Understanding organization’s base currency in Dynamics 365 (CRM)

Introduction

In this blog, I have explained what should be the base currency of an organization and what problems you may encounter if you do mistakes in selecting it.

What is organization’s base currency?

Organization’s base currency is the currency which is selected at the time of installing D365 On-Premise or while configuring D365 Online.

Where currency is used?

All entities in CRM have a lookup reference to Currency entity. This lookup reference determines the currency in which all the Currency type fields should be captured for a record. E.g. On opportunity record, we have a lookup to Currency entity i.e. we select currency on the opportunity record. So based on selecting the currency on opportunity all its currency fields like Est. Revenue, Total Amount, Discounts are captured.

What is _base field which gets created for each currency type field?

If you have observed, when we create a field of type Currency, its corresponding _base field is created automatically by CRM. This field always gets calculated in Organization’s base currency.

How multiple currencies work and how the exchanges rates are applied?

When you install the CRM, by default it enables only single currency which is considered as organization’s base currency. The Exchange rate of Base Currency is set to 1 and we cannot change it.

When we add new currency (from Setting > Business Management > Currencies), we select the currency code and put Exchange rates which are corresponding to the base currency. These exchange rates are used later while calculating base amounts.

How to capture/update exchange rates and how it impacts existing records?

Exchanges rates in CRM are not captured automatically. You will need to manually put exchange rates either at the time of enabling currency or update it later in existing currencies.

When we update exchange rates in CRM, it does not apply to existing amounts of the existing records. When any amount field gets updated on existing records, the updated exchange rates are used to calculate base values.

Understand with examples

Let’s say, we have below setup in our CRM Environment.

Organization Currency: US Dollar (USD)

Additional Currencies:

1. Indian Rupees (INR) with Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 68.03 INR
2. Australian Dollar (AUD) with Exchange Rate: 1 USD = 1.39 AUD

Below table contains examples of quote records with different combinations of currencies.

Quote ID	Currency selected on record	Total Amount (captured using currency selected on record)	Total Amount _Base (captured using organization’s currency)
DLKJ548	INR	INR 158900	USD 2336.18
KEIK902	USD	USD 59800	USD 59800
PELJI7453	AUD	AUD 6500	USD 4681.88

 

Unforeseen problems which might occur later

1. Organization’s base currency can be selected only at the installation/configuration time of CRM. We cannot change base currency once CRM is installed/configured.
2. Sales goals are always captured in organization’s base currency. We cannot change currency on Sales Goal record.
3. If you select base currency incorrectly, then for reporting purposes, you might always need to convert the amounts in your currency using exchange rates.

Case studies

Case 1

Contoso is Indian company which works on Indian Rupees currency. All the clients of this company are Indian clients and they don’t have any other clients from other countries.

Solution: In this case, only single currency is needed which will be organization’s base currency i.e. Indian Rupees (INR).

Case 2

Contoso is Indian company which works on Indian Rupees currency. This company has clients across globe like US, Australia, New Zealand etc. The company has 85% clients from US and remaining 15% customers are distributed among other countries.

Solution: Even though, the company has 85% customers from US, and no customers from India, the company works on Indian Rupees currency. Hence, the organization’s base currency should be set to Indian Rupees (INR) and additionally USD, AUD, NZD currencies should be enabled with their respective exchange rates.

Case 3

Contoso is Indian company which works on US Dollar currency. This company has clients across globe like US, Australia, New Zealand, and India etc. The company has 85% clients from India and remaining 15% customers are distributed among other countries.

Solution: Even though, the company is Indian company and has 85% customers from India, the company works on US Dollar currency. Hence, the organization’s base currency should be set to US Dollar (USD) and additionally INR, AUD, NZD currencies should be enabled with their respective exchange rates.