How do I handle exchange rates in Expensify if I want to manually adjust them?

Fredrik

Hi = I have a lot of foreign currency expenses and uses your function to add to the actual cost to reflect the final charges from my Credit Card or actual Cash Costs. However . . . there are times where this is NOT working smooth and I would like to manually over-ride (establish a different and expense-line-specific currency rate). Can this be done? I see myself doing that just prior to completing/filing the report (after I have received the Credit Card bill) and sending it to my financial department. Please comment if possible to do. Fredrik

Rachael Hopkins

Hi @Fredrik there are two main approaches with reporting expenses in a foreign currency:

1. You incur the expenses in cash (or on a credit card which is not linked to Expensify), this uses the day's trading average for the exchange rate, and you can use the Currency Conversion Surcharge to offset the foreign exchange fees. You can also manually change the Amount on the expense if needed, but this will be flagged for review.
2. You incur the expenses on a credit card which is connected to Expensify, and you SmartScan the receipts so that the cash receipt will merge with the credit card transaction and reflect the actual amount charged. You will report the exchange fees as an additional expense.

Can you elaborate on what scenarios are not working for you at present?

Daveweez

Please vote for my idea here"
https://community.expensify.com/discussion/304/override-fx-rate-on-the-individual-expense-level#latest

This idea is to the ability to manually change the FX rate for individual expense line. I envision this being an option that the Admin would enable on the policy level. This would of course warrant a flag in the Report Notes so that approvers can see that the FX rate was changed (Maybe even showing what the old rate vs new rate is).

Use case example:

Lets say I am traveling to Europe and I exchange $100 to €75 in the airport (FX rate is 0.75). That exchange rate the airport vendors gives is usually a few points worse than the actual rate that Expensify uses (FX rate of 0.833). So when I report that I spent €75 EUR, Expensify will use the Expensify rate and the report will show $90 to be reimbursed. In this case, I lost $10 on the conversion.
In this scenario, I would like to override the FX rate in Expensify to specify that it should be 0.75 and that way I would get reimbursed the full $100 and be made whole.

trishaegberts

Is there any update on whether or not Expensify is working on a feature to manually change the FX rate on individual transactions to match them to employee's actual FX rates charged by their banks? This continues to be a monthly challenge when reimbursing staff for expenses, particularly because Expensify almost always under-estimates the FX rate, so unless our employees are paying close attention to the Expensify conversion, they're being short-changed on reimbursements.

I know the Cash Conversion Surcharge is something we can change, but that is not a long-term solution because each individual transaction should be able to be matched to the employee's actual expense.

Jimfuno

Hi any update on this? This is a real admin headache not having the ability to change the expense to the correct exchange rate...

Ronan_TDC

Asking for update too, need to find a solution..

VisionRx

Don't hold your breath. Expensify has indicated for years that this is not on their agenda.

LarsH

Expensify doesn't support this. I am now moving to Zoho Expenses which provides this feature... and which is free for small businesses up to 3 user accounts... very neat!!

Saenissr

This is needed as the rate on the ground where I support NGO workers is not the same as the FX rate in trade. Please provide an option for manual adjustment.