New: plan in the currency you actually do business in

A group of five companies rarely runs in a single currency. The Slovak subsidiary invoices, pays salaries and keeps its books in euros. The American one in USD. The Czech parent in crowns. Each has its own accounting, its own accounting system and its own numbers, which make sense exactly in the currency they were created in.

Until now, the default currency was the Czech crown. In practice this meant that if an entity kept its books in another currency, it had to be changed through a support request. If no such request was made, colleagues in Slovakia entered the plan in euros, because otherwise they couldn’t defend it, but the app treated it as crowns. That won’t happen anymore.

From now on, every entity in Symfio has its own currency.

How it works

• Each entity has its own currency. The Slovak company works in euros, the Czech one in crowns, every other one in its own. The choice is mandatory, so it is always clear what currency you are looking at.
• It applies to accounting data and to the plan. Actuals are loaded in the currency the entity keeps its books in, and the plan is entered in the same currency. Plan and actuals sit side by side in the same units.
• You enter numbers as they are in your source documents. A contract in euros is entered in euros. No more intermediate step in a spreadsheet, and no more conversion columns you had to maintain next to the plan itself.
• You keep working with the group as before. Entities stay on one platform; user rights, mapping and sharing work unchanged.

Who benefits most

The biggest impact is for groups and holdings with subsidiaries abroad. Typically a Czech group with a Slovak or American entity, where each company has its own accounting but financial management runs centrally. That is exactly where most inaccuracies arise.

But it also helps companies that are just starting out abroad. Setting up an entity in another country is a matter of weeks today. Deciding how to bring it into reporting is often what holds up the whole process most. A new entity with its own currency is added as quickly as any other.

And it also makes sense where the whole business is run in a foreign currency. A Czech company with a dollar price list and dollar costs can keep its reporting in the currency it actually thinks about its business in, provided the source data is in that currency too.

What we recommend

If you operate in one country and one currency only, you don’t have to do anything. Your entity has its currency set and behaves exactly as before.

If you have a foreign subsidiary, review its settings at your next plan review. And then let the plan be created where the input originates. A plan in which your colleague in Slovakia recognises their own numbers gets filled in better than one where they have to check whether the numbers even match what they signed.