Accounts in other currencies

A bank account held in another currency, such as the GBP balance of a Wise account, is booked in its own currency. It has a ledger account of its own in that currency, and every movement on it is converted to euros at the European Central Bank reference rate for its day: the books stay in euros, while the ledger also keeps the pounds and the rate. The ECB publishes its rates around 16:00 CET on working days, so a movement from today can be booked once that day's rate is out.

What an account in another currency can book

From an account in another currency you can categorise a transaction, match it to an invoice, book a transfer between your own accounts, an owner investment or withdrawal, a tax refund, other income or a government grant. A GBP payment can settle a GBP invoice, with the difference between the invoice's booked value and the payment's euro value booked as an exchange-rate gain or loss, or a euro invoice, settled in full when it's within 2% of what's outstanding. An invoice in a third currency (a USD invoice paid from a GBP account) can't be matched. Salaries, tax payments, dividends, loans, leases, equipment purchases and asset sales, refunds, business trips, home office claims and links to expenses or recorded payments can only be booked from a euro account for now.

Converting between your own balances

A conversion between your own balances is booked as Transfer Between Accounts on each side. Wise conversions are paired automatically, from the bank sync or from importing a Wise transaction history into each account, including when you booked one leg before the other arrived. Other conversions aren't paired yet: their legs book as transfers, and the difference stays in Money in transit (1090), so ask your accountant to book it. Once both legs are booked, the difference between the euros that left one account and the euros that arrived in the other is booked as an exchange-rate gain (4300) or loss (6100). The fee Wise takes is a bank fee: a transaction history carries it on the selling leg, which books it as one, while the bank sync brings it in as a row of its own to categorise as bank fees.

Transactions in another currency

A transaction that isn't in its account's currency is a different case: a USD card charge listed on a euro account, a euro row on a GBP account, or any row on an account in a currency the ECB publishes no rate for. When your bank sync or a CSV statement brings one in, Arvello keeps it rather than throwing it away, because banks only hand over a limited stretch of history and a skipped row might never be retrievable later. It appears in All Transactions with an Other currency badge and "Not in this account's currency" in the category column. It never enters Needs review, never gets a journal entry, and doesn't count towards the totals, reports or VAT figures. You can't match, categorise or undo it either. If the row came from a CSV import, its row menu offers Delete, which helps when the file's currency column was mapped wrongly: delete the rows, fix the mapping and import the statement again. Rows from a bank connection can't be deleted, since the bank may not send them again. Conversions that arrive in euros keep a note of the original currency on the transaction.

Opening balances

Opening balances are entered in euros, so cash an account in another currency held on your opening-balance date can't be moved onto its ledger from the opening balances yet. Until then its card shows that amount as not in your books yet; ask your accountant how to record it.

At the year end

The cash on each account in another currency is revalued on the year-end card of the annual report, together with the foreign-currency invoices: it's valued at the ECB rate on the last day of the year, and the difference from its euro value in the books is booked as a currency gain (4300) or loss (6100), reversed on the first day of the next year (see Year-end checklist).