Explain a foreign currency invoice bank transaction from a bank feed or statement upload

How to explain money received from a customer against an invoice you've issued in a different currency, if you're uploading your bank transactions into FreeAgent from online banking.

If you issue a foreign currency invoice to a customer and you don't have a bank account in that currency, you'll need to enter the money received as a value in your business's main currency in FreeAgent. For UK customers, this is likely to be £ sterling.

Entering payment for a foreign currency invoice in £ sterling

If you're explaining your bank transactions from an upload, you'll see the receipt come into the bank account in £ sterling.

Navigate to the 'Banking' tab at the top of the screen and select 'Bank Accounts' from the drop-down menu.

Choose the relevant bank account from the list of accounts.

Select the transaction and when you explain that invoice receipt, if you choose an invoice that was in a foreign currency, FreeAgent gives you another value box here.

In this box, you need to put what the equivalent value in the foreign currency was.

Full or part payment for the invoice?

So if your customer has paid you in full for the invoice, just put in the same amount as you issued the invoice for. FreeAgent will fill this in automatically.

If your customer has paid you in part, then you'd need to check with your customer how much they were paying you in the foreign currency, and overtype FreeAgent's figure. Your customer would need to tell you, for example, "I'm paying you €100".

What about any bank charges or commission deducted?

If your customer is paying you net of any charges or commission, then you'd need to split the sterling amount, but don't adjust the foreign currency amount. This is so that FreeAgent will mark the right amount of the invoice as paid.

What if the exchange rate has changed since I issued the invoice?

A realized currency gain or loss crystallizes on this invoice once it's fully or partly paid.