Multicurrency - Change behaviour of Unrealised Gains/Losses with Bank Accounts
Xero has a gap in handling Fx gains/losses.
It is great at both Realised and Unrealised on bills and invoices but it drops the ball on Cash at Bank. It treats it all as Unrealised, which is where the flaw is.
You can have an empty currency bank account which has a residual functional currency balance and has movements on the TB every month due to revaluation. This is clearly nonsense.
I have also been told to ignore the exposure column on the Fx report as it is meaningless.
For Fx gains/losses Cash is a document in exactly the same way that Bills & Invoices are. I.e. each cent comes into Xero at a functional value and leaves at a functional value.
So there should be a Realised Gain/Loss on the cash movement just as there is for the bill being settled.
This is currently being carried in Xero as Unrealised which is incorrect accounting.
There is no error in the total for Gains/Losses but the split is incorrect.
We used to calculate the amounts as part of the Revaluation process using a FIFO principle.
I.e. the remaining balance was matched with the latest receipts and the gain/loss on those was recorded as Unrealised. It was trivial to calculate the Realised as the balancing figure from calculating the total applicable Gains/Losses.
I don't know how you would make this calculation within Xero.
-
Kent Hutchings commented
the incorrect unrealised FX bank revaluation on the P&L causes reporting issues especially when external parties such as banks review the reports.
-
Bryan Soriano commented
Since we are using Central Bank rates to record spot rates when recording bills and invoices, there should be an option to import central bank rates to set the exchange rates in the currencies settings