MAS 500 Makes Its Way in the World with Multicurrency

Thursday, April 29, 2010 by Socius

MAS 500 has a multicurrency module for those companies’ international companies dealing with foreign currency. If you process currencies other than the US dollar, you may want to look at the features of this module.

You can use multi-currency with the following MAS500 modules:

• GL
• AP
• AR
• Cash Management
• Sales Order
• Purchase Order

In MAS 500 you define a home currency, for example USD (US dollar). The home currency defines how all the reports and transactional values in the system will be displayed.

Now you can define all the natural currencies for transactions. There is no limit to the number of currencies you can setup. In setting up these currencies you can define GL accounts for realized or unrealized exchange gains or losses by currency.

The multicurrency module is also where you maintain the exchange rate tables ..called schedules. You can define the exchange rates with effective dates and expiration dates if needed. You decide how frequently the exchange rates are updated..daily, weekly, monthly. You can also link an exchange rate schedule to a customer or vendor, or to each customer or vendor location.

Some other features specific to the MAS 500 multi-currency module include:

• Revalue the natural currency of transactions or accounts to reflect their current value, and automatically post the unrealized gains or losses.
• Revalue invoices, vouchers, or general ledger accounts marked as “Revalue.”
• Handle cash receipts, invoices, and credit memos in different currencies.
• Apply exchange rate schedules to a specific company or to all companies defined in Sage MAS 500.

 Multi-currency can save time and increase accuracy by automatically performing currency conversions for accounting transactions. The multi-currency model can help streamline period-end processing by eliminating the complication of having to manually adjust for multiple currencies and exchange rates.

By Jeff Steel, an Ohio Sage software consultant