Currencies and exchange rates

Flowtly Editorial Team2 min

Your organization has one currency of its own, set under Settings → Organization. Records can be kept in other currencies — a supplier cost in euros, a client invoice in dollars — and Flowtly converts them whenever it has to show them together: on a budget total, in a report or dashboard figure, and in an accountancy export.

Where a rate comes from

Flowtly looks for a rate for the pair on the date of the record, in this order:

  1. The daily table published by the National Bank of Poland (NBP), the rate source for every currency it quotes.
  2. A fixed official rate, for the currencies NBP does not quote but which are held at a rate set by treaty or by a central bank rather than by a market.

If neither applies, the pair cannot be priced and Flowtly stops — see below.

A fixed rate is consulted only when NBP has no quote for that day, so it can never displace a market rate for a currency NBP does price.

Currencies converted at a fixed rate

Currency Rate
Central African CFA franc (XAF) 655.957 to the euro
Saudi riyal (SAR) 3.75 to the US dollar
Bulgarian lev (BGN) 1.95583 to the euro

These are not market rates and do not move. The lev rate is the irrevocable conversion rate fixed when Bulgaria adopted the euro, and records held in lev convert at it.

Currencies that cannot be converted

The Argentine peso (ARS), the Nigerian naira (NGN) and the Russian rouble (RUB) have no rate source in Flowtly. A record in one of these converts nowhere, and any document that would have to convert it will not be produced.

When a document does not generate

If an invoice, a budget figure or an export stops with a currency error, it means an amount on it could not be converted at a rate Flowtly can stand behind. The error names the two currencies, the date and the record involved.

One line that cannot be converted stops the whole document. This is deliberate. A document that looks entirely normal but carries converted amounts that are wrong is worse than one that does not appear, because the wrong one gets filed or sent to a client.

Retrying does not help, because nothing about the rate changes between attempts. Instead:

  • Read the currencies named in the error and check them against the lists above.
  • If a record is in a currency Flowtly cannot convert, re-enter it in one that can be converted, or remove it from the document.
  • If the currency should be priced and is not, raise it with support rather than working around it.

Example use cases

  • Invoicing a client in euros while the organization keeps its books in another currency.
  • Recording supplier costs in Central African CFA francs and reading the budget total in the organization's own currency.
  • Handing an accountancy export to an accountant with every figure converted at a documented rate.

Connection map

Refers toUses upPart ofDerived from
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
invoice billed to counterparty. invoice taxed by tax-group. cost spends against budget. cost owed to counterparty. bank-transaction reconciled to invoice. contract schedules payment-schedule-line. contract agreed with counterparty. contract attached to budget. budget covers project. invoice billed from project. project linked to budget. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty.billed totaxed byspends againstowed toreconciled toschedulesagreed withattached tocoversbilled fromlinked tobecomessold toIInvoice — A sales document issued to a client: line items, dates, tax. It is created, reviewed, previewed and then sent.InvoiceCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartyTTax group — The tax treatment applied to a line, so rates are set once rather than per document.Tax groupCCost — Money the organisation owes or has spent, tracked against a budget.CostBBudget — The financial envelope an engagement is measured against — what was planned, versus what has actually been spent.BudgetBBank transaction — A movement on a connected bank account. Matching it to an invoice or a cost is what makes the books agree with the bank.Bank transactionCContract — The financial terms of an engagement: a structured set of payment schedule lines, in one direction or the other.ContractPPayment schedule line — One dated amount on a contract, in a direction — money owed to a supplier, or due from a client.Payment schedule linePProject — The core organizational unit for a business initiative, client engagement or internal work. Everything tracked — time, cost, invoicing, profitability — hangs off one.ProjectPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.Deal

Related terms