What date is used by multicurrency?

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What date is used by a transaction during a Payables multicurrency transaction? I have a user entering in transactions for February and it is using the March exchange rate even though the transaction and Posting date is February and there is a valid exchange rate for that period. The March rate should not even work as it is not within March 1st to 31st.

Thank you in advance for any help.

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Dale Coulthard 3,055 on at

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Check the setup in financial. I am on GP9, so the path may not be the same for you, but I go through Tools>Setup>Financial>Rate Types, then pull up the Exchange Table ID. There is a field called "Transation Rate Default". If Next Date is selected, that may be causing the issue, but I am guessing at this point because I have not had that happen to us, so I looked at our setup and saw this field and we have Previous Date marked. Also, if the exchange rate you want the system to use has an expiry date on it, then in the same setup is a separate field "Search for Unexpired Rates:" and our is marked unlimited. If your organization has it marked for limited, then the date being used in your transaction may be forcing the system to not use that date due to this field being marked for limited number of days of use/reference.

Best regards,

Dale

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Looking at the setup they are using Next date. If there is no rate for the transaction date it will use the exchange rate on the on the closest date after the transaction date. Previous date looks back.

If I then change it to back (from forward) the Feb 27th transaction would look for a date of before Feb 28th and would find the correct entry but would a March 3rd transaction would then look back and find the February rate as well.

Seems like a Feb 27th transaction should find the rate for Feb 1st to 28th and a March 3rd transaction should find the rate for March 1st to 31st but it seems like it cannot be the case.

If I entered a Month end rate for this rate type and left it at go forward would that solve the problem? It would look for an exchange rate going forward (unless the transaction was on the last day of the month) and would always find that month end rate next. For their purposes the rate would be the same as Feb 1st to 28th entry so it seems stupid but I guess it could work.

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Dale Coulthard 3,055 on at

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A few comments:

1) Is the organization private or public? If public, I would think what ever solution is identified would need to pass control and audit review and would need to be documented and ensure that any change does not override a current established procedure / control.

2) What is the organization/management's expectations on exchange rates? If there are no policies or expectations, then your suggestion of month end would be a good option if the currency is fairly stable as a stable currency will not cause materially different results by using one rate for an entire month.

3) If the organization has had this setup for a while and had no issues until now, you may consider leaving it alone (assuming this is a private company). If the company allows the user to change the exchange rate, you may want to teach them to review the exch rate and change it when needed to the appropriate rate.

4) If multicurrency is new to the organization, then this is a good time to choose the best practice for the organization and implement. I'm going to sound like a politician now...I'm not sure that I can tell you what the best alternative is for the organization. The options in GP were probably established because different companies had different desires on how best to represent their financial transactions based on their processes so GP allows flexibility in how the rates are determined.

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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Tom,

Dale makes some really good points. I just wanted to add that the previous/next settings do have the option of looking 'the other way' for a number of days that you specify. Not 100% sure if this would help with what you want to set up, but you can see more detail on this in my book's sample chapter posted on the publisher's site: www.packtpub.com/.../0325EN-Chapter-6-System-and-Company-Setup.pdf (It's on page 16 of this chapter or page 164 overall.)

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Mark\Victoria thanks for your answers.

My main problem with the screen is why let me enter a date range for the exchange rate if it is not used. If I have a transaction on Feb 27 and an exchange rate defined as from Feb 1st to Feb 28th it should use that rate. I do not understand why if finds and uses that rate on Feb 27th until I enter a rate for March (then it uses March). That makes no sense!

As for your book Victoria I did pre-order a copy and have it printed off but I have not had a chance to read it yet. I did skim it and after 20 years of GP consulting I think we share similar thoughts.

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Victoria Yudin 22,769 on at

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Thanks Tom!

Hmmm, I think I was misunderstanding your question...I just re-read you original post and the latest one...and that does not sound right to me, either. What type of Payables transaction is it? And what version of GP?

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Have you more than one FX table set up for this currency?

Could you be looking at the wrong FX table (they are chosen based on rate type).

Are these transactions manually entered?

As with Victoria - what kinds of transactions are you entering?

Ian.

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Community Member on at

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It is a straight AP transaction. The rate is their corporate rate which works fine all month. When they enter transactions for feb in march it is picking the march corporate rate instead of the document and posting date. I thought maybe it was picking the GP user date but changing that date to Feb did not help. Could it be the comptuer date that drives the date? I hope not but I have no easy way to test on their system as I remote in (as well as other users).

They are running GP2010.

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Its the Document Date that drives the FX Rate calculation.

If your document date is correct - its has to have something to do with the way you have set up the FX table.

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I understand what you are saying Ian and if a Customer came to me with the same set of circumstances I would tend to say the same thing, lol.

My problem with that is that the exchange rate works all month long. It only stops working (in the sense that it adds the wrong rate) when we cross months and add a March exchange rate.

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