Use the Hidden “Currency Calculator”
There will be times in a QuickBooks Desktop multicurrency situation when you’ll be dealing in two currencies in a transaction, and you’ll know two values but you’ll want to calculate the third. Here’s a common scenario:
You transferred $5,000 US to a euro currency account and your bank gave you credit for €4,249.24 in the euro currency account. You want to enter the transfer transaction in QuickBooks Desktop. How do you calculate the third value, the exchange rate, if you can’t find it from the bank? The answer lies within the QuickBooks Multicurrency feature, but it’s a hidden function. Read on to find out how.
QuickBooks Desktop Multicurrency Course
Hit Control+Alt+C on your keyboard and enter any two of these three values:
- Home currency amount
- Foreign currency amount
- Exchange rate (such as the number of US Dollars required to buy one euro)
Then click Calculate and the third value will appear:
You can use this trick if you know any two of the three values involved in a foreign currency calculation, without a calculator.
This is just one scenario that the CompuBooks QuickBooks Multicurrency Course for Desktop will solve for you, and this doesn’t even exist in the HELP function.
The CompuBooks QuickBooks Desktop Multicurrency course will take you through all the ins and outs of using Multicurrency, Foreign Currency, Exchange Rates, and valuations.You’ll learn how to tell what any foreign currency transaction is worth in your own home currency, and how to let QuickBooks handle exchange gains and losses on foreign currency automatically.
You’ll also learn what to look for and when to intervene and create a foreign currency adjustment. You’ll see how easy it is to work with exchange rates and foreign currency, as long as you’re taught how to do it correctly.
QuickBooks Online Multicurrency Course – Coming Soon
QuickBooks Online (QBO) can also be set up to work with multiple currencies, and QBO has a number of advantages over QuickBooks Desktop. Here are just two of them:
- All balance sheet accounts except for Equity accounts can be assigned a foreign currency in QuickBooks Online. This is in direct contrast to QuickBooks Desktop, which allows for a foreign currency to be assigned to bank, accounts receivable, credit card, and accounts payable accounts. Imagine your business purchases a building in a foreign country, and the purchase price is in that country’s currency. It would be difficult to track this purchase in QuickBooks Desktop, whereas QuickBooks Online can do this handily. The same advantage applies to tracking a mortgage on that foreign building, denominated in that foreign currency.
- QuickBooks Online does not require manual downloading of foreign exchange rates; it does it for you. QuickBooks Desktop, on the other hand, requires that the user curate the historical exchange rate list for all foreign currencies being used.
QuickBooks Online is constantly changing, and so it is improving on its multicurrency function. QuickBooks Desktop has not changed its multicurrency functions in many years.