Hi Mark,

I have a tricky client who wants to use Solar Accounts but they have a large number customers, with dozens of invoices, who insist on receiving invoices in US Dollars. Their base currency in Solar Accounts is a "dollars" type currency at the moment, albeit not USD, but at least the $ symbol appears on invoices.

This is an example of what's happening:
1. Invoice raised for $5,600 in Solar Accounts, though in the narrative it says "all amounts are in USD" for the customer's benefit
2. Customer pays invoice in USD, resulting in $8303.09 being received into the bank account in local currency.
3. In Solar Accounts, the money is applied to the invoice, creating an overpayment of $2,703.09 on the invoice.

The question I have is does the overpayment appear as income in the period it is paid? There is no VAT applicable to these invoices (one blessing at least) but I'm not sure how Solar will handle this complexity.

Also, let me know if there is a better way of handling this type of situation. If Solar could invoice in multiple currencies, that's be great, but I believe it doesn't.

Cheers

Thinking on this further, I think what they'd have to do is right click on the overpaid invoice andn create a "refund" transaction that goes "From" the relevant income account in the P&L, in order to balance the income and A/R ledger.

Let me know if there is a better way - I'd really like to get this guy using Solar, as it makes my life easier...

Hi Angel,

The overpayment is not treated as income - it is simply considered a 'loan'. The refund payment you describe will convert it to income, but I think this makes things too complicated because you haven't actually given any refund.

You are right that Solar Accounts doesn't support multiple currencies for a single business. Given this restriction, we think the best solution is to create two 'businesses' - one business in local currency and another in USD. When you want to send a USD invoice to a customer, you create two invoices: one in the USD business and another in the local currency business using an appropriate exchange rate. Note that the local currency business is the 'main' business because it should contain all your transactions, but the USD business is only used to produce invoices in dollars. If you are using the online version of Solar Accounts our billing system will charge you for two businesses - please contact us and we will apply a discount to your account so that the second business is effectively free.

Regards,