Multi-Currency

Multi-currency is not a display option in Budgero — it's core accounting. You can hold accounts in any of 168 currencies inside a single budget, and every number still adds up in one place. This guide covers the conversion machinery; for choosing and changing the anchor currency itself, see Budget currency.

Two amounts per transaction

Every transaction on a foreign-currency account stores two values:

• the original amount — what actually happened, in the account's currency. This is the ground truth and never changes.
• the converted amount — the same transaction expressed in your budget currency, which is what categories, Ready to Assign, and reports consume.

Alongside them, Budgero records the exchange rate used and whether you overrode it. Your CHF account's history stays in francs; your budget reads in euros; nothing is lost in between. Account balances work the same way — each foreign account knows both its native balance and its converted contribution to your net worth.

Where rates come from

When a transaction needs converting, Budgero resolves the rate through a strict hierarchy — the first source that applies wins:

Priority	Source	When it applies
1	Per-transaction override	You set the exact rate on that one transaction
2	Custom rates	A rate you defined for a date range that covers the transaction
3	Fetched rates	Month-averaged rates Budgero retrieves automatically
4	Manual rates	Standing rates you entered yourself — no internet required
5	Adjacent month fallback	The nearest month's rate, when nothing else covers the date

For most people, fetched rates do all the work invisibly. The layers above them exist for the moments when "the market average" isn't your truth.

Custom rates: your rate, your date range

Settings → Currencies is the control room. There you define Custom Exchange Rates: a currency pair, a rate, and a date range. Within that range, your rate beats the fetched one.

Typical uses:

• You moved money at a known rate. You converted €10,000 at 1.0845 on March 3rd — pin that rate to that week and the books match the wire receipt.
• A managed or pegged currency. If you deal in a currency where the official rate and the practical rate differ, set the one that reflects your reality.
• Historical cleanup. Imported years of foreign transactions? Define custom rates per period instead of editing rows one by one.

Custom rates are live settings, not one-time stamps: when you add, edit, or delete one, Budgero recalculates the converted amounts of every transaction in that range — except transactions you've individually overridden, which always keep their pinned rate.

Per-transaction overrides: matching the statement

Market rates are averages; your card's settlement rate never quite is. When the converted amount needs to match a statement to the cent, override the rate on the individual transaction — enter either the rate or the exact settled amount, and the transaction is exempt from all automatic recalculation from then on.

This is the tool for: card purchases abroad (banks add their own spread), transfers where the receipt shows the exact rate, and any line your accountant will eventually compare against a statement.

Manual rates: budgeting without a rate feed

Manual rates are standing rates you enter yourself, used when fetched rates aren't available — offline, or on a self-hosted instance you haven't connected to a rate API. Set them once for the pairs you use and multi-currency keeps working with no network at all; you can always true up individual transactions with overrides later.

Day-to-day workflows

The cross-border household. Salary lands in GBP, rent leaves in EUR. Each account keeps its own currency; assignment and spending decisions all happen in the budget currency. No mental FX math at any point — the rate hierarchy handles it.

Travel. Spend on your home card abroad and the transaction arrives in the account's currency as usual — enter what the terminal showed in the foreign currency or what your bank app shows settled, whichever you have; an override reconciles the difference when the statement lands.

Reconciling foreign accounts. Reconciliation compares original amounts against your bank — francs against francs. Conversion never interferes with whether your account balance is right; it only determines how that balance reads in your budget currency.

What conversion never touches

A principle worth knowing: rates affect how foreign amounts are expressed, never what happened. Original amounts are immutable facts; converted amounts are interpretations that improve as your rate data does. Deleting a custom rate doesn't corrupt history — it just sends those transactions back down the hierarchy to the next applicable rate.