Invoice and pay in another currency

Documents in your customer's money, books in yours — the rate printed on the paper, the bank's figure on the payment, and the difference booked for you.

Currencies

Your books are kept in one currency — the one you chose when you created the workspace. Your customers and suppliers don't always share it. On the Business plan and up, any document can be in the money it was actually agreed in, while the books underneath stay in yours. This guide walks the whole journey: invoice in another currency → get paid → see it in your reports.

Before you start

  • Your home currency is set under Settings → General. Everything underneath — the ledger, your balances, every report — is kept in it, so settle on it before you record anything.
  • If a customer or supplier usually deals in another currency, open their record, click Edit, and set the Currency under Defaults. New documents for them start in it, and you never pick it twice.

Tip: nothing changes for a workspace that only ever uses one currency. The currency row stays out of sight until you pick a second one.

Invoice in another currency

  1. Open Invoices and click New invoice
  2. Pick the customer — a Currency row appears in the document details
  3. Choose the currency (search by code or by name — EUR or euro)
  4. Check the Rate beneath it, add your lines, and click Create

The rate is filled in from the day's published rate and labelled with where it came from and which day — "ECB rate for 24 Sep", never a bare number. If you have a better figure, type over it: it's stored as your own rate. A rate a long way from the feed asks you to confirm it, which is the one guard that catches a rate typed upside down.

Everything on the document follows the currency: line prices, totals, the PDF, and the customer's payment page. Prices pulled from your catalog convert at the document's rate as you add them, rounded to that money's own decimals — yen have none, some dinars have three, and Papertools keeps each as it is.

The same Currency row is on estimates, sales receipts, bills, expenses, purchase orders, credit notes, supplier credits and both kinds of recurring template. A draft's rate can change while you edit it; an issued document's rate is frozen, and the PDF prints it under the footer so the reader knows exactly how it was converted.

Getting paid — and paying

When a euro invoice is paid into your own-currency bank account, open the invoice and click Record payment as usual. Beside the amount, Papertools asks the one thing only your bank knows: Reached your account — how much of your money actually arrived. The difference between that and what the invoice was worth on its own date is your exchange gain or loss, booked automatically. The payment's page shows both figures.

That field is never filled in for you. Once you've typed the amount received, the published rate is offered underneath — "at the published rate that's about $1,296.40 — enter what your statement shows, or use this figure" — and one tap takes it.

Paying a foreign bill asks the same question the other way round: Left your account. Refunds, customer deposits, supplier advances and credit notes all follow the same rule — money moves at the figure that actually moved.

If the money lands in an account kept in a third currency — a euro invoice paid into a yen account — Papertools asks what arrived in that account instead, and works the rest out from the published rate.

Bank accounts in other currencies

A bank account can be kept in a currency other than your books'. Add it under Settings → Money accounts and choose its Currency. It starts empty and only takes money in its own currency; its register, statement import and bank matching all work in that money. Moving money between two accounts in different currencies asks what arrived on the other side — the rate comes from the two real figures, never one you look up.

Statements in the customer's money

A customer with euro invoices gets a euro statement. Open Reports → Customer statements, pick the customer, and choose the money beside the period picker: your books shows everything converted into your home currency, EUR shows only the euro invoices and payments at the amounts printed on them, with a euro opening balance and running total. Send that one — it's what the customer's own books agree with. The vendor's version lives on the vendor's record page.

Reports

Every report is in your home currency, so a total is always a total. A few things are worth knowing:

  • The balance sheet shows foreign balances at the report date's published rate by default, with the difference carried as one equity line marked not posted. Switch to As posted to see them exactly as booked.
  • Reports → Exchange gains & losses lists every exchange difference one document at a time — realised on payment, unrealised at month end, and tax conversion kept apart — so the two exchange lines on your profit & loss are never a mystery.
  • The aging report breaks what you're owed down by currency too, because a euro debt is chased in euros.
  • At month end, Settings → Locked months can revalue every foreign balance at the day's rate before you lock the month. It reverses itself the next morning, so payments keep their own arithmetic.

Tax at its own rate

Some tax offices want the tax on a foreign document converted at a different day's rate from the rest of it. Settings → Tax asks the question in plain words — the document's rate, the day of supply, one rate per month that you set, or a rate you type on each document. Unanswered means the document's rate, which is fine for most. Check your tax office's rules before changing it.


Paper-Ai understands currencies too. "Invoice Acme in euros" or "a bill for 1,200 dollars" opens the form with the currency already set — you check the rate and press Save, as always.

Still stuck? Contact us — a human reads every message.All help articles