
Does YNAB have plans for multiple currencies support within one budget?
I know this question has already been raised here a few times, but do you guys(the YNAB team) have any plans about supporting multiple currencies? I think it's an essential functionality for a budgeting app.
There're 3rd-party tools that can convert currencies for your transactions, why you cannot do the same? A few years passed since people started asking you, and still no progress in this direction?
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Hi Gray Griffin !
In short, having multiple currencies in a budget is ideally something we would love to better support in the future. If there's a certain way you'd like to see this option function, I hope you'll take the time to submit a Feature Request.
One thing that may take some time developing is how to ensure the exchange rates are accurate or apply correctly in the overall numbers. As you know, this could get to be pretty intricate given all the currency options that could be in a single budget at one time.
In the meantime, another YNABer created the Multi-currency for YNAB API extension. We don't officially support the community created API extensions, so if you have any questions you'll need to reach out to the tool developer, but you may want to give it a try to see if it suits your needs! :)
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Hi, I am still on trial phase but already felt the lack of multi-currency a negative aspect. I used Home Budget and despite its difficult manual interface, it could manage multi-currency very well and for me that was a plus.
Would be great to have this option.
For now I am pretending the Euro account to be in Pounds... but its misleading anyway.
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Actually multicurrency is quite simple (unlike the new credit card approach 😉). One doesnt need to budget in several currencies. Only the register need to support several currencies. And that is simple too.
My budget is in RUB, my credit card is in RUB as well. When i buy someting from ebay i pay in USD, CAD, AUD or whatever. Before the transaction is fully processed my bank shows it foreign currency and gives me an apporximate Fx. After the transaction is cleared the bank gives me final amount in RUB and puts the initial foreign amount in comments.
Same can work in YNAB. Nobody's following their budgets down to one cent. An amount in currency + Fx from ANY source is enough to give an idea and allow not to overspend... too much 🙂.
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g000phy said:
Only the register need to support several currenciesNot quite. Working with the equivalent value in a single budget is the second common approach, and you've discussed the issue with transaction entry (converting to the equivalent value). The remaining issue is due to the fact that someone has an account that is actually in a different currency than the budget currency.
The equivalent value of that money changes as the exchange rate changes, impacting the budget (spending plan). I don't know about you, but even a 10% shift (not uncommon) in TOTAL BUDGET FUNDS would mandate a change in my spending plans.
They would need to periodically reconcile that YNAB account, making a reconciliation adjustment. Having a category to absorb this "effective" spending/income would be a smart thing.
Thus the tradeoffs:
Separate budgets (dedicated currencies) -- result in duplicate categories and have difficulty with holistic planning.
Single budget (equivalent currency) -- have to babysit the foreign account balances and the impact to future spending plans.
Pick your poison.
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Thanks everyone for spending time giving your feedback.
I am still in the 30 days free test hence have space to play with the App. The multi currency is quite important to me so I have filled in a functionality suggestion in the Website, just so the development team and YNAB business strategists can get the feeling of their customer base needs.
I will try the multi budget for a while since my transactions are fairly simple and the expenses are either in one or another. It can become more tricky as using a tech back like Revolut which is quite current agnostic - but for this I solved the issue with a single category where I pay Revolut when required (not sure if there is a better idea).
So, hopping that YNAB will one day support multi currencies (I have it with Home Budget) I will continue to play with it for now.
Thanks everyone.
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Hey guys, there is a new solution to this pain, a currency converter for YNAB that I made. Please see this thread, where I describe it in detail: https://support.youneedabudget.com/t/p8hybcj/app-currency-converter-for-ynab Cheers! :)