Translating Balances
You can translate your actual and budget account balances from your functional currency to another currency. If you have average balance processing enabled, you can translate average, as well as standard, balances. If you want to report financial results in Euro, you can use General Ledger's translation feature to translate your account balances from your functional currency to Euro.
Run translation after you have completed all journal activity for an accounting period. If you post additional journal entries or change your translation rates after running translation for a period, you must retranslate. Additionally, if you change the account type for an account segment value and want to retranslate your actual account balances, you must re-enter or change the period-end and average exchange rates for the periods you want to retranslate.
Rates Used for Translation
General Ledger translates your accounts according to SFAS #52 (U.S.), using period-end rates for asset and liability accounts, period-average rates for revenue and expense accounts, and historical rates or amounts for owners' equity accounts.
Additional Information: See: Notes on Translation with Historical Rates and Amounts
When you translate average balances, General Ledger uses averages of different rates, depending on whether the system is translating a non-historical account or a historical account:
Non-historical accounts: General Ledger will use averages of daily rates for the rate type specified in the Set of Books window.
Historical accounts: General Ledger uses a weighted average of the historical rates across the number of periods in the specified range being translated.
Cumulative Translation Adjustment Account
In accordance with SFAS 52 (U.S.), when you translate your actual balances into another currency, General Ledger automatically sets the balance of the Cumulative Translation Adjustment account to the net difference needed to balance your translated chart of accounts. If you have multiple companies or balancing entities within a set of books, General Ledger automatically sets the balance of the translation adjustment accounts of each company or balancing entity. General Ledger does not make balancing adjustments to this account when you translate budget balances.
Multiple Reporting Currencies
General Ledger's translation feature is used to translate amounts from your functional currency to another currency at the account balances level. General Ledger's Multiple Reporting Currencies (MRC) feature is used to convert amounts from your functional currency to a reporting currency at the transactions level.
MRC is specifically intended for use by organizations that must regularly and routinely report their financial results in multiple currencies. MRC is not intended as a replacement for General Ledger's translation feature. For example, an organization with a once-a-year need to translate their financial statements to their parent company's currency for consolidation purposes, but no other foreign currency reporting needs, should use General Ledger's standard translation feature instead of MRC.
If you use MRC and have properly initialized your reporting set of book's balances, you can report directly from your reporting set of books without running Translation. For more information, see: Notes on Using Translation with Multiple Reporting Currencies
Prerequisites
Define a period in your calendar that precedes the first period you want to translate.
Define a period in your calendar following the period you want to translate.
Enter period and historical rates for your target currency.
If you are translating budgets, define your source and target budgets.
To translate actual account balances to a foreign currency:
1. Navigate to the Translate Balances window.
General Ledger displays the Functional Currency for your set of books as the currency you are translating.
2. Select Actual for the Balance Type to translate.
3. (Optional) If average balance processing is enabled in your set of books, select a Usage:
Standard: To translate standard balances only.
Average: To translate average balances only.
Both: To translate both standard and average balances.
4. Mark the All checkbox to translate balances for all balancing segment values, or enter a single Balancing Segment Value for which you want to translate balances.
5. Enter the Target Currency to which you want to translate. You can choose any enabled currency other than your functional currency.
6. Enter the Period of the balances you want to translate.
Attention: The Period you enter the first time you translate actual balances will be the earliest period for which you can translate actual balances for any subsequent translations.
7. Choose the Translate button to begin a concurrent process to translate account balances. General Ledger displays the request ID (Req ID).
Additional Information: Translating both standard and average balances generates two separate concurrent requests; one to translate standard balances and one to translate average balances. Both request IDs will be displayed in the Req ID field.
To translate budget balances to a foreign currency:
1. Navigate to the Translate Balances window.
General Ledger displays the Functional Currency for your set of books.
2. Choose Budget as the Balance Type to translate. If average balances are enabled for your set of books, the Usage field will display Standard and cannot be changed.
3. Mark the All checkbox to translate balances for all balancing segment values, or enter a single Balancing Segment Value for which you want to translate balances.
4. Enter the Target Currency to which you want to translate. You can choose any enabled currency other than your functional currency.
5. Enter the Period of the balances you want to translate. You can translate budget balances for any period regardless of the period you choose to translate first.
6. Enter the Source budget whose account balances you want to translate, and the Target budget for which you want to calculate translated account balances. You can translate one source budget into one or more target budgets.
Attention: You should not translate more than one source budget into the same target budget for the same period and currency because each source budget translation will override the balances in your target budget.
The budget year containing the period you are translating must be open in your source budget.
7. Choose the Translate button to begin a concurrent process to translate account balances. General Ledger displays the request ID (Req ID).
See Also
Defining Calendars
Entering Period Rates
Entering Historical Rates
Assigning the Set of Books Accounts
Defining Budgets
Overview of Multi-Currency Accounting
Notes on Translating Average Balances
Multiple Reporting Currencies Overview
Overview of Average Balance Processing