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Exchanging currencies - not enough digits!

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 12, 2019
3 replies
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I have changed a sum of GBP for USD - the bank took pounds from our Sterling bank account and put the dollars in the USD bank account.............the exchange rate they gave me was quoted to 4 decimal digits in the "normal" fashion (ie £1 = $1.nnnn). Using the inverse rate (as Quickbooks does) gives me too many digits to enter into a transaction and the amount at one end is incorrect. Since this is never going to reconcile with the bank statement, how do I account for the few pennies, or cents, difference? I cannot put another line on a transfer transaction and write it off to exchange differences.
This happens quite often in exchange transactions and credit card purchases - I make a lot of currency deals.

QuickBooks Desktop

Best answer by Carneil_C

Has this been resolved? This is one of the most confusing work arounds I've ever seen for what should be an easy fix.

Thanks for joining the thread, @Cimitri. I’ll address your concern about this feature in QuickBooks Desktop.

I can see how this specific feature is beneficial to you and to your business. However, this feature for handling multi-currencies is unavailable.

In the meantime, I’d suggest following the steps given by my colleague @Catherine_B above on how to send this suggestion to our Product Development Team. We value your suggestions. This way, our developers can determine what features to add to QBDT's future enhancements.

Here are some handy articles that can be beneficial along the way: Reconcile an account in QuickBooks Desktop.

I'll be around if you need further assistance in QBDT. I'm very eager to help. Take care!

MikiD

I’d be happy to share a way on how to account for these differences, Flyingfemme.

Since you’re unable to enter this amount when transferring, you create a journal entry instead. This transaction will allow you to enter two lines. The first line is for the account where the funds are coming from (Debit). The second will be the account where you’ll be depositing the fund (Credit).

You might want to enter a 1 is to 1 exchange rate for JE to record the exact amount difference. I’d also recommend consulting an accountant to make sure everything will be recorded properly.

Continue to drop your questions here if you need additional help.

FlyingfemmeAuthor

Thanks for the suggestion but it doesn't work. I am changing GBP into USD (GBP is my home currency) and the exchange rate from the bank was £1 = $1.3151. The inverse of that is 0.7603984 and QB cuts off the last digit before it does the calculation. I end up 33 cents out on the USD account.
This drives me nuts because QB is not following "normal" practice for exchange and I don't know how to make the bank accounts reconcile with the next statement.

Adrian_A

Thanks for getting back to us, Flyingfemme.

The steps provided by my colleagues is correct, however there's one more thing you'll need to do. When reconciling, you'll have to select the amount being transferred and the journal entry. This way, it will match the transactions on the bank and on QuickBooks.

Here are screenshot as an example:

Here's an article to guide you with reconciling: Reconcile an account.

The QuickBooks Community team is always to help you.

M

Michael Corfman

I don't understand why those from Quickbooks who have chimed in here have referred to the request to increase the number of digits permitted in specifying a currency exchange rate as a feature request. In fact, the world has evolved so that currency exchanges are commonly done with more than five digits of precision.

The fact that Quickbooks does not support the same precision that real-world currency exchanges have supported for quite a while now is a product defect, plain and simple.

I am a software engineer myself, and I think there is a fundamental communication problem if this issue is being characterized as a feature request to the development staff, rather than as a product defect.

In fact, the issue with old and established fiat currencies like GBP and USD is the tip of a much larger issue where Quickbooks is simply failing to keep up with more modern currency conversion requirements. Try handling BTC as a currency, when only two decimal digits are supported as a currency precision. Or, how about modern brokerages, such as Kraken, where balances in a USD account are kept to greater precision that pennies.

These are examples where there is an opportunity for Quickbooks to show leadership and handle problems that are going to become more severe problems for larger and larger portions of its customer base as time goes on.

FlyingfemmeAuthor

Irrelevant now that QB is canning the Desktop software next week!

M

Merve486

I've been trying to reach A SINGLE expert for three days about the same problem. It keeps saying, 'Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. You’re still in line to talk to one of our experts,' but after waiting for two hours, it disconnects. I'm so furious because the support service of QB was the only reason I chose QB, but I see that this simple issue has not been solved for 5 years. OMG.

C

Chrea

@Merve486

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