Currency Handling

[KenF]

I work as a consultant and have clients outside the US. For most contracts, I am paid in USD. While I bill time in USD some of my expenses are often in a foreign currency. It would be ideal to show the relevant currency for specific entries and have a conversion factor.  Currently I use the quantity column to convert the "amount", which is entered in the relevant country's currency, to USD, so the total column shows USD. I know I could simply do the conversion and show the amounts only in USD, but would prefer a way to make the conversion transparent to client (hence why I have used the quantity column for this purpose). However, the dollar amounts in the Amount column are shown in my country currency, so my work around isn't ideal.

What would be ideal is when you enter an expense or time you can select a currency type and a conversion factor to convert to whatever the invoice is billed in. The ability to specify a custom string to override the default symbol would also be helpful. I likely means a new column, currency conversion, would need to be optionally shown on the invoice. Not sure whether this belongs in the invoice module or the entry module.

Happy to discuss in more detail but suspect the team there already knows how to handle this. Great product.

And if the program already does this, apologies, and point me to the directions in the manual.


Cordially, Ken

[Adam]

Hi Ken,

The best thing for you to do is always enter the expense amounts in USD.  Then in the Invoice itself, set the Currency to their denomination.  If you have internet access, it will calculate the exchange rate using Yahoo Finance.  If you want you can change the exchange rate after that.  On the bottom of the invoice it will show the totals in USD and then show the exchange and total in their currency.

Cheers,
Adam.

[Johnresponse]

Like Ken - I flip between country to country and find the lack of currency option a bit of a limitation. Amongst the benefits provided by the system I find the speed of setting project durations the key feature - I do not invoice using the system and would find the suggestion using a protracted way of applying a conversion a turn off - especially as the conversion rate changes would also need to include conversion costs.
Surely just having a field for currency against a project would be a simple addition to what is one of the easiest multiple project time recording systems.

[Adam]

The hardest thing with the "localization" of stuff in general, whether it is the date format, currency symbol or currency delimiter, is that that is all done by the iOS (iPhone Operating System).  We cannot "mix and match" from one thing to another in a screen.  It would be very hard, and odd looking, if it were to show different dates and such on a screen.  It would be even worse on an invoice, as the column widths are determined before generating the invoice.  If there were different items, the whole thing would have to be run thru, before generating an invoice, and would take considerable time.  This would slow down the invoice generation for every user and could take 2 or 3 times longer than it already is.

So that is why we came up with a way to just convert your local currency into a different currency on an invoice.

[Johnresponse]

Adam - i appreciate your reply and this is not the place to retort; after many years of product management i am used to negotiating the differences between designing and implementing products - especially with very bright software engineers.

You have a brilliant piece of software - I can understand where you are coming from and possibly your rational but hiding behind an OS ....
Outside of the united states there is a big wide world that doesn't use the $ and as a user I and many more users and potential users have to consider what information I present on an invoice so that the receiving company feels comfortable enough to pay wit giving them an excuse to ask questions, to which end if I used a conversion rate I would have constantly change billing rate as over the past 2 years the exchange rate has fluctuated from $2.06 to the £ to $1.31 resulting in confusion by the receiving finance organizations. This is why I in invoice separately as each client requires slightly different formats; charge out rate is always applied in £'s in the UK, Euros in Europe and Dollars in the US the only constant is the invoice has to be clear, simple and non-confusing.

One minor modification would render this software perfect for my uses, even so it's 'half tidy' as they would say in Wales ( that's short for pretty damn good )