Foreign Currency Transactions in Wave

SystemSystem Posts: 412 admin

imageForeign Currency Transactions in Wave

Sometimes, you'll need to spend money or deposit a payment in another currency. This might sound complicated, but Wave Accounting makes it easy to stay on top of this bookkeeping. Before we dive in...

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edited December 10, 2019 in Help Center Discussion

Comments

  • SBenoitSBenoit Member Posts: 48 ✭✭

    I think Wave should clarify what is actually going on in the background to show the balance of a foreign currency account on the balance sheet, as it isn't quite as simple as the statement: "On the balance sheet, Wave uses the xe.com rate to approximate the value of this asset in my Business Currency for reports.". If this were true, you wouldn't have situations where the balance is zero in the foreign currency, but non-zero in the local currency, which I run into all the time. I believe in the back-end Wave holds a running balance in both local and foreign currencies and this allows the expenses/income to be recorded in the local currency on the day it happened, but the effect is that the balances drift apart over time. I fully understand why it's doing it this way, but in articles like this it should be specified, not oversimplified.

  • AlexLAlexL Member Posts: 2,869 ✭✭✭

    Hi @SBenoit . Totally appreciate your feedback on this, and I can understand exactly where you're coming from. We are currently working on providing more features and corresponding education around foreign exchange in Wave, so I'd be more than happy to pass your thoughts along to our Accounting team.

    Thanks again for the feedback.

    edited December 26, 2019
  • cwidcwid Member Posts: 2

    Having some issues creating a journal entry in a foreign currency. I have a USD bank account, and it is set up in Wave in USD. However, when I try to do a journal entry and post to this account, the entries are in CAD funds, and I cannot see anywhere to fix this or select USD as the transaction currency for the JE.
    For example, we need to post a $0.07 adjusting journal entry to our US account (to clean up the account). We post it and save it. Wave converts it to $0.05 (USD?) in the account, so the account is still out $0.02 USD.

  • AlexLAlexL Member Posts: 2,869 ✭✭✭

    Hi @cwid . I see that this is being dealt with by our support team over ticket, so I'll let you get the answer that you need there.

  • DwenianDwenian Member Posts: 3

    How do I add an foreign currency transaction? Nothing as complicated as the example given. My accounts are in CAD: I travel to the US & make a $10 USD purchase which I pay for in USD. I want to add the transaction as USD $10 (which I used to be able to do) but now I only seem to be able to add the amount but not say what it's an amount of (CAD, USD, GBP etc).
    Am I now supposed to manually work out the exchange rate myself to add the Transaction in CAD?

    edited June 8, 2020
  • CalliePCallieP Member Posts: 439 admin

    Hi again @Dwenian ! As mentioned in another comment to you, the currency for regular income/expense transactions is determined by the currency of the Account field. If you pay this USD amount form a CAD account, then the transaction will appear as CAD, and you can use your bank statement to identify the exchange rate if need be. This article explains all of this in more depth, including your exact situation: https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035538791

  • ChuanhuaChuanhua Member Posts: 1

    @SBenoit said:
    I think Wave should clarify what is actually going on in the background to show the balance of a foreign currency account on the balance sheet, as it isn't quite as simple as the statement: "On the balance sheet, Wave uses the xe.com rate to approximate the value of this asset in my Business Currency for reports.". If this were true, you wouldn't have situations where the balance is zero in the foreign currency, but non-zero in the local currency, which I run into all the time. I believe in the back-end Wave holds a running balance in both local and foreign currencies and this allows the expenses/income to be recorded in the local currency on the day it happened, but the effect is that the balances drift apart over time. I fully understand why it's doing it this way, but in articles like this it should be specified, not oversimplified.

    Hi Wave Team , is there any fix about this?
    I have account in foreign currency after i zerolized it, there shouldn't be any amount in my local currency left.

  • brian1990brian1990 Member Posts: 2

    I have the same issue. I have a USD Bank Account which has 0 balance but in balance sheet it's saying -€926.64. This may cause me to do an error while doing the company's Audit. Can the issue be resolved ? Do I need to contact customer support ?

  • CalliePCallieP Member Posts: 439 admin

    Hey @Chuanhua and @brian1990 , thanks for reaching out. Our Accounting product team is currently working on building out greater control from your end with regard to foreign currencies, which you can click here to learn more about - so while this is not yet available, it is on the way! Thanks for your patience while we build this out.

  • jamaljamal Member Posts: 1

    Hello Callie

    i am doing my auditing in USD and i have the same issue .
    MY BANK ACCOUNT IS IN HKD ( HONG KONG DOLLARS) , but on the balance sheet the curreny conversion is not right ,

    i have HKD2546.12 which is around 327 usd , but on balance sheet i have 1523 usd .

    any way to solve it ? i appreciate your help

  • AlexLAlexL Member Posts: 2,869 ✭✭✭

    Hey @jamal , as Callie mentioned, our Accounting team is working on providing better foreign exchange solutions for the future. In the meantime, you can create a Journal Transaction which changes the amount to the correct adjustment so that it matches how much should be showing in Wave.

  • zeuskyzeusky Member Posts: 1

    Hi Alex I have a two foreign currency accounts and I transfer funds between them and record them in the foreign amounts. I had undertaken 4 transactions on the same day between these accounts. The foreign currency amounts balance, but the closing balance is translated into an amount that is not accurate. As it was all done the same day (i.e. same FX translation), I thought it would have balanced.

    I can see that your accounting team is working on better FX change in the future. It would be great if you could post here when that is done. As a suggestion, perhaps your development team could just record the value of the foreign currency transactions in the following ways:
    (1) for transactions between a home currency account and a foreign currency account, allow the user to set an effective FX (i.e. allow them to post each side of a transaction as different currencies, with the variance between the two the implied FX exchange rate.
    (2) for transactions between two foriegn currency accounts, do not do an FX transaction between them. When running a report, you could then automatically convert the foreign currency account into the domestic currency account at the prevalining exchange rate of th date of the report, with the difference recorded in an FX gain/loss account. You could either let the user select the frequency of the posting of the FX gain/loss journal or not post the FX gain/loss entry at all and allow that line item in the P&L to vary depending on the day the report is generated.

  • VijaygzaVijaygza Member Posts: 2

    The sign for ZAR currency should only be "R", but shows up as ZAR on reports. This makes it difficult to read. How can the sign be changed to "R" in all reports?

  • BarsinBarsin Member, Moderator Posts: 2,041 ✭✭✭

    Hey there @Vijaygza

    I apologize however, at this time Wave does not give you the ability to customize this currency symbol on your transactions at this time :disappointed:

    Our team is aware of this issue and we've backlogged this support ticket while we handle some new upgrades to our transactions page

  • VijaygzaVijaygza Member Posts: 2
    The sign for ZAR currency should always be R. Nowhere in the US will you see currency represented as USD$.
  • PetriPetri Member Posts: 9

    @CallieP and @AlexL you said in August that there will be coming update with control for FX rates. Any estimate when that would be?

    Our Accounting product team is currently working on building out greater control from your end with regard to foreign currencies, which you can click here to learn more about - so while this is not yet available, it is on the way! Thanks for your patience while we build this out.

  • generalinqgeneralinq Member Posts: 14

    Has the feature to input our own exchange rate been implemented yet? That link was from April of last year. Any update? I'm getting negative numbers in my local currency instead of a '0' balance. The account reconciles but shows this negative number in the balance sheet which messes up all the other numbers. If this isn't fixed soon, it will be my absolute last draw with Wave accounting (first draw was no 2FA for security which should be a priority). I'm very disappointed with this product in the last few years, time to take action.

    edited February 7, 2021
  • KiahDKiahD Administrator Posts: 267 admin

    Hi @Petri and @generalinq !

    The foreign exchange rate editing feature is not yet available, and as it turns out, I don't currently have an ETA for when it will be, but thanks for your interest here!

    That said @generalinq, if you're seeing negative figures for your local currency balance, instead of 0, please send an email to Customer Support. A member of Customer Support will be able to assist you with creating a revaluation transaction (an adjustment entry) to resolve this. Thanks!

    edited February 8, 2021
  • PetriPetri Member Posts: 9

    @KiahD said:
    Hi @Petri and @generalinq !

    The foreign exchange rate editing feature is not yet available, and as it turns out, I don't currently have an ETA for when it will be, but thanks for your interest here!

    That said @generalinq, if you're seeing negative figures for your local currency balance, instead of 0, please send an email to Customer Support. A member of Customer Support will be able to assist you with creating a revaluation transaction (an adjustment entry) to resolve this. Thanks!

    It is sad to hear there won't be coming any fix for this soon. This makes foreign currency business completely unusable. Only workaround I have discovered so far is to create new foreign currency account with correct adjustments in place at the beginning of each fiscal year.

  • generalinqgeneralinq Member Posts: 14
    @Petri how do you make those adjustments? Won’t you still be in the same position but instead in that new foreign currency account?

    I have a choice. Either make my reports look good OR have my accounts reconcile. I can’t get both anymore due to this issue. May have to contact customer support and see what they can do. Have no clue. I chose to have my reports be accurate over my reconciliation because it is my reports that I use when inputting my taxes and I truly know they are reconciled....for now..
  • fredngofredngo Member Posts: 1

    Does Wave handle unrealized foreign exchange gains/losses? Say, in year 1, my business makes $100 USD. At the end of the year my balance sheet has $100 USD, worth, say, $120 CAD, which is what we report to the CRA as the assets on the balance sheet. In year 2, my business is paused and has no additional income, but the exchange rate has gone up and the same $100 USD in the bank is now worth $130CAD. We report this to the CRA as assets of $130CAD on the balance sheet, plus an adjustment in the Equity section of an unrealized gain of $10 CAD. Does Wave handle this situation?

  • Peter1234567890Peter1234567890 Member Posts: 4

    How do I add a receipt in foreign currency? I have bought some things for cash, got just receipts, how to add them?

  • adhersinadhersin Member Posts: 1

    @Peter1234567890 said:
    How do I add a receipt in foreign currency? I have bought some things for cash, got just receipts, how to add them?

    There seems to be a bug in Wave with transactions made in a foreign currency. It doesn't show the "upload receipt" button on the right side of the transaction (in transaction list view) and when you edit the transaction, then go to the "Receipt" tab, it won't let you drag and drop a receipt or open the file upload prompt.

  • LJBusinessSolutionsLJBusinessSolutions Member Posts: 1

    @Peter1234567890 I'm experiencing the same issue. Thanks for addressing this. Will follow your post for a resolution.

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