings you would need to make sure to define the following exchange rates:
- CAD to USD
- GBP to USD
- EUR to USD
Now, back in the project we will exchange the following currencies:
- CAD to EUR
- GBP to EUR
- USD to EUR
We are able to calculate all of those in the project since we have a common base currency of USD. Meaning, the CAD item is exchanged to USD using the company CAD to USD exchange rate, and then it is converted from USD to EUR using the company's EUR to USD exchange rate.
(How this all works is based on the "Cross Currency Triangulation" formula/process.)
We hope this helps! If you have any questions, please reach out to us in Support chat 🙂