Full multicurrency alternative to Xero?

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Xero provides partial support for multicurrency handling, specifically, it allows bank accounts and invoices to be denominated in a currency other than an organisation's base currency. However, assets and liabilities store their values converted to the base currency.

This creates a variety of issues for businesses transacting in multiple currencies, as demonstrated by discussions on the Xero feature request site (https://community.xero.com/business/discussion/1502020) and elswhere on AccountingWeb (https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/xero-is-recording-discrepanc...).

Can anyone recommend an alternative accounting service in Xero's price range - i.e. ~£50/mo. - that supports a full multicurrency ledger and reporting?

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John Toon
By John Toon
17th Sep 2021 12:13

What Xero does is correct, but I'm assuming, from the links you posted, that what you want is the ability to do full multicurrency reporting aside from the base currency reporting. Xero and their competitors don't provide this functionality so you'd need to step up to an ERP system like Xledger or similar to do this assuming you want to stay on the cloud.

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Replying to johnt27:
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By johndewey
17th Sep 2021 17:54

johnt27 wrote:

... what you want is the ability to do full multicurrency reporting aside from the base currency reporting.

Yes, there's that but the lack goes deeper than that. For example, if you're in Xero's chart of accounts and click on the linked balance of an account, you get the list transactions that led to that balance. But even if those transactions were made in foreign currency (i.e., not the defined base currency) they're presented in the base currency, which is quite inconvenient.

There IS a way to get a view of the actual, native-currency account transactions, and that is through an account transaction report. But by the number of clicks required to get there, you can tell that multicurrency is an afterthought in Xero, not a first-class citizen. (See also the fact that the old P&L and BS reports supported other-currency presentation, whereas the new ones do not).

So, I'm still on the lookout for a package that puts multicurrency front and centre, but on a budget. Any recommendations?

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By johndewey
20th Sep 2021 12:26

Here's another example of how multicurrency handling in Xero is a second-class citizen.

Say you enter a transaction in GBP when the base currency is USD. For example a receipt of a certain amount with a date sometime in the past. Now run the "old" P&L - which purports to provide multicurrency reporting - and set it to display in GBP.

The previously-entered transaction will NOT appear in the same amount as it was entered. This is because Xero stores the amount internally as USD and will have performed two forex conversions: once upon entering the value and again upon running the P&L.

This should not be the case. The reporting package should not be converting amounts which are in the native currency of the report.

As a result, a tool which may have been useful for reporting in more than one jurisdiction (which doesn't happen only to huge companies which can afford large accounting packages) becomes sub-optimal.

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Elliott Chandler Picture
By elliottchandler
24th Sep 2021 00:38

Go SAP Business One in the cloud.

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