Invoice with two currencies`

On 2008-07-12 18:03:14 -0700, Buckbuck said:

> FM8.5
>
> My business is now starting to sell in Europe. Currently I have an
> Invoicing system based on dollars. Has anyone good advice on how to
> set up my Invoicing system so that it can reflect other currencies?
>
> Should I avoid formatting my fields and qualify the currency another
> way?
>
> Thanks
> Matthew

What you need is a table with one record each for alternative
currencies and current conversion-to-dollars percentages. In the
invoice line items and in the invoice itself where the total fields
are, have two sets of fields, one for dollars and one for the
alternative currency.

Then for each invoice, you can specify the alternative currency to be
used and let auto-enter calcs in the invoice line items pull in the
appropriate conversion percentage. Show both the dollar amount and the
alternative amount totals. If the invoice is only for dollars, just
don't specify the other currency. I'm presuming that an invoice will
only use ONE alternative currency at a time. If a single invoice uses
more than one, you've got a really messy business model. ;) Maybe you
should just stick to Euros.

The real work comes in administering the daily changes in currency
conversions, and in assuring that if corrections are made to an invoice
or item, that newer conversion rates don't overwrite the older, correct
ones.

However, you're also going to have to do some research on taxes in
other sales countries. Do you own VAT or other tax? How are you going
to figure that out for many different countries?
--
Lynn Allen
--
www.semiotics.com
Member Filemaker Business Alliance
Long Beach, CA

In article
,
Buckbuck wrote:

> FM8.5
>
> My business is now starting to sell in Europe. Currently I have an
> Invoicing system based on dollars. Has anyone good advice on how to
> set up my Invoicing system so that it can reflect other currencies?
>
> Should I avoid formatting my fields and qualify the currency another
> way?
>
> Thanks
> Matthew

You should probably leave all your invoices in dollars. Trying to play
in two currencies is going to get messy. (eg. summary reports would
have to work out what exchange rate to use to get only dollar amounts,
etc.). Besides, "Europe" is a big place with many different countries
and many different currencies, so that would get even messier.

BUT, if it's a VERY VERY simple invoice-only system, then you can
change the formatting of amount fields to be only two decimal places,
and then use a pop-up menu to give each incoive record the appropriate
symbol (you can then use copies or merge versions of the same field to
display the syumbol wherever needed) ... then the problem of cleaning
up the mess is transferred to your accounting system instead. )

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:25:42 -0700 (PDT), Buckbuck wrote:
> > As to Europe: we have the euro now. There are 25 countries in the EU.
> > Countries that have joined the EruoZone are: Germany, Ireland, Netherlands,
> > Greece, Finland, Luxemburg, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal,
> > Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta (15 countries)
> >
> > Countries that haven't joined the EuroZone are: Denmark, Sweden, UK,
> > Estonia, Hongary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slowacia, Tsjechië, Romania,
> > Bulgaria (12 countries)
> >
> > Some countries not mentiones are: Vatican (used Italian Lire, now Euro),
> > Monaco (Used the Franc, now Euro), San Marino (Lire, now Euro)
> >
> > And some 20+ European countries not in the EU or the EuroZone.

.... such as Switzerland where I do maintain a EUR/CHF project for FMP.

The most obvious choice is to apply a currency information. This can be
done either by adding the currency to the number info itself. You should
ensure by field verification that a valid currence always has to be
entered. You might add an extra field for currency, which may use
presets according to certain layouts or may auto enter a currence from
the previous record, since most of the time a user will stick to one
main currency during work.

You might keep numbers split from each other - e.g. completely within
different tables (one for USD, one for EUR). You might keept it in one
table and do a total conversion, e.g. taking a current exchange rate
from a global field and calculationg the USD value from Euros. Or you
might track the real conversion rate at the moment of data application.
This should be done by taking the Euro value AND the actual exchange
rate on the day where this entry does apply in order to compute a
matching USD value.

When you do update Euro prices each 3 months, you might use constant
exchange rates within this period of time. This could be done by an
exchange rate table for each quarter of a year and a relation that does
derive a quarter year from the date of a record and does take the
matching related exchange rate for this quarter.

- Martin

In article
<102e260b-7eb2-4304-9163-6a96b3967514@z66g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
Buckbuck wrote:
>
> Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this. In my business my
> prices do not fluctuate with the US exchange rate so fixing our
> European prices in Euros is desired. We change the prices quarterly if
> we are being hammered by a low currency. But even then one is somewhat
> married to the rise and fall as a matter of stability with customers.
>
> I have created / duplicated a second set of TABLES, INVOICE_EURO,
> LINES_EURO and PRODUCT_EURO to manage this. The only problem so far is
> that my CONTACTS TABLE, having a related portal showing Invoices pulls
> Invoices from the INVOICES table and not the INVOICES_EURO table when
> the Contact (Customer) is in Europe. Is it possible to direct the
> TABLE selection in this portal via a discriminating function?
>
> Thanks
> Matthew

Portals show records via a Relationship, and a Relationship can only
link to one Table. You can't change which Table a Relationship links to
on a record-by-record basis. The easiest thing to do would be to have
two Relationships and Portals - one linked to Invoices and one linked
to Invoices_Euro. You would also need two sets of fields (each using
the appropriate Relationship) if you are doing things like displaying a
count or total of related invoices.

You could even do this through one set of Tables by having a Radio
Button field that let's you swap between Dollars and Euros for
individual invoice records. Each invoice record would also have to
store the current exchange rate so that dollar amounts can be
calculated for things like summaries and historic records won't change
with the altering exchange rate.

BUT,
even though you may only change your exchange rates at quarterly
intervals, the banks don't. Any payments would be converted at the
exchange rate of that day, which means your invoices are never going to
match your accounting system (at best a headache and at worst legal /
tax department problems).

The only way it would really work at all is if dollar invoices are paid
into a US bank and Euro invoices are paid into a European bank ... even
then, the Euro jumps around in comparison to whatever country's
currency the bank happens to be in.

I think you are heading for major nightmares trying to keep records
using two currencies.


Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)