How multi-currency projects work

Kompass can quote and invoice projects in different currencies within one organisation. Each project has a single currency: its quote item prices and costs and the invoices you send the client are in that currency. Payments and expenses can be entered in any of your organisation's currencies (see section 9). Supplier bills, purchase orders and the cost of time logged on the project stay in your base currency. Totals across projects, such as the clients list, the dashboard and reports, are shown in your organisation's base currency.

Key terms

• Base currency: your organisation's main currency. All organisation-wide totals and reports use it.
• Project currency: the currency a project is quoted and invoiced in. By default this is the base currency.
• FX rate: a conversion rate, shown as "1 EUR = 0.85 GBP", meaning one unit of the other currency is worth 0.85 of the base currency.
• Budget rate: a rate your organisation sets for a period, for example a quarter or a year. A budget rate stays in force until you record the next one.
• Daily rate: the reference rate for one day. Kompass loads the European Central Bank's reference rates every night, and you can add your own.

1. Add a currency to your organisation

Each organisation has a list of currencies its projects may use. It starts with just the base currency.

1. Open the user menu and choose Configuration, then Currencies.
2. Click Add currency and choose the currency.
3. Enter its First budget rate and save.

Kompass supports EUR, GBP, USD, CHF, SEK, NOK, DKK, PLN, CZK, CAD, AUD, NZD and JPY. When you add a currency, Kompass loads its daily rates for the past three years in the background, so documents dated in the past find a rate too. Before entering invoices dated in the past, check under Daily rates that the rates for those dates are there: a document saved earlier keeps the rate it found.

The base currency of an organisation cannot be changed while any project uses a different currency.

2. Budget rates and daily rates

Select a currency on the Currencies page to see its Budget rates and Daily rates.

• Budget rates: click Record rate and enter the rate and the date it starts. The rate in force until then ends the day before. There is always a budget rate: if you forget to record the next quarter's rate, the last one carries on.
• Daily rates arrive every night from the European Central Bank. You can also click Add daily rate to enter your own rate for a day; it takes precedence over the published rate for that day. For any date, Kompass uses the most recent daily rate on or before it: on weekends and bank holidays, and before that day's rates are published, that is the previous day's rate, and a rate you entered yourself carries on until a newer daily rate exists. If there is no daily rate on or before the date, the budget rate applies.

The top of the page shows when the daily rates were last updated, and warns you when a fetch failed or a currency has had no new rate for a week.

3. Choose which rates are used

Each currency has three settings. Click the edit button next to the currency on the Currencies page to change them.

• Project rate source (Budget or Daily): the rate a project in this currency takes. Budget is the default.
• Projects can type their own rate: when on, the project form fills in the rate and you can type over it. When off, projects always use the looked-up rate.
• Document rate source (Daily, Budget or Project): the rate invoices, payments and expenses convert at. Daily converts each document at the rate for its own date, which is how accounting systems usually work. Project uses the project's rate for all its invoices; payments and expenses, which do not belong to a single project, use the budget rate instead.

Changing these settings never changes projects or documents that already exist. They apply to rates looked up from then on.

4. A project's currency and FX rate

1. Open the project (or create a new one) in Kompass.
2. In Currency, pick one of your organisation's currencies.
3. The FX Rate is filled in from your rates, with its origin shown under it, for example "Rate from Budget from 2026-07-01". If your settings allow it, you can type a different rate instead.
4. Save.

A project in the base currency has no FX rate.

The rate is fixed when the project is accepted

Until the project is accepted its rate is provisional: it is the rate on the day you set the currency, so quotes and the pipeline have base-currency figures. It is not updated automatically after that. When the first quote item is accepted, Kompass looks the rate up again for the acceptance date and fixes it, then updates the base values of every quote item and cost to match. A rate you typed yourself is kept as it is.

Once the project is accepted, or has been invoiced, its currency and FX rate can no longer be changed.

5. Prices and costs are in the project currency

On a project in another currency, everything you enter on its quote items is in the project currency: prices, cost rates, quantities times rates, margins. The quote item screens and the quote and invoice documents your client receives show the project currency.

• Templates are stored in your base currency. When you apply a template on a project in another currency, its price and costs are converted into the project currency at the project's FX rate.
• Cost options (your standard cost rates) are also kept in the base currency and are converted into the project currency when you pick them. After that the converted figure belongs to the project and you can edit it.

6. Organisation-wide totals are in the base currency

Organisation-wide summaries convert every project's figures into the base currency. This includes:

• the clients list and its export (quoted, accepted, invoiced, paid and unpaid values),
• the dashboard,
• reports and exports such as the Projects Performance Report, which also include the project currency and the base figures alongside the project-currency ones.

Quoted, accepted, work in progress and margin figures use the project's FX rate, so a project's performance does not move with the exchange rate. Invoiced and paid figures use each invoice's and payment's own base value.

A single project, quote item or invoice is always shown in its own currency. In lists such as invoices, the totals stay in the rows' currency when every row shares one, and are shown in the base currency when the currencies are mixed. In the projects list, the totals of a parent project and its child projects are shown in the parent's currency.

7. Copying and moving quote items

• Copying quote items to a project in another currency is allowed. The amounts are converted from the source project's currency to the target project's currency through the base currency.
• Moving quote items to a project in another currency is not allowed, because a move keeps the numbers as they are and would relabel, for example, EUR 1,000 as GBP 1,000. Copy them instead.
• Copying a whole project keeps its currency. A rate that came from your rates is looked up again for today. A rate you typed is kept, as long as the currency's settings still let projects type their own rate.

8. Invoices and payments

• Invoices are raised in the project currency, and the invoice document shows that currency. An invoice that already has lines cannot be moved to a project with a different currency or FX rate.
• When the document rate source is Daily or Budget, each invoice converts at the rate for its tax point (or its date when it has none). The invoice shows its Invoice rate, Rate date and Rate origin. If you change the invoice's date, the rate follows, until the invoice is posted or sent to your accounting system. With the Project source, invoices use the project's FX rate.
• A credit note line that credits an invoice converts at that invoice's rate, so the credit reverses exactly the base amount that was invoiced.
• A payment can be in any of your organisation's currencies, whatever the currency of the invoices it pays (see section 9). Payments from Xero can be in the invoice's currency, see below. When a payment is allocated to an invoice in another currency, Kompass works out how much of the invoice it settles at the payment's own rate when the payment is in the invoice's currency, and otherwise at the rate for the payment date (or the project's rate with the Project source). A payment that pays the invoice in full clears it exactly, with no cent left open.
• When the amount received differs from the invoice's base value because the rate moved between invoice and payment, a fully paid invoice still counts as fully paid. The difference is an exchange difference, not money the client owes.

9. Payments and expenses in another currency

When your organisation has more than one currency, payments and expenses have a Currency field. It starts at your base currency.

1. Open the payment or expense in Kompass and click Edit (or create a new one).
2. In Currency, pick the currency the money was received or spent in.
3. The Exchange rate is filled in from your rates for the payment or expense date, following the currency's document rate source, with its origin shown under it, for example "Rate from Budget". You can type a different rate instead; it then shows as "Typed". If no rate is recorded for that currency and date, Kompass asks you to type one.
4. Enter the amount in that currency. The field names the currency, for example Gross Amount Received (USD) or Amount (EUR), and the base currency amount is shown under it.
5. Save.

• If you change the date, the rate is looked up again for the new date, unless you typed it yourself. A typed rate stays until you change the currency.
• If you change the currency, the amounts you entered stay as they are and are now in the new currency, so check them.
• Payments: allocations to invoices stay in each invoice's currency, as before. Kompass checks in the base currency that a payment is not allocated beyond the amount received.
• Expenses: the expense amount and its allocations are all entered in the expense currency. Kompass stores their base currency amounts and adjusts the allocations by any rounding difference from the conversion, so a fully allocated expense matches its base amount exactly.
• A payment that came from your accounting system keeps the currency and amounts the accounting system recorded and cannot be changed in Kompass.

Importing payments and expenses

The payment and expense imports accept three more columns on rows that create a payment or expense:

• currency_code: the currency, for example USD. Leave it blank for your base currency.
• currency_rate: the exchange rate, base currency per one unit of the currency. Leave it blank to use your rates for the row's date; a row with no rate recorded for that date is refused.
• amount_received_local (payments) or amount_local (expenses): the amount in that currency. If you give only amount_received or amount, it is read as a base currency amount and converted at the rate. A row in your base currency uses amount for expenses; amount_local is ignored there.

Rows that update an existing payment or expense cannot set a currency, and a payment or expense that is already in another currency cannot be updated by import at all. In the payment allocations import, the amounts are in each invoice's currency, as on the payment screen, and they can be added to a payment in another currency. The expense allocations import works in the base currency only and cannot add allocations to an expense in another currency. See Payments and Expenses for the screens themselves.

10. Correcting a rate

Figures that have already used a rate never change on their own. A rate that a project or document uses shows as Locked and cannot be edited or deleted. To fix a wrong rate, use Correct rate on it:

1. Enter the new rate and click Preview.
2. Kompass lists what Will be restated at the new rate and what is Kept as they are, with the base values before and after and the difference.
3. Click Correct rate to confirm.

Kept as they are: projects that have already been invoiced, invoices that are posted or have been sent to your accounting system, payments that came from your accounting system, and approved expenses. Their differences are a matter for your accounting system.

If you record a budget rate that starts in the past, for example a quarter's rate published a few weeks late, you can tick Restate documents dated from this date. The same preview shows which projects, invoices, payments and expenses dated from that day move to the new rate before you save.

11. Removing a currency

When a currency is removed from your organisation, its rates and every project and document in it are kept, and they can still be edited. The currency can no longer be chosen for new projects, payments or expenses. A currency that a project is quoted in cannot be removed. Adding the currency again makes it available with its rates.

12. What your accounting system receives

• Xero: when your Xero organisation has multicurrency turned on and the project's currency enabled, new invoices are sent in the project currency together with Kompass's rate, so Xero shows the same base amount as Kompass. Payments recorded in Xero against those invoices come back in that currency. Otherwise invoices are sent in your base currency, converted at the invoice's rate. An invoice keeps the currency it was first sent in, even if you enable the currency in Xero later, and a credit note is sent in the currency of the invoice it credits.
• QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Sage 300: invoices and credit notes are sent in the base currency, converted at the invoice's rate. The accounting system calculates tax on the converted amounts, so its invoice total can occasionally differ from Kompass by a cent. Payments recorded in the accounting system come back to Kompass in the base currency and are applied to the invoice as described above, so an invoice paid in full in the accounting system is paid in full in Kompass.
• Sage 50 and Sage 200: the export files contain base-currency amounts, tax included, converted at the invoice's rate. Payments are not read back from these systems.
• Zoho CRM: deals and quotes are sent in the project currency when your Zoho organisation has multi-currency turned on and that currency is active in Zoho. Otherwise they are sent in the base currency. If your Zoho connection was set up before multi-currency was available, reconnect it so Kompass can read your Zoho currencies; until then, amounts are sent in the base currency.

Summary

• Add currencies, with a first budget rate, under Configuration, Currencies.
• Budget rates carry on until you record the next one; daily rates arrive every night.
• Each currency's settings decide which rate projects and documents use; changing them never changes existing figures.
• A project's rate is provisional until acceptance, then fixed. Its currency and rate are locked once it is accepted or invoiced.
• Enter prices and costs in the project currency; templates and cost options are converted for you.
• Organisation-wide totals are in the base currency.
• Payments and expenses can be entered in another currency, at a rate looked up for their date or one you type.
• Correct a wrong rate with Correct rate and check the preview before confirming.
• Copy, do not move, quote items between currencies.
• Use the new Kompass interface for projects in another currency.