Exchange rates fluctuate and can be difficult to account for when you’re working on international architecture, engineering, or construction (AEC) design projects. We understand. That’s why Synergy simplified this for you in our April 2019 update.
This is a big deal for those of you that work across international borders. Customers in faraway places mean extra challenges — culture, language, and, prior to April, working with multiple currencies.
Keep reading below for your grab-bag of top tips to help you manage your global accounting by using multi-currency invoicing to bill your international clients.
Multi-currency in four easy steps…
You can relax — using multi-currency in Synergy is a straightforward, four-step process.
Step one — Set up a foreign currency for your company
Get your system administrator to define the range of currencies your company will invoice in. Your project managers can then select these currencies when they’re setting up their projects.
Step two — Set up a project in a foreign currency
When your project manager’s creating their next project, just get them to select the currency to invoice in and then choose how the exchange rate is calculated. ‘Fixed’ will apply a predetermined exchange rate to all invoices, and ‘variable’ will use the exchange rate at the time of invoicing.
Step three — Invoice in the foreign currency (AKA: don’t do anything extra)
When it comes time for invoicing, your invoices are automatically calculated from your company’s base currency to the nominated project currency. The bookmarks in your invoice will clearly show this, so your client gets an invoice in their own currency.
Step four — Use your accounting add-on to disburse payments
When you receive a payment in your account, you handle the payment in your specific accounting add-on. The accounting software handles any exchange rate variances* and the next time Xero or QuickBooks Online is synced — ta-da! — the payment will revert to the base organization currency, to send back to Synergy. Then you’ll see the payment in Synergy.
That’s right, we’ve made it that simple to be that tricky! Because simplified AEC account management, means more time for design.
* Your subscription level of QBO or Xero must support multi-currency functionality.
Synergy provides an example of a foreign currency invoice as a document template but feel free to design your own invoices to suit your company’s needs (only in Synergy Business and Synergy Enterprise).
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