Currency and Foreign Exchange Rates

FX Currency Rate Management

Catalyst offers the ability to draw from system-generated currency exchange rates when working with foreign currency exchange rates or user-defined rates, which you can set manually. Learn more about managing your FX rates below. 

This article contains the following topics: 

• Basics
• System-generated rates
• Spot rates
• Avg rates
• User-defined rates

Basics

If you report on companies that deal in more than one currency, then you'll want to determine where Catalyst will draw the respective foreign exchange rate. You can choose between system-generated or user-defined rates. System-generated rates will be generated automatically by Catalyst, or you can manually set these rates and define them yourself based on any other source of truth you trust. 

To manage your Currency FX Rates in Catalyst, go to Administration > Manage Actuals > Currency Exchange Rates.

System-generated rates

The site will only use User Defined rates if they are entered. If you leave the User-Defined columns blank in Catalyst, the system will default to System-Generated. If you fill these fields in, the system will assume you've set user-defined rates and default to those over system-generated rates.

The above example shows system-defined rates because the fields are blank under the User Defined headers. The below shows an example of system-generated rates or spot rates from a third-party source.

Spot rates

• The spot rate can either be system-generated or user-defined. It is the rate at the end of the month and is used for Balance Sheet purposes.
• The spot rate is a currency exchange term defined as the price quoted for immediate settlement on an interest rate, commodity, a security, or a currency. It is also referred to as the "spot price," and is the current market value of an asset available for immediate delivery at the moment of the quote.
• Spot rates change each day. They have an opening balance, a high balance, a low balance, and a close balance. Each company decides internally which balance they use to determine the rate they want to use, either opening, high, low, or close. That choice will need to remain consistent across the board when using User-Defined spot rates. Catalyst spot rates default to the High Balance.

Note: The spot rate is the fx rate at the end of the period - this is the rate that balance sheet accounts are converted at. This is because a balance sheet is a “point in time report”, such as reporting the Cash balance as of 1/31/22 or another specific date/point in time.

Average rates

• The average (AVG) rate can either be system-generated or user-defined. It is the average daily rate across the whole period or month and is used for Income Statement purposes. Therefore, it is also used in profitability cube data for activity.
• The Income statement is an “over time report”. For example, it will show Sales from 1/1/22 through 1/31/22. This is why the average rate for the period is used, rather than the spot rate at the end of the period, because those sales happened across the whole period, not just at the end of the period.

User-defined rates

• User-defined rates only apply if/when an end-user actually enters values into the User Defined column header cells in Catalyst. Otherwise, system-generated rates will be used for both spot and average rates. 
• User Defined rates must be manually added by the user. These rates are determined internally by your accounting team and will usually come from a third-party source. There are multiple sources where foreign exchange rates can come from, such as Yahoo Finance or OANDA. Some services are free but many require a subscription that require payment. 

The above example shows user-defined rates because the fields are not blank under the User Defined headers. Important: If anything is entered into a cell under User Defined, even a space, Catalyst will default to User Defined.