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The FX Rates page is where your workspace records the exchange rate each foreign currency converts to your at. Every multi-currency document the workspace creates afterwards — a quotation, an order, a vendor invoice, an accounts-payable record, a PDF, a dashboard report — reads the rate that was on this page at the moment the document was created and keeps that figure for life.

What it is

A single page under Admin & configuration → FX Rates with three regions:
  • A Current rates card showing the latest rate the workspace has on file for each managed currency.
  • A Rate Entry card where you enter a date and a rate for each managed currency you want to update.
  • A Rate History table — the permanent log of every save the workspace has ever made.
A rate is per currency, per date, expressed as the amount of base currency that one unit of the foreign currency converts to (for example, 32.50 for USD means one US dollar converts to 32.50 of your base currency). You enter the rate manually; the page does not pull from any external feed.

The snapshot principle

The most important rule on this page is what FX Rates is not: it is not a live conversion service that updates the figures on existing documents. Every multi-currency document the workspace creates — a quotation, an order, a proforma invoice, a vendor invoice, an accounts-payable record, a PDF export, a dashboard report — captures the workspace’s current rate at its own create time and keeps that figure on the document for the rest of its life. Updating a rate on this page after the fact does not rewrite the rate on any document that was already created. A quotation written last Tuesday keeps last Tuesday’s rate; the order it converts to keeps the rate at its own create; the invoice that ships against the order keeps the rate at its create. So the rate on this page is the rate the next document will pick up. It is not the rate the quotation, order, or invoice you opened earlier in the week is using — to see those, open the document itself. This is also why getting the rate on this page right before you create the day’s multi-currency documents matters more than catching a missed update afterwards. Once a document is saved, its rate is the document’s; the table is no longer the source for it.

Why it exists

A workspace operating in more than one currency needs one shared answer to two questions: what rate are we using today, and what rate were we using when this commitment was made? FX Rates answers the first; the snapshot each document carries answers the second. The split is deliberate. The commercial figures on a confirmed deal — the deposit value the customer paid, the AP amount you owe the factory, the margin the team negotiated against — were sized at the rate that was current when the deal was struck. Revising the table later for a business-as-usual rate change should not silently restate those numbers, because the customer and the factory will not honour the revision; the deal stands as it was struck. The snapshot is what protects the deal from the rate keeping evolving underneath it.

When it is used

  • At workspace start-up, to record an opening rate for each currency you expect to trade in before the team begins creating quotations and orders.
  • Whenever the workspace’s working rate changes — typically the start of a new day, week, or month, per your team’s policy — to refresh the rate the next batch of documents will pick up.
  • Before a one-off document in a currency that hasn’t been quoted recently, to enter today’s rate so the new document captures it at create.
  • For reference, when finance needs to read back the rate history of the workspace.
You reach the page from the sidebar under Admin & configuration → FX Rates.

Dependencies

  • A workspace with its base currency set up — every rate on this page is expressed against that base. The base is set when the workspace is provisioned and shown read-only on Workspace settings; it cannot be changed from this page.
There are no upstream master records FX Rates depends on; the page is the upstream master itself.

What depends on it

Every multi-currency figure the workspace produces reads from the rate that was on this page at the moment the figure’s document was created:
  • An order captures its FX rate at create from this page, against the order’s Order date (or today, when no order date is set). The order’s reporting math uses that saved rate for the rest of the order’s life. See Order: FX rate field.
  • A quotation captures the rate at create; a proforma invoice does the same when it is generated; a vendor invoice and an accounts-payable record do the same when they are recorded.
  • The line totals on a cost sheet are sized in the cost sheet’s own currency; when finance rolls cost-sheet figures up to the base currency on a per-order analysis, the order’s saved snapshot is the rate used.
  • The PDF exports of any of the above carry the saved rate of the document that produced them.
  • Dashboard reports and AP rollups across multiple documents read each document’s saved snapshot, not the current rate on this page.
The detailed conversion behaviour — how the saved rate is applied to a vendor invoice, how a realized gain or loss is recognised when a foreign-currency invoice is settled at a different rate, and the re-stamp that runs when an order’s currency is changed — lives on Foreign exchange alongside the Finance pages that produce it.

Managed currencies

The page surfaces a rate-entry row for each of the workspace’s managed currencies: USD, EUR, and JPY against your base currency. These are the three the Rate Entry card lets you enter a rate for from this page. A workspace that trades in other currencies — for example, GBP, VND, or INR — handles them today at the document level: the order’s FX rate field, the vendor invoice’s rate, and the AP record’s rate are each enterable on the document, so a document in a currency that is not on the managed list still captures a rate at create. The catalog on this page does not yet hold those rates separately, so a new document in a non-managed currency requires the team to enter the rate on the document itself. The managed list is set by the platform today, not configurable from this page. It is also separate from the Currencies catalog, which only governs the billing-currency dropdown on the vendor record; the two lists are maintained independently.

Current rates

The Current rates card sits at the top of the page and shows, for each managed currency, the most recent rate the workspace has on file plus the date that rate was entered for. The card is the quick read for the team — “the rate the next document will pick up if it is created today” — and is also where finance confirms that the day’s working rate has actually been saved before letting the team start raising documents.

Rate Entry

The Rate Entry card is the editor. To save new rates:
  1. Pick a Rate Date — the date you want the rate to apply from. Defaults to today; you can backdate it (for example, to fill in yesterday’s rate after the fact).
  2. Enter a rate in the row for each managed currency you want to update. Leave a row blank to keep the existing rate for that currency unchanged.
  3. Choose “Save Rates”.
  4. The Confirm Rate Changes dialog opens, listing every currency whose rate is changing with the old value on the left and the new value on the right. Read the list, then confirm.
If nothing was actually changed — you opened the editor, looked, and closed without typing — the page refuses the save with a clear “no rates were changed” message rather than silently writing an empty change. Re-saving a rate for the same currency on the same Rate Date overwrites the existing rate — that’s how you correct a typo for today’s rate without leaving the wrong figure on file. Documents already created against the prior figure keep their saved snapshot regardless (see The snapshot principle).

Rate History

The Rate History table is the permanent log of every save the workspace has ever made. Newest entries appear at the top; each row records the currency, the rate date the save applied to, the rate that was saved, who saved it, and when. The history is the read-back for finance — “what rate were we using on the day this document was created” — and the audit trail of who changed what. The table exports as a spreadsheet through the Export Excel button at the head of the section. The download is the same history the page shows, so you can hand a month’s record to finance without copying rows by hand. Rate History entries are not editable from the page. If a row has the wrong figure, save a fresh entry for the same currency on the same Rate Date to overwrite the current rate; the prior entry stays in the history as the record that the correction was made.

Business rules

  1. The rate is base currency per one unit of the foreign currency. A saved rate of 32.50 for USD means one US dollar converts to 32.50 of your base currency.
  2. Rates are entered manually. The page is the editor; it does not pull from an external feed.
  3. One rate per currency per date. Saving a fresh rate for a currency on a date the workspace already has on file overwrites the existing rate and writes a new entry in the history.
  4. A save with no changes is refused. Opening the editor without typing anything and pressing Save Rates is rejected with “no rates were changed”.
  5. A save with changes opens the Confirm Rate Changes dialog. The dialog lists every currency whose rate is changing, with the old and new figures side by side. The save commits only after you confirm.
  6. The Rate History is a permanent record. Every save writes a new history row; rows are not edited or deleted from the page.
  7. Updating a rate does not retroactively change any existing document. Every multi-currency document captures the current rate at its own create time and keeps that figure. See The snapshot principle.
  8. The managed currencies are USD, EUR, and JPY against the workspace’s base currency. Other currencies are handled today through the per-document rate field on the order, invoice, or accounts-payable record.

Best practices

  • Enter the day’s rate before the team starts raising documents in that currency. The rate on the page when a document is created is the rate the document keeps; an update later in the day does not rewrite the morning’s documents.
  • Use a steady policy for when the workspace updates rates. Most teams pick a cadence — start of day, start of week, or once per significant move — and stick to it. The Rate History is the audit trail of when the policy was followed.
  • Treat the Confirm Rate Changes dialog as the check. The old → new side-by-side view catches a typo before it lands on the next document.
  • Read the Current Rates card before raising an unusual-currency document. If the figure looks stale, refresh it before you create the document — the snapshot the document keeps is the figure that is current at create.
  • For a one-off document in a currency the managed list does not cover, enter the rate on the document itself. The order, invoice, and accounts-payable record each carry their own rate field for exactly this case. The detailed conversion behaviour lives on the document.