Q: I attempted to change the Exchange Rate within the Package itself, from 616.04 (October) to 623.86 (November). The first thing I did wrong was to get the formatting of the new exchange rate wrong ..... I entered 6.2386 instead of 623.86!! I then changed the exchange rate from 6.2386 to 623.86, again within the package. These two transactions produced some strange transactions on the Expense Exchange Account. We managed to dump the Business Package into a text file and remove, manually, the eight entries that these two transactions had generated. We then attempted to make the exchange rate change in the correct manner, only to find that the correct November rate was already showing in the menu window.

So we now have a situation in which we have the Business Package accurately recording the November exchange Rate (for November posting) but the Expense Exchange account and the dummy dollar value accounts are not recording any changes in respect of this change. That is to say the dollar accounts are still valued at the October Rate of 616.04.  The last suggestion was to make a manual entry to change the value of the dollar accounts, but we have now discovered that we cannot manually post to the 900004 series accounts since the package will not accept this length of number.

A: Have you tried the "Reconcile foreign exchange" function under the Currency Maintenance menu? That is designed to handle exactly the situation you have encountered.

In hindsight, you also could have just left the "odd-looking" entries in the ledger, since the second one completely corrected for the first one. You could have noted on the printout that there was a data entry error, and the auditors probably wouldn't have given you any grief about it.

Q: But it didn't.  That was what was so strange.

A: You need to take into account how much the balance would have changed with the exchange rate fluctuation. Is the difference between these numbers equal to that change?

Q: It is not doing what I want it to do. As I see it, the package gives me two options in the "Change/Inquire Currencies" option of the "Currency Maintenance" menu.

 1.       Change Currency Data

 2.       Reconcile Foreign Exchange.

A: Actually #2. is what you want to force the program to recalculate the equivalent balances of the foreign accounts.

Q: "Reconcile Foreign Exchange", however, takes me directly into the CASH ON HAND account (which is in CFA rather than the standard FRF) and asks me for both a date and a source doc, before it will let me do anything else.

A: What it is supposed to do is to put entries into an account that you have for recording foreign exchange fluctuations.

It makes the adjusting entries in your base currency, since it is not the foreign currency balance which changes, it's the base currency equivalent which must be adjusted whenever the exchange rate changes.

It asks you for a date, which is the date it should record the exchange rate changes as of.

It asks you for a source doc, which is the 5-character source code that should be on the entries it makes.

Q: I could wish it would sort itself out when I change the rate to December's, but I fear it won't, since the program is registering November's rate, while the dummy accounts are still valuing the dollar accounts at October's rate.

The next time you change any exchange rate it will automatically "Reconcile" again. Maybe you could try changing the rate by 1 cent and then changing it back again, calling the second one a "correction". Or you could put it back to the previous rate, which should result in no correcting entries and then change it to the new rate again and it should do the correction correctly this time.

Q: If I could have posted directly to the 900000 accounts and the Expense - Exchange account all my problems would have been solved.................but I can't! :-(

No, you can't do that. It's done this way on purpose to avoid unaudited changes. I do not claim that it is designed in the best way, but it works correctly.