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# Manage Currencies

DonorWise is built to handle the variety of currencies your ministry may process.

Base Currency | Defined in the System Setup, the Base Currency is the currency used in the General ledger. Other currencies are expressed as units of the base currency. Read More > General Ledger Tab

If you have an integrated general ledger, the base currency will appear (as may others).

Donations are typically coded at the exchange rate when the gift was received, though your ministry may choose to use a rate for the entire month. The gift retains the units of foreign currency received.

Your ministry may receive donations and other funds in a currency other than the currency of your General ledger.

Ministries will have differing practices of converting currencies; most will have their accounting books in their local currency, although some will have their books in a foreign currency (like USD). This will effect how the conversions are done:

Ministries that use their own local currency in their General ledger can choose to wait until they have the exact bank exchange rate for the deposit and then enter the donations (transactions) into DonorWise using this rate. This practice will eliminate the necessity to deal with exchange differences altogether.

A ministry may also want to give staff and other responsibility centres credit for their donations before the bank deposit has cleared and the actual exchange rate is known.

•They should choose a reasonably accurate exchange rate and enter the donations into DonorWise using this rate.

•For the deposit, the actual bank rate should be used. This will result in an exchange difference in the clearing account. When the clearing account is reconciled at month-end, the exchange difference should be written off (to the Exchange difference account, either 44x or 79xx).

•This must be done on a monthly basis.

Ministries that use a foreign currency in their books will simply choose an appropriate exchange rate (weekly or monthly) to use for all transactions. They will not have exchange differences as long as the rate used to record the deposit in the General ledger is the same as the rate used for the donations in DonorWise.