Hold money in more than one currency

Screens /bank-accounts · /treasury · Roles: Admin, Accountant

An operator taking channel payouts in dollars holds dollars whether or not the books admit it. A workspace can hold money in more than one currency, and move between its own stores across currencies with the books saying what actually happened.

Open a store in another currency

1. Open /bank-accounts and add an account.

2. Pick the currency. The picker is searchable and lists your base currency first, which is still the default.

3. Leave the opening balance empty - see the caution below.

4. Save. The store appears on /treasury under its own currency.

A foreign store must open empty

An opening balance in a currency other than your base currency is refused, deliberately. An opening balance posts at face value onto your base axis, so a dollar balance would land as that many rupees, and because both sides of the entry are the same number it would balance perfectly and overstate your trial balance silently. A foreign store opens empty and fills from real movements, which is the only version of this that cannot lie.

Move money between your own stores

A transfer between two stores in different currencies is a conversion, and it is recorded as one:

• money leaves the source store in the source currency;
• money arrives in the destination store in the destination currency;
• the difference lands in a currency exchange account, so the books say where it went rather than absorbing it.

Both halves are journals in their own currency. Nothing puts two currencies on one entry.

Why the difference has to be visible

Every ledger entry takes its currency from its journal. If a single journal held dollar debits and rupee credits it would net to zero arithmetically and commit while describing nothing at all. Splitting the conversion is what makes the rate an explicit, readable fact.

The payout sweep

When foreign balances have to come home to several properties’ banks, the sweep computes the whole plan first and shows it before anything moves: which source store, which destination bank, which amount.

1. Open /treasury and start a payout sweep.

2. Read the plan. One row per source-and-destination pair, resolved per property.

3. Look for a row with no destination. A property whose bank is not set appears with its answer missing rather than being folded quietly into a default.

4. Execute. Every leg posts as its own conversion or transfer.

Set each property’s bank before you sweep

A booking’s cash lands in the bank the property settles through. A property with none resolved surfaces on the plan with no destination - fix it on the property rather than letting the sweep guess. See Manage bank accounts.

What this does not do yet

Restating open foreign balances at a period-end rate - currency revaluation - is not built. Holding several currencies and converting between your own stores both work; the period-end restatement does not, and it is on the public roadmap.

What’s next

• Manage bank accounts.
• Read the treasury.
• Reconcile the cash report.