Multi-currency & FX
SBB handles any currency — UGX, KES, TZS, RWF, NGN, GHS, ZAR, USD, EUR, GBP and more. Each money location holds its own, and reports total in your base currency.
Base currency
Your business has one base currency, set when you create it. It is what reports, budgets and consolidated totals are expressed in. Choose the currency you actually think in — usually your home currency, even if you hold USD.
Foreign-currency locations
A USD bank account is a money location with currency USD. It holds dollars, its balance is in dollars, and transactions against it are recorded in dollars.
Converting to base currency happens for reporting, using the rate saved with the transaction.
Recording a foreign-currency transaction
- Select + Record and choose the transaction type.
- Choose a money location whose currency differs from the business base currency.
- Enter the amount and transaction date.
- Review the Exchange rate field. It reads
1 transaction currency = ? base currencyand previews the value that will appear on reports. - Accept the suggested dated rate or enter the rate actually used by your bank or payment provider.
- Save the transaction.
If a rate service is unavailable, enter a rate manually. Leaving it blank keeps the entry explicitly unrated until you correct it; SBB does not silently apply today's rate to an old transaction.
Creating a foreign-currency invoice
- Open Invoices → + Create.
- Choose the Invoice currency.
- If it differs from the base currency, confirm the Exchange rate and the base-currency preview.
- Complete and save the invoice.
The invoice keeps its original currency, booked exchange rate and base total. Payments inherit that same FX treatment, so the P&L agrees with the invoice. Once an invoice has a payment, its currency cannot be changed.
Rates are frozen per transaction
This is the important part.
Each transaction keeps the rate that applied on its date. A sale made in March at March's rate stays at March's rate forever. When the rate moves in November, March's numbers do not move with it.
Without this, every report you have ever run would change every day, last year's profit would be unstable, and a filed tax return would stop agreeing with the books behind it.
What this means in practice
If you re-run last quarter's P&L, you get the same answer you got last quarter. That is the whole point.
Where rates come from
Rates are fetched for the transaction date. Where no rate exists for a date — common for less-traded African currency pairs on older dates — the entry is left unrated rather than stamped with today's rate.
An unrated entry is visibly incomplete and can be fixed. A wrongly-rated one looks like a fact and quietly corrupts your reporting.
You can set a rate manually where you know the real one — the rate your bank actually gave you often differs from the mid-market rate, and yours is the truthful one for your books.
Rounding
SBB converts using decimal half-up rounding to the base currency's configured number of decimal places. It then stores the booked base amount as whole minor units—for example cents for CAD or whole shillings for UGX. Reports reuse that stored amount instead of recalculating it from a newer rate.
Transaction splits preserve the source currency, frozen rate and booked base value. This keeps the split lines equal to the original transaction after rounding.
Gains and losses
Holding foreign currency means its base-currency value moves. If you hold USD and your local currency weakens, those dollars are worth more — a real gain, even though the dollar balance never changed.
Ask your accountant how to treat this for your jurisdiction; it usually belongs in the month-end close as an adjustment.
Practical advice
Pay in the currency you hold. Converting on every transaction accumulates spread and makes reconciliation harder.
Keep foreign holdings in their own location. Do not convert dollars to local currency in your head and record the result — record the dollars.
Reconcile foreign accounts against statements in their own currency, not the converted amount.
Selling abroad? Agree which currency the invoice is in and stick to it — invoices carry their own currency.