Do you support multiple currencies?

There are ways to handle this Ed. There's a process called 'triangulation.' We can avoid a lot of that by simply concentrating on the cash aspects but as you still need to account at the end of periods, it's as well to bite the bullet.

You can estimate the GBP equivalent at the time of billing. There will likely be a change between billing and receipt but that's either a (usually) small net gain or loss unless you're working in highly volatile currencies.

The bank statement should provide sufficient detail and in any event, the customer often provides either an electronic remittance advice or a paper version.

Whatever happens, there is usually evidence of one kind or another that can be relied upon.

Sticking with a single currency choice per country won't work. Many of 'us' are working across multiple currencies - in my case 3 (USD, GBP and Euro) so the choice needs to be there.

This is an important subject for me as like Dennis I have use the main three currencies and have separate bank accounts for each. I would like to use FreeAgent but this seems a stumbling block - do you have any suggestions?
Should I have a GBP account then 2 'Universal' accounts for USD and Euro?

If you feel confident that you can manage that then we'll throw in the Universal accounts for free to cover you until we've solved the multi-currency problem. Does that work for you?

Thanks for the offer -

At the moment I use MYOB Plus - could I import my existing data for all three currencies including invoice histories across the three FreeAgent accounts?

Thanks Ed, I'll do that either later today or over the weekend. You may've seen my other post as an idea about subscriptions taken out by clients and being able to populate (if that's the right word) each invoice with info on what they have bought and when it expires. I suppose all will be clear when you see my data.

I found your service very interesting and I would like to use that. but problem is that I need to use CZK as a currency. Is that in your future plan to support more currencies? It would be great.

Hi, thank you for reply.

other thing is that in CZ usually in your and the invoicing company contact field is written also IC = identification number of your business and DIC=VAT number if applicable.

one more question: would be possible to customize INVOICE template? means for example if you want to change language on invoice or make my own layout.

I too have an issue with foreign currency. I work in the UK and invoice almost exclusively in USD. I currently receive payment via paypal.

I am just looking at using freeagentcentral.com to manage my accounts, but it's currently unusable for me because of the multi-currency requirement.

R.

The latter. I don't have any foreign currency bank accounts at the moment.

Ed,

Thanks for the update. It's a shame because it looks like freeagentcentral would be ideal for me, apart from the multiple currency issue.

I'd like to have the free trial extended, and I'll have a play around with some of the other features to make sure they do what I want/need.

Cheers,

R.

Oh yes, I'm well aware that it's not an easy task. I have 2.5 years of pain to prove it :)

R

Hi Ed, just to let you know I also have this requirement - although I invoice most clients in sterling in the UK, I have one client in Sweden who I invoice in SEK. They pay in SEK to my UK company bank account. The bank does the conversion and credits the sterling equivalent to the account.

It sounds like you'll have this sorted quite soon, so I'll hang on to my Swedish invoices until then!

Regards,

Tim

I also need the ability to have a bank account that's in a different currency from my 'base' currency. For example, I have a UK bank account for my UK clients and a Danish bank account for my clients here in Denmark. I'm currently having to ignore the references to 'kr' (kroner) in my UK account in FreeAgent and pretend they're UK pounds. However, that messes up the profit and loss and other general accounting functions...

Is there any update on multi currency developments in freeagent please? Surely its easy enough to add multiple bank accounts in different currencies and just have reports etc treat each currency separatelty,. If you bring it all back to pounds once a year fofr tax calcs that would be fine surely?

I need this feature as well. I am working with US and EU customers but right now because of FA limitations I need to send them invoice with GB pounds, even though they pay in their currency. It looks unprofessional.

The easiest way of making it working for me would be to give me a possibility to specify two currencies. The default one would be made in GB which will go into accounting and a custom one which can be customized by me and will have only effect on the invoice.

Users are asking for this feature for more than a year already, I hope FA will do something about it eventually?

At the moment I don't have the need for managing bank accounts in different currencies, but some of our clients are invoiced in foreign currencies (USD or EUR), so we do have some multi-currency requirements.

Echoing Radek's post, here's a suggestion that would provide the functionality that I'm guessing many of us need, without having to build a full multi-currency accounting system across the board:

Allow hourly rates and other line entry items and the invoice as a whole to be specified in a foreign currency. However when saving it, use a current exchange rate to store the expected GBP total as the value for the invoice for all accounting/reporting purposes.

The client would receive the invoice with all values in the foreign currency. Then when payment is received e.g. by bank transfer, the transaction can be "explained" by linking it to the foreign currency invoice, which then gives a actual GBP figure to the invoice and an actual exchange rate.

If required the difference between the expected and actual figure can automatically be added as an exchange rate gain/loss. An alternative is the real amount overrides the expected.

As it is, the way foreign currency invoices have to be managed is to approximate the foreign currency hourly rate in GBP for timesheets, create GBP invoices in Free Agent, manually create separate foreign currency invoices using a word processor, keeping them filed separately, and then have to do the manual explaining the difference as an exchange rate gain/loss once they're linked with the actual bank entry. This is very laborious and error prone, particularly when recording timesheets automatically into Free Agent.

A similar process could be used for expenses, so they can be entered in a foreign currency as per the receipt, but the entry in the bank statement would be in GBP and could be linked as an explanation to the expense. This would be extremely useful for travel expenses.

This approach would keep the actual Free Agent accounting system, i.e. reporting, transactions between accounts, etc, still in a single currency, but the invoices and expenses can record their original currency amounts.

This wouldn't solve everyone's currency issues, but may be a good interim step.

The recent new feature - multi-language invoicing was a real let down since at first glance I thought we were finally going to get multi-currency.

Hey, it's a global marketplace out there. I often have to remind US vendors that there is a market outside the US, for thinks like date/time formats and currencies.

Having read James' suggestions, I think that would satisfy most of my needs too.

I only have GBP bank accounts, but I need to invoice in EUR and USD, and also charge expenses in both currencies - often incurred in GBP but billed in EUR or USD!

I also receive some payments in the billed currency via Paypal. This is then withdrawn to my GBP bank account.

It sure would be nice to keep track of all this in one place.

R.

Robin - that's pretty much our scenario too.

Our company is increasingly dealing with customers abroad. Multi-currency feature is a must for us. I would imagine, there are plenty of freelancers who have similar issues.

I am appalled by FreeAgents comments that it is difficult to implement and that there are other priorities. I was hoping that at least they will say they are working on it and give indication of when this would be implemented.

The only solution I see - if FreeAgent is not able to do it - we will have to move to different software provider (like xero.com), who have the multi-currency support.

That, of course, will be a bit of hassle (changing accounting software or accountant always is), but it will be worth it in the long run!

The main issue I think is that the 'near future' has been thrown around for a year. That's just poor expectation management, if it's going to be included in the next release and you do, and major releases are monthly, that would be a better indication of how long the wait is.

I appreciate you can't do everything at once, although we are taking more foreign currency than pounds at the moment (USD & EUR specifically), and it's slowly becoming a blocker for us. All the other nice features (which other competitors don't have) will soon not matter.

I agree as well, great features and interface don't mean a thing if I can't bill my clients with jumping through hoops. I will not be upgrading from the trial until I can bill in USD.

Hmmm.
If I were to upgrade, wouldn't I you bill me in USD?

Oh ok, I guess I misunderstood the original post. Thanks!

Just wanted to say, that I need USD support along with the standard GBP. At the moment, I just recreate invoices depending on the amount which hits my bank account.

I guess that's what I'd have to do at the moment, ie. invoice in USD from my USD FA account, then re-create the invoice for the equivalent GBP amount in my GBP FA account. It would be a real hassle though.

Roan, great news! Just yesterday I was hit once again by importing the data from paypal and as you may imagine all dollars were converted into pounds in 1:1 ratio. Looking forward for this release!

This feature is deal-breaker for me.

Most of our invoices and many expenses are in EUR and other currencies, although we are a small UK based company. The bank account is GBP but we must invoice our project in the home currency of the client.

I checked out xero.com and it looks good, but no project / job costing, so no use to us, although it does have strong currency support.

Similarly Kashflow.

I’m just adding my voice to the crowd, please get multi currency support working soon - I’m on a trial account at the moment and FreeAgent looks fantastic. However, up to now I’ve been entering historical data - and if I were to use FreeAgent full time it would be a huge hassle not to have multi-currency support. The majority of the work I do is abroad and I often have to invoice in the local currency. In addition a large amount of my expenses are in other currencies. I can get around the expenses issue (though it’s a huge pain) by manually looking up historical exchange rates, but I won’t be able to use invoicing at all.
I’m afraid this might be a blocker for me and I’d have to use Xero (which in every other respect I find a lot less attractive than FreeAgent)