What is multi-currency bookkeeping?
Foreign-currency transactions, revaluation and realised gain or loss handled consistently.
Multi-currency bookkeeping becomes its own discipline the moment an Australian business holds a foreign bank account, invoices export customers in USD or NZD, pays an offshore supplier, or sits inside a group with an overseas parent or subsidiary. Each trigger raises a different question: an export invoice raises a GST-free classification question, a foreign bank account raises an income-disclosure question on the tax return, and an intercompany balance with an overseas entity raises a translation question that has to survive a BAS lodgement and, eventually, the annual financial statements.
The mechanic underneath all of it is translation to AUD. Every foreign-currency transaction converts to AUD at a rate for the transaction date, and every open foreign-currency balance at period end revalues to the closing rate. BAS is lodged in AUD only — there is no foreign-currency BAS — so every export sale, every foreign supplier bill, and every foreign bank movement has to already sit in the ledger as an AUD figure, coded correctly, by the time a BAS agent looks at it.
Why it matters
| Without a system | With CapEasy |
|---|---|
| Month-end arrives whenever someone gets to it | Books closed on a fixed date, in the same shape every month |
| Unexplained transactions pile up in a suspense account until year-end | Every account reconciled to the statement, with discrepancies explained not plugged |
| Your accountant bills you to fix bookkeeping before they can do their own work | A short questions list instead of a year-end archaeology project |
| You cannot answer "how did we do last month" without a week of digging | Whoever files opens a finished file |
What we need from you
Financial
- Bank and card statements
- Sales invoices
- Supplier bills
- Expense receipts
- Payroll summaries
- Loan statements
System
- Chart of accounts
- Opening balances
- Accounting software access (read/write, least privilege)
- Multi-currency details if applicable
Context
- Prior period financial statements
- Your accountant’s coding preferences
- Anything unusual we should expect
How it runs, step by step
- Transaction recording & classification
- Daily transaction entry
- Revenue and expense categorisation
- Capital vs operating classification
- Ledger & trial balance
- General ledger review
- Sub-ledger reconciliation
- Chart of accounts restructuring
- Reconciliation
- Monthly bank and card reconciliation
- Discrepancy investigation, with a written explanation
- Multi-account and multi-entity reconciliation
- Catch-up & clean-up
- Working back from the last clean period
- An honest read on how far back the records support
- Rebuilding to current
Who does what
| Your CapEasy team | Multi-currency bookkeeping, the reconciliations and reporting behind it, and the questions list that keeps it honest. |
| Your registered BAS or tax agent | Everything that carries a licence in Australia — rendered exactly as written: work out what goes on your bas, or advise you on it — under tasa 2009 that requires registration we do not hold. |
| You | One conversation with one named person, and the decisions that are genuinely yours. |
Multi-currency bookkeeping in Australia
AASB 121 governs the translation mechanics, not the functional-currency call
AASB 121, The Effects of Changes in Foreign Exchange Rates, governs transaction-date recording and period-end revaluation of monetary foreign-currency balances, and covers functional-currency determination for a group member whose books need translating into AUD. We apply AASB 121's mechanics — record at the transaction-date rate, revalue open balances at period end. Determining what an entity's functional currency actually is sits with your accountant.
GST translation has its own ATO rule, separate from the accounting rate
The ATO sets out how foreign-currency amounts convert to AUD for GST purposes in GSTR 2001/2 — broadly, the rate on the transaction date, from an acceptable source such as the RBA, applied consistently. We apply that mechanic every quarter. Whether a particular transaction attracts GST at all is a BAS service your registered BAS or tax agent determines.
Export sales are usually GST-free — coding it right is bookkeeping, deciding it is not
A sale to an overseas customer is commonly GST-free under the export provisions in the GST Act, but the conditions (export timing, where the service is performed, who the recipient is) are a classification question. We code export invoices to a GST-free tax code once that's confirmed. Ascertaining whether a specific sale qualifies as GST-free is a BAS service reserved to a registered agent under TASA 2009 s.90-10 — bookkeeping doesn't decide it.
Foreign income and offshore accounts are a tax-return disclosure, not a bookkeeping filing
An Australian tax resident generally discloses worldwide income, including foreign interest and business income, on the annual return, and a group with an overseas subsidiary can trigger Controlled Foreign Company attribution or transfer-pricing documentation under Division 815 of the ITAA 1997. Foreign account data also flows to the ATO under the Common Reporting Standard. We maintain the foreign account ledger as clean source data; what belongs on the return is your tax agent's call.
What your registered BAS or tax agent receives from us
- Every foreign-currency transaction converted to AUD at a transaction-date rate, with the rate and source recorded against the entry
- A named, consistently applied exchange-rate source (RBA or another documented provider) used the same way every BAS period
- Export sales coded to the correct GST-free tax code once classification is confirmed, with AUD-converted sales evidence retained for the BAS
- Realised FX gain/loss on settled foreign invoices, bills and payments, posted to its own account separate from unrealised movements
- Period-end revaluation of open foreign-currency balances — bank accounts, receivables, payables, intercompany loans — to the closing rate each quarter
- Unrealised FX gain/loss posted to a distinct account and reversed at the start of the next period so it never compounds
