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Currencies

Your budget has one currency: your envelopes, To Be Budgeted, reports and net worth are all counted in it. Each account can have its own: a euro account next to your dollar ones, a card from home while you live abroad, cash for a trip. Its amounts stay in its currency, exactly as your bank shows them, and your budget counts each transaction at what it was worth in yours on its day.

If all your money is in one currency, there's nothing to set up: everything works as before.

The budget's currency​

Choose it in Settings → Currencies. Nothing is converted: it only says which currency your amounts are in, so they show with the right symbol and so accounts in other currencies can be added. A budget gets one automatically when you first give an account a currency, or connect a bank.

You can correct it as long as no account in another currency has transactions. Changing it after that would mean converting every amount, which FlyBudget doesn't do.

Accounts in another currency​

When you add an account, pick its Currency. It can be changed until the account has its first transaction; after that, add a new account in the other currency and move the money with a transfer.

Accounts you connect to a bank get the bank account's currency. Linking a bank account to an existing account in another currency warns you.

Everywhere an account's own amounts appear (its register, balance, reconciling, imports) they're in its currency. Totals across accounts are in your budget's: the sidebar, the Accounts page and net worth add each account at today's rate, with ≈ $1,080.00 under a balance in another currency.

What a transaction is worth​

Each transaction in another currency keeps its value in your budget's currency next to its own amount, worked out at the exchange rate of its day. That's what the budget and income and spending reports count, and it stays: a later change in the rate doesn't move what you spent last month.

Your bank charged a different amount? Open the transaction and type it in Value in USD (or your currency): what your card statement says it cost, fees included. Use the day's rate goes back.

Missing rates​

A transaction whose day has no exchange rate yet can't be counted honestly, so it counts as nothing until there is one, and FlyBudget says so: the budget and reports show how many are waiting, the register marks them No rate, and totals name the currencies they left out. Add a rate (below) and they're filled in. FlyBudget never quietly counts one currency as another.

Exchange rates​

Settings → Currencies shows the latest rate for each currency you use, and lets you type one in: 1 GBP in EUR for a day. A day without a rate uses the closest earlier one, up to a month back. A rate you type in wins over a downloaded one for its day.

Downloading rates​

Turn on Download ECB reference rates to fetch the European Central Bank's daily rates from Frankfurter, an open-source service. It's off until you turn it on, because it's a request to another server; only currency codes and dates are sent, never anything about your budget. Once on, FlyBudget checks every few hours and fills in transactions waiting for a rate. The ECB publishes about 30 currencies; others need rates typed in.

You can point it at your own Frankfurter server under Server. Self-hosted installs can also set FLYBUDGET_EXCHANGE_RATES_URL (see self-hosting).

Recalculate from rates works out values again after you correct a rate. Values you typed in and reconciled transactions stay as they are.

Transfers between currencies​

Moving money between accounts in different currencies has two amounts: what left one account and what arrived in the other. In Add transaction, choose the transfer as the category and a second field asks for the amount in the other account, filled in at the day's rate. Type over it with what your bank shows.

Both sides of a transfer are worth the same in your budget's currency (the side in it decides), so moving money is never income or spending, whatever the rate. Editing one side's amount leaves the other's alone: what left isn't what arrived.

Transfer suggestions also find pairs in different currencies whose values are within 3% of each other.

Currency difference​

Money you keep in another currency is worth more or less in yours as rates move. An account in another currency shows that next to its balance, like +$12.40 from the rate. It never changes your envelopes on its own. Choose it to Record difference: it adds a correction worth that much, in a category you pick (income for a gain, spending for a loss), or none to keep it out of income and spending.

How amounts are written​

Each currency is written as at home: 1 234,56 zł with the złoty after the amount, $1,234.56 before, CHF 1'234.56 with a space. The Number format in Preferences still decides the separators. Under How amounts are written you can choose another symbol or side for any currency you use, on this device.

Amounts are typed with the currency's own decimals: yen have none (12.5 isn't an amount in yen), Kuwaiti dinars three.

Good to know​

  • Backups include your currency, the exchange rates and every value. A backup from before currencies existed restores into your budget's currency.
  • CSV exports add a Currency column and the value in your budget's currency when you have accounts in more than one.
  • Imports read amounts in the account's currency. A bank statement (CAMT) in another currency than the account warns you.
  • Rules compare amounts in the transaction's own currency.