QuickBooks Desktop vs QBO Multiple Currencies

The course will start by discussing how to get access to both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. Intuit, the owner of QuickBooks often offers a free 30-day trial for each software package.

This will be a project based course. We will enter transaction in Excel before entering them into the accounting software, QuickBooks desktop and QuickBooks Online. Excel is more transparent, making it easier to understand the process. QuickBooks will then automate the process making it more efficient.

We will learn how to turn multicurrency on in both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. We will learn which accounts will be affected most by multicurrency transactions, these accounts being cash account types, accounts receivable account types, and accounts payable account types.

This course will work an example problems related to the sales cycles and the purchases cycle. The sales cycle will focus in on tracking foreign currency receivables. the purchases cycle will focus on foreign currency payables.

We will also demonstrate transactions related to forward contracts. We will discuss the uses of forward contracts including for speculative purposes and to mitigate risk on foreign currency transactions.

The multiple currency feature is useful when the company is holding onto cash in a foreign currency, the software helping us to record the home currency equivalent for financial statement presentation.

Multiple currency functionality is also helpful when we make sales on account, sending an invoice, hoping to get paid in the future, tracking accounting receivable, but expecting to be paid in a foreign currency. The accounts receivable account will need to be valued in the home currency even though we will be paid in a foreign one.

We have a similar situation when we make purchases on account, promising to pay in a foreign currency at some point in the future. The accounts payable account will need to be valued in the home currency equivalence even though we will be paying in a foreign currency.