Foreign currency and FX

Your reports are always in your home currency. Anything you record in another currency - a foreign-currency invoice, a bill, or a foreign-currency bank account - is converted using Kontala's daily exchange rates.

How amounts are converted

A foreign document is booked at the exchange rate for its date, so your reports show its home-currency value on the day it happened. The original currency amount is always kept too - you see it on the document itself.

Where gains and losses come from

Exchange rates move, so the home value of foreign money changes between recording something and settling it.

• While a foreign invoice or bill is unpaid, Kontala retranslates the outstanding amount to the latest daily rate. The running difference is an unrealised gain or loss, held in the Unrealized Currency Exchange Gain/Loss account.
• When it is actually paid, the final difference becomes real and is recorded in the Realized Currency Exchange Gain/Loss account.
• Foreign-currency bank balances are also kept at the latest rate, so the Balance Sheet shows what the money is worth today.

This is called revaluation, and it all happens automatically - there is nothing for you to post.

See the detail

Both accounts appear on your Profit & Loss under Administration Expenses once they have activity. Click either one, or find it in Account transactions, to see each difference and the document it relates to.