Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

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siowena
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Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

Hi,
I use MMX for banks, cash, stocks & shares portfolios.

I'm moving from one country to another and for easy would like all the balances, etc. on home page, etc. to be displayed in the new country currency instead of the old country currency.
The currencies of the individual accounts are not changing, so account in my home country will still be in the home local currency and likewise old accounts in the old country will remain.

I tried to search for 'move country' 'change base currency' but no useful results display.

Just looking to see if anyone if there are any issues with just changing the base currency from old to new (e.g. USD - GBP). Is there any other updates I need to do?
What about currency conversions on older transactions?

Thanks, Andy
MartinArmstrong
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by MartinArmstrong »

Andy, can I suggest that whatever answer you are given, that you take a copy of your <database_name>.mmb file, rename the copy to TEST.mmb, and do a test run of updating to your new currency on that.

You'd then have the ability to swap between the two databases (see menu File | Recent Files) and compare values to satisfy yourself that everything is as you expect it to be.
nstein
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by nstein »

I think the general process will be:
  1. Switch base currency via Options -> General -> Base Currency. This automatically clears the conversion rates for your new base currency but does NOT replace the rates currently stored for any other currency. In your example you are switching from USD -> GBP. If you have an account in EUR, all of your EUR/GBP conversions will still be using the EUR/USD rate. You have to delete and update the rates yourself.
  2. Go to Tools -> Organize Currency...
  3. Select each currency one-by-one (other than your new base currency), delete all existing rates in the table on the right, then click the "Download Currency Values history" button to fetch the new rates for your existing transactions.
If you're comfortable with SQL you could execute

Code: Select all

DELETE FROM CURRENCYHISTORY_V1;
prior to step 2, then you don't have to delete the rates in the Organize Currency dialog, just download the new ones. Might save a few mouse clicks depending on how many currencies you use.

I agree with Martin, try it on a backup first.
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

MartinArmstrong wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 1:51 pm ...that you take a copy of your <database_name>.mmb file, ...
Yep, this is my normal process ... lesson learnt from many years in IT. Never can have too many backups.
siowena
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

Thanks @nstein, I'll give it a go and see what happens. Yep, backup 1st.
siowena
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

General findings:

The suggestion worked well, following is findings from examining the results - I'll update/edit this as I find more.

1. Old AMD (Armenian Dram) exchange rates would not load. Looking at the yahoo currency site, it doesn't seem to hold old historical records for minor currencies. I used xe.com to get some of the historical rates. I suppose you could also use spreadsheets with the old and new currency exchange rates to work it out if needed for a large number of transaction dates. I only had 18 days as it was a vacation so manual entry from xe.com was done.

2. Assets. Assets values entered, e.g. a car/property does not convert as it doesn't have a current when an asset is entered. So a Car in 85,000AED becomes 85,000 GBP and not 18,085.11 GBP. Values need to be converted and updated manually.
- As I've not used Assets extensively (not sure how to use it yet) - I'm not sure if there's any impact on the % appreciate/depreciate entries. There also seems to be a function to add transactions to the asset, this definitely has currency on one side of the transaction screen.

3. Budget tables. This assumes base currency, therefore all values have to be converted & updated manually. (or delete the old budget year/month entries if no longer needed for reference).
nstein
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by nstein »

For assets instead of just manually maintaining the value you can add an asset transaction for 85,000 AED which should apply the conversion to GBP at the proper rate. Good point about the budget numbers, I hadn't thought of that.

I think there are quite a few enhancements that should be made to streamline the base currency switch. Clearing old rates, downloading new rates, converting manual asset values, and probably even the budget updates can all be done automatically. When you finish your evaluation it would be great to log an enhancement request on GitHub that covers your findings so we can try to make it easier.
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

Not sure this is related, but the share update button the toolbar no longer updates the prices. I'm not sure this has anything to do with the change of currency as opening the backup (pre-base currency change) seems to have the same problem. Just a wild guess, it's probably having issues with the new 'cookie' type websites now I've returned to UK/EU area.

If I go into each share/stock and press the button there, it updates - kinda - it downloads the share history but doesn't update the share price and recalc the share/stock current value.
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by MartinArmstrong »

Not sure this is related, but the share update button the toolbar no longer updates the prices.
Separate problem, see https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/5894 and https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/5890
siowena
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Re: Moving country - impact of changing base currency?

Post by siowena »

MartinArmstrong wrote: Tue May 09, 2023 6:53 am
Not sure this is related, but the share update button the toolbar no longer updates the prices.
Separate problem, see https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/5894 and https://github.com/moneymanagerex/money ... ssues/5890
Mine is slightly different to this.
- the toolbar button produces no responses, no dialogue nor does it update any stock prices.
- most of the stock prices will update the history if I go into each individually and press the update button but doesn't then update the stock price against the holding and therefore doesn't re-calc the stock holding values, total values, etc.
- one or two of the stocks are giving a 'date before' issue which is weird as the purchase dates on the stock are from 2008.

I'll investigate more and then raise the necessary GitHub issues.

EDIT: 11May
- the one or two stocks that gave 'date before' issue was because for some reason the Portfolio account had a date after the 1st transaction on the stocks. Not sure why this is now an issue after moving country as dates formats dd/mm/yyyy are same in both countries.
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