Foreign-currency bank and card accounts

You can hold a bank or credit-card account in a supported foreign currency (for example a USD chequing account) inside a book whose own currency stays the same.

Add a foreign account

1. Go to Ledger › Banking › Accounts.
2. Click Add bank account, set the Name and Type (Bank or Credit card), then pick the Currency.
3. The Currency list offers your book's currency (the default) plus the foreign currencies the Bank of Canada publishes a daily rate for. Choose the account's currency and finish adding it.

Pick the currency when you add the account: it can't be changed afterwards, because changing it would restate every transaction already recorded. If you set it wrong, add a new account in the right currency instead. When you import a statement in a supported foreign currency, TALISK_HQ creates the account in that currency for you.

How the money is recorded

The account holds its balance in its own currency (its face value). TALISK_HQ records each transaction in your book's home currency at that transaction's date, using the daily rate, and that home-currency figure is what posts to your general ledger. Your reports, tax and balances therefore stay in one currency and tie out, exactly as before.

TALISK_HQ does not revalue an open foreign balance in your ledger as rates move. The gap between the account's foreign balance and its recorded home-currency cost is an unrealized gain or loss: it is shown for your accountant on the FX revaluation worksheet at period end, and never posted on its own. A real (realized) gain or loss is recorded when you pay a foreign bill from the account, when a customer's deposit into the account pays an invoice in the same currency, or when you move the whole balance to another account.

If TALISK_HQ cannot fetch a rate when a transaction is recorded, it books it one for one at face value and tries again each night until it can re-book it at the converted value. A line still at face value a few business days later raises a card on your books-health checks, which names up to ten such lines, because until it is re-booked that account's balance in your books is off by the gap between face value and the converted value. What to do depends on why it is stuck:

• The period is locked because you filed a return for it. Talk to your accountant, and do not re-open it: changing a period a filed return covers makes your books disagree with what you filed.
• The period is locked for another reason. On Ledger › Accounting › Period Lock, use Update lock date or Remove lock (unlock all dates), let the nightly check re-book the line, then lock the period again.
• The line paid a bill. If the line is the bill's only payment, TALISK_HQ re-books the line and the bill together, on its own, once a rate is published, even when the bill was also recorded at face value. There is nothing to unmatch. If the bill or the payment falls in a locked period, the two steps above apply: unlock it and the nightly check re-books both, then lock it again (never re-open a period you filed a return for). If the line is one of several payments on the bill, ask your accountant to correct the difference.

The same card covers invoices and store payouts stuck the same way.

A customer's deposit that pays an invoice in the account's currency is handled differently. On a day with no published rate it is recorded at the invoice's own rate rather than at face value, so your books stay as close as they can, and TALISK_HQ records it again at the day's rate once that rate is published, as long as the deposit is the invoice's only payment. If the invoice itself was also recorded at face value, the invoice and the deposit are re-booked together. If it cannot (for example a second instalment on the same invoice), the deposit stays at the invoice's rate.

Moving money between accounts

When you move money between two of your own accounts (for example sweeping a USD account into your CAD chequing account), record it as a transfer so it is not counted as income or an expense.

1. Go to Ledger › Banking and find the line for the money leaving the first account (the withdrawal).
2. Click Transfer on that line.
3. Pick the matching deposit on the other account from the list. Both lines are then paired and marked as a transfer, and neither is categorized on its own.

TALISK_HQ works out the accounting from the two real lines:

• Moving money out of a foreign account into a home-currency account settles that foreign money at its average recorded cost, and the difference against the home-currency amount you actually received is booked as a realized exchange gain or loss.
• Moving money into a foreign account from a home-currency account, or moving between two accounts in the same currency, records no gain or loss: the money simply carries its cost across.
• Moving directly between two different foreign currencies is not supported. Move through a home-currency account instead.

If the foreign account still has transactions waiting for an exchange rate, finish those first. TALISK_HQ will ask you to try the transfer again after the daily rates refresh, so the cost is worked out correctly.

To undo a transfer, open either paired line's details with the chevron and click Undo transfer under Change what this is. Both lines return to your review list.

Reconciling a foreign account

You reconcile a foreign account in its own currency. The statement balance, cleared balance and difference on the reconciliation worksheet are all shown in the account's currency, and you tie it out against the statement the same way you would any account.

Because your books carry the account in your home currency, the worksheet does not show a single home-currency "GL cash vs bank" tie for a foreign account. Instead it shows the account's foreign position, its recorded home-currency cost, and the average rate between them. That is information, not a reconciliation error: the tie that matters is the foreign statement against the foreign cleared transactions.