Multi-Currency accounting

[MrMike]

I am running a retail business here and need to choose an accounting system that can handle multiple currencies and multiple stores.

I have heard the Canadian version of quickbooks can handle multi-currencies but although I have evaluated every version available of the US version (yes, even enterprise solutions 2005) it does not seem to have anything similar to this feature, although it handles everything else rather well.

I would be interested in how any of you business operators are managing in a situation where you have Accounts Receiveable in both Pesos and Dollars; but Inventory and Accounts Payable, plus your pricing structures are mostly US. Also obviously there are bank accounts in both currencies.

I am currently using a bloated, cumbersome ERP system that no one seems to be able to use properly (Macola Progression) and which I must discontinue using since my company has recently become independant of a parent company which has retained the license for the software.

It seems I am forced to choose between an underpowered system that handles only one currency and leaves me to whip out a calculator to adjust accounts in the other currency every time the rate changes, or else invest a huge amount of money in an enormous enterprise solution and only use a small fraction of its features.

Any ideas?

 

[Chris]

Mike, there is nothing in the QuickBooks price range that handles multicurrency well. Macola is around 500 - 800 a module and more or less your best bet. I assume you would need a sales front end of some kind, payables, receivables, gl and inventory as a basic suite.

We have links with a open source enterprise system handling multi-currency and multi-languages (In fact, we specified and developed much of this package specifically for the small to medium enterprise with functionality only to be found in the bigger suites - first erp open source product ever.). This is called Compiere and it is truly open source. Runs on an Oracle database (Personal Oracle, I think 7 but I'm not sure at the moment)... and works quite well. Totally developed in Java. You could download this from http://sourceforge.net/. In this software segment, it is hard to find a suitable product at the right price. I would suggest that we get together and work through Compiere. If you're willing to put in the time, this is your cheapest option. One of our board members is an excellent Java programmer and could tweak where necessary as the source is available. I would put this on top of the list.

There is another smaller package out of Canada and I'll get you the name of it. While researching, you could look at the Microsoft Business Suites.. Search for Microsoft Business Solutions. One is Great Plains and this one... http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/smallbusiness.aspx
You have to bear in mind integration with your existing point of sale terminals.

Again, this is a difficult market segment and there is not much software catering for it. We run a combination of QuickBooks on the sales side and Peachtree on the inventory side and we are never satisfied with our own software. I think we have a similar set of requirements. Perhaps we should band together, install Compiere and get our excellent programmer to do the java tweaking that we both will require. A Java Jar or two with you will in any case be nice!

 

[Chris]

Two more notes..

Do a search on Traverse software for the product out of Canada.. Multi-Currency, Multi-Lingual. We are doing a Navision implementation now and this could also work, but it is really up there in terms of price. I'll let you have my bill for the consulting

 

[Mirador]

We could avoid all this if we just go back to the gold standard...

 

[MrMike]

Great suggestions

Lets definitely get together and discuss, I am intrigued by the open-source idea. I have long been an admirer of the open source community but my expertise are limited to MS only situations, so I have thus far been unable to participate. It seems these two schools are sufficiently polarized that there is scant documetnation available for MS trained people to migrate to open source.

Our problem with Macola is we have no front end (yes thats right it takes up to 30 minutes and opening about 7 modules to write a single invoice - and that doesn't include posting the damn thing to GL or receiving payments.)

Right now the database is so screwed up that I have 5 accounting types doing nothing but fighting with it to isolate and correct all the errors. Mostly they sit around scratching their heads complaining about how screwed up it is.

I am not an accountant and have learned through recent hard experience that accountants should not be trusted any further than is absolutely necessary and so I would like to have a system that I can actually get my head around.

P.S. Have you used the multi-currency feature in Canadian Quickbooks?

 

[heldengebroed]

We could avoid all this if we just go back to the gold standard...

Or to the Euro :classic:

Greetings


Johan

 

[MommC]

I use Quicken....and my son uses QuickBooks

to do both my personal accounting and business accounting.
The Quicken is used for personal and also our property accounts while QuickBooks is used for our retai/service business.
I can't tell you much about the QB (I could ask my son to email you tho' if you'd like to speak to him about it - he's an accountant!) but I can tell you from a book-keepers perspective that the Quicken is nice.....it has a currency conversion feature that lets me input pesos into my Canadian or American dollar accounts that will then convert at current exchange rates (downloaded daily via internet automatically) to plug into the account (puts the peso am't in the memo area for the entry).
The only drawback is for some reason the peso exchange rate doesn't update automatically so I have to physically go in and update it (wouldn't be much of a problem for you to get the official rate daily from the bank and input it).
You can keep the accounts in any particular currency you chose and I have bank account set up for my Canadian banks as well as my US$$ acc't (In Canada) and also in pesos for my DR Bank as well as a US$$ acc't (in my DR bank).
I'm not sure how it would integrate with your POS but the QuickBooks IS our POS in our retail store however we only have one location so not sure how it would work with more than one location.
Hope this helps a little .........
Feel free to PM is I can answer any other wuestions for you!

(PS my other son works for Microsoft as a "solutions" expert so he may be able to provide some assistance but at a "cost" , however I'm sure he'd be more than willing to find out if there is anything MS has to offer that would fit your needs without a "consultation" fee if you emailed him and told him his mother asked you to contact him regarding same! ).