YNAB You Need A Budget

[wayrachaki]

Is it possible to allow multiple currencies within one budget? There are plenty of countries outside the United States in which the economies run in two currencies, one for daily purchases and another (often dollars) for larger, more expensive items and services (e.g., computers or rent). Could you please consider allowing us to run multiple currencies, perhaps with a built-in exchange rate feature?

[Malisa]

Is it possible to allow multiple currencies within one budget?

Sorry, there's not a way to do it at this time. You'd have to have separate budgets for each currency. It's been suggested before. I'm sure it's on 'the list' of future features to be developed, but I'm not sure where it stands in line.

There are plenty of countries outside the United States in which the economies run in two currencies, one for daily purchases and another (often dollars) for larger, more expensive items and services (e.g., computers or rent).

I did not know that. Thanks for the education. I'd love to know which countries/currencies. I always figured most of the multiple currency requests came from people who: travel frequently, have two residences, live near borders, etc.

[wayrachaki]

My experience with this has principally been in South America, especially in countries with sketchy financial history in which the popular memory is of high nominal inflation rates in the local currency and little faith in anything but "hard" currencies for purchases of anything with real value. Some countries have gone so far as to try and outlaw this practice of having accounts in multiple currencies, while others have gone in head-first and simply adopted the dollar as their own. In my current country of residence, anything more than approximately $100 can usually be purchased either in local currency or national, while things in excess of a $1000 or so (e.g., houses, cars) are almost completely done in dollars.

On top of this, I also have accounts and expenses in the US, meaning either two completely different budgets (a bit of a hassle) or converting US costs to local currency on my own (a bit sloppy).

Having an option to use multiple currencies would be awesome.

[WairereRose]

The closest we've had to this was back in the 'old' days when I was younger, and Australian and Fijian currency in the smallest coins (less than 50c) were similar looking to ours. We could use them interchangeably with our own currency and it wasn't a big deal. Nowadays we'd never swing it - 5c coins don't even exist anymore, and our 10c coins now resemble the 2c coins we had when growing up in both size and colour.

Sorry to get slightly off-topic. This is a great reason to support a multi-currency function I think. I don't know if it's in the works, though I do know it has been suggested many times in the past.

[UKPauly1970]

I'd love multi currency within one budget too. Euros and pounds please!!!

[rodeoclown]

Rose - I miss having kiwi 10c pieces in my wallet
Although some vending machines wouldn't accept them, it was cool that we had interchangeable currency!

[rodeoclown]

This isn't coming any time in the immediate future, but it is something we think about frequently (especially as some of the team spend large amounts of time country-hopping).
It is a really tricky problem, because you can't just roll up multiple currencies into a single total, and you can't really budget into one category with two currencies, as the amount you budgeted could vary from day to day due to exchange rates (and you can't always pay a bill in multiple currencies). And further to the exchange rates, one currency doesn't really have an equivalent in another until you actually get it exchanged, as the rate could drop through the floor over the course of a day. So the two really need to be kept separate anyway.

It's tricky, but we are thinking about it.

[sikorskys]

I believe most of European users would be grateful for multi-currency support. And for ex-USSR countries it's an especially common practice to budget in two or even more currencies.

In fact, some people in my country have salary in US Dollars even it's not an official currency of course. Most people here think in dollars or euros even they don't plan to leave the county for next 20 years. I personally have three different savings accounts in different (!) currencies, like a lot of people in my country. So, it's rather difficult to manage my stuff with YNAB.

Actually, I thought I will never ever buy a financial software without multi-currency support... Well, YNAB was so great, I had no choice But still hoping for a such feature.

[bobbucy]

I have experienced this in mainland China, where local merchants would prefer a "hard" currency such as the Hong Kong dollar to the Chinese RMB. And I could understand how folks traveling between some countries in Europe might want this. I do travel internationally for business, so frequently have expense reports in a couple of currencies. However, I think that trying to incorporate this into budgeting software will be problematic. Moneywell has added this into their 2.0 release that just came out this week, and the software will connect to the web to look up daily exchange rates. While that sounds very clever, the difference between bank buying and selling rates means that you are going to have to make manual adjustments on every transaction, which I think would quickly become a pain in the butt. For my part, I often don't put any international personal expenses down in my budget until the transaction shows up in my online banking and I can see the amount after currency conversion. I tend to keep track of it manually on a spreadsheet or something until I have the final numbers.

[Hieschen]

Hi

any news on this, I would be quite interested in a multiple currency option.

Pat

[whitetiger]

I am just trialling this software and forgive me if my idea is flawed. I really want to try to find a way to use your product as an alternative to iBank, Moneywell and Moneydance. I like the sheer simplicity of it and think I will actually have the discipline to use it. That said, multi-currency is absolutely essential.

For my circumstances, I am happy for my budget to be in a single currency, even if I am receiving my income and spending in multiple currencies. At the end of the day, I still need to have a base currency as a reference. Therefore, all I need is for the software to always convert my "Income" and "Outflows" to my base currency using the prevailing exchange rate of the day. I would even be happy to use a conversion rate that I specify.

I guess I am not quite understanding why this task is so complex and I believe that the simple solution above would not ruin the integrity of your excellent system. At the end of the day, you will gain multi-currency clients that would be grateful for a solution even if it is imperfect. Your single currency clients wouldn't see any changes.

I am sure you've looked at how other providers deal with this. The fact is, there is no perfect solution.

Please give this some thought, as it I think it would bring you very close to being the best software in your peer group.

Cheers

W

PS. Can I have two budgets (one in each currency). That would be a partial (and slightly irritating) solution. I suppose the other idea is to manually convert all of my transactions to a base currency.

[Malisa]

PS. Can I have two budgets (one in each currency). That would be a partial (and slightly irritating) solution. I suppose the other idea is to manually convert all of my transactions to a base currency.

Yes, you may.

Here is one thread that talks about it:

post101528.html#p101528

[HelveticaTheBold]

Just bumping this as a request please!

We have an account in Hong Kong in HKD, an account in Aus in AUD and an account in China in CNY. The China one is for day to day expenses and I don't have the ability to transfer between here and overseas so it works well on its own budget. However, it would be absolutely fantastic to be able to put my HKD account and my AUD accounts onto one budget as the amount I have left in HK after paying a couple of bills there is what I have left to transfer to Aus to pay off debt, save etc.

Lots of expats work in multi currencies as they have bills in different countries. It really would be a fantastic plus to YNAB.

[IT_Prof]

In the Android Market is a program Financisto, where multicurrency perfectly realized. The user specifies a single "home" currency. The user then makes himself a currency exchange rate on a specified date, all transactions on this date and for the following dates (unless the exchange rate changes) are automatically converted to the "home" currency. The default value for the exchange rate is 1:1. In the list of transactions is visible transaction currency, and in the budget, the transaction is accounted for in the home currency, ie in the currency of the budget.
Sorry for my english...