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H
hgld
March 28, 2020
Question

Multi currency: GBP account with a zero balance showing an incorrect negative balance in Balance Sheet report

  • March 28, 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 0 views

The base currency for my Quickbooks is Canadian dollars (CAD), however I also have one British pound (GBP) bank account. We frequently receive payments into our GBP bank account from UK businesses, and we then exchange this into CAD and transfer it to our CAD bank account.

 

As of the 23 March 2020, our GBP bank account has a zero balance. We've transferred all our money to our CAD bank. You can see this here:

 

However when I run a balance sheet as of the same day (23 March 2020), our GBP account is showing a negative balance. 


I can't work out how this can be possible. If I have a zero GBP balance and want to convert it to CAD, regardless of the exchange rate -  anything multiplied by zero is... zero. 

 

The frustrating thing is that I can't even use a journal to correct the problem. If I try it just pushes the problem the other way. I end up with an incorrect closing balance on my GDP bank account (by about £1,841) but the CAD balance on my balance sheet is zero. So I'm just pushing the problem around.

 

It seems that there is something fundamentally broken in the way that Quickbooks is calculating balances. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have a workaround? 

3 replies

T
taxpro2000
March 28, 2020

The quickbooks register and balance sheet report play a different role. It doesnt mean if you have a zero balance in the register, your balance sheet should have a zero balance as well. This report is all about the companys assets, liabilities and equity. You probably issued a check more than its funds using that account. Run a quickreport and filter it to checks and see if that helps. If there are, then they should be reported as current liability or whatever you call it in your COA. 

H
hgldAuthor
March 30, 2020

No - this didn't solve my problem.

I've checked this account and the there were no payments issued that exceeded the available funds in that account. All of the payments and deposit reconcile to a zero balance. This is something to do with the way QB calculates foreign exchange. I believe it's either a bug or a design flaw.

J
JamesM
March 30, 2020

Hi there. I want to makes sure you get the support you need with this. I recommend contacting our support team for further assistance. Here's a link with the contact details. Feel free to ask questions.

I
IaroslavB
September 2, 2020

It happens due to conversion rate which QB using when recording transaction.
One of the solutions to correct CAD balance when GBP balance is equal to 0 and CAD balance is not 0, is to record a journal entry of FX gain loss. Set a bank account which you want to correct and FX account, make an entry in CAD but manually change FX for this transaction to 99,999,999,999 , this way CAD balance will change but GBP balance will not be effected. 

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