Exchange rates

Overview

These files provide exchange rates between the trading currencies and the primary currency. Your primary currency is normally the currency of the country in which you live, and which you use to pay your taxes and bills. The trading currencies are the currencies in which you buy and sell each investment. The program needs to know the exchange rates between these two types of currencies, if you have bought or sold investments in currencies other than your primary currency, so it can convert the amounts automatically. Please refer to the page about currencies to learn more about the different types of currencies.

Examples

Here is how the demo exchange rates are defined in the example files.

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| Cur1 | Cur2 | Start      | End        | Rate   | Comments                                                                                 |
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| GBP  | EUR  | 2025-01-01 | 2025-01-01 | 1.2086 | Example rate for GBP/EUR that covers a period of a single day                            |
| GBP  | EUR  | 2025-01-02 | 2025-01-02 | 1.2087 | Example rate for GBP/EUR that covers a period of a single day                            |
| GBP  | EUR  | 2025-01-03 | 2025-01-03 | 1.2053 | Example rate for GBP/EUR that covers a period of a single day                            |
| GBP  | USD  | 2024-10-01 | 2024-10-31 | 1.3211 | Exchange rate for GBP/USD published on the british government website for October 2024   |
| GBP  | USD  | 2024-11-01 | 2024-11-30 | 1.2952 | Exchange rate for GBP/USD published on the british government website for November 2024  |
| GBP  | USD  | 2024-12-01 | 2024-12-31 | 1.2662 | Exchange rate for GBP/USD published on the british government website for December 2024  |
| GBP  | USD  | 2025-01-01 | 2025-01-31 | 1.2707 | Exchange rate for GBP/USD published on the british government website for January 2025   |
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Currencies

The Cur1 and Cur2 columns define the two currencies involved in the definition of the exchange rate.

Period

The Start and End columns define the time period for which the exchange rate is specified. Each exchange rate can be provided for a period as short as a single day or as long as you want. The shorter the periods the more accurate the conversions will be and the more entries will have to be provided to covers transactions.

Rate

The rate is the number by which you must multiply a monetary amount to covert it from the first currency into the second currency. You will often have to use decimal numbers to get accurate results.