Transitioning existing customers and vendors to Multi-currency

Once you enable Multi-currency, assigning a customer currency to a new customer is as easy as populating any other field. You simply select it when you create or edit the organization record. The only requirement is that you have not yet posted anything against the organization.

You can change the currency of a customer account as long as none of the following scenarios applies:

  • The organization is associated with posted billing items, either as the revenue organization (the organization that was billed), or the cost organization (the organization where the work was done)
  • The organization has 10,000 or more pending billing items
  • The organization is the parent organization of another organization
  • The organization is the billing organization for another organization

You can change the currency of a vendor account as long as none of the following scenarios applies:

  • You have created a purchase order for the vendor
  • At least one product has this account selected as its vendor

NOTE  For vendor accounts, data modification is not available. If the vendor has existing dependencies, you may want to assign your internal currency to the organization so that the values in existing POs are not assigned a different currency, and create a new vendor account to use with the new currency.

Selecting a different currency for customers with pending billing items

IMPORTANT  The various types of billing items differ when it comes to changes in the customer currency. You must review and update billable amounts based on the following behavior:

Pending Billing Item Type Description
Labor The currency symbol for pending labor items will be updated to the new currency. The billable amount for the labor is recalculated using the saved role rates and work types for the new currency.
Charges, Services, Service Bundles, Milestones and Subscriptions Billable amounts for pending non-labor items for this organization will remain the same, but the currency symbol will be changed. For example, a billable amount of $100.00 will be changed to £100.00. This change will also be applied to pending contract service and service bundle periods for the entire duration of the contract.
Expenses Expenses are incurred in various currencies independently from the currency of the customer organization they will be billed to.
When the expense report is approved, the value of the expense is calculated in both the internal and the customer currency.
• If the customer currency is updated before the expense report is approved, the value is calculated for the correct customer currency, so there is no issue
• If the customer currency is changed after the expense report approval, the currency symbol is updated, but the value is not

Transitioning customers with posted billing items

Transitioning existing customers to Multi-currency is more complicated. All posted billing items must be recalculated using the correct exchange rate with the customer currency, which has been fluctuating over time. Simply changing the currency symbol would mean all posted amounts are incorrect, so we do not allow it.

To transition existing customers who have posted billing items to Multi-currency, you have the following options:

You create a brand new organization for the customer in your Autotask instance using the new currency setting, and copy or re-create all dependent entities such as contacts, tickets and opportunities that are relevant and will be active in the future. This will be a manual process that is entirely under your control, and will be your responsibility.

This is a good option if you were just recently implemented, and do not have a lot of data associated with customers you want to assign a new currency. It works well if you created contacts, projects and tickets. It is not a feasible option if you have set up contracts, devices, subscriptions, or have integrated with an RMM tool.

NOTE  You will have two accounts for the customer, one in your internal currency that will contain all billing items up to the present, and one in the new customer currency that will be associated with all future business.

You engage Datto Professional Services to perform a data modification. You will provide us with an Excel file that lists the organizations that you want to assign a different currency, and the exchange rate you want us to use to recalculate historic billing data. You can choose to use one average exchange rate, or supply us with one exchange rate per quarter. You can also leave it to us to look up the correct exchange rates.

Datto Professional Services will take your Autotask instance offline to do the following:

  • Assign the respective new currency to all organizations
  • Use the exchange rates you provided to recalculate either the Unit Price (Customer Currency) or the Unit Price (Internal Currency). Which field is recalculated depends on the strategy you used to work around the lack of Multi-currency.

Some of our customers have set up each billing item multiple times, once for each currency.

EXAMPLE  You internal currency is the British Pound. You are offering the same Monthly Server Maintenance service in 3 currencies: Pound, Euro and Danish Krone. You set up 3 services:
Monthly Server Maintenance (GBP) - 100.00
Monthly Server Maintenance (EUR) - 120.00
Monthly Server Maintenance (DKK) - 895.00

Depending on the location of the customer, you select the appropriate version of the service. Because you did not select a currency on the Local Terms & Symbols page, when you generate an invoice or export the billing transaction, the value in the billable amount field is transferred to your accounting software without a currency symbol. In your accounting software, the customer is associated with the correct currency, and the invoice you generate contains both the right amounts and the right currency.

The drawback of this approach was that reports you generated in Autotask were quite useless if they contained items from more than one currency, and profitability reporting was not really possible.

If you used your own currency to bill customers in other countries, you may or may not have selected a currency on the Local Terms & Symbols page, but each billing item was only ever set up once, in your own currency.

EXAMPLE  You internal currency is the British Pound. You set up one service:
Monthly Server Maintenance - 100.00

If you employed Strategy 1, the Unit Prices (Customer Currency) will be correct when the new currency is assigned to your customers. We will recalculate the values in the Unit Price (Internal Currency) fields using the following formula:

EXAMPLE  Unit Price (Internal Currency) = Unit Price (Customer Currency)* Exchange Rate

If you employed Strategy 2, the Unit Prices (Internal Currency) will be correct when the new currency is assigned to your customers. We will recalculate the values in the Unit Price (Customer Currency) fields using the following formula:

EXAMPLE  Unit Price (Customer Currency) = Unit Price (Internal Currency) / Exchange Rate

The calculated values will be correct to the degree the exchange rates we apply during the conversion approximate the actual exchange rates on the day of the transaction, but they will not be exactly correct. Currencies fluctuate constantly, and if you bill customers in a foreign currency, you will not know your exact revenue until the customer pays the bill and the payment is converted to your internal currency. This is even more true when you use an average exchange rate for historical transactions.

The conversion should, however, result in numbers that are within a couple of percent of the actual price or revenue numbers.

NOTE  The advantage of Data Modification is that you will be able to continue using the same organization record for the customer. Future billing items will be recalculated, as well, and you do not have to terminate existing contracts and create new ones with new prices.

IMPORTANT   Invoices are archived documents that will not be touched in either scenario. This will mean that either the currency or the amount will differ from the posted transaction.

Transition process

YOU: Contact Datto to have us activate the Multi-currency module

If you are interested in having Multi-currency enabled, please contact your Datto Account Manager or Account Executive. We will contact you and answer any questions you might have. If you decide to go ahead, you will sign a Scope of Work document for a Professional Services engagement. Since your Autotask instance modification will require a brief outage while the scripts is run, we will schedule the date for your Multi-currency implementation.

YOU: Notify your customers about the transition to a different currency

Notify the customers you want to assign a different currency that starting on a given date, you will begin doing business with them in their own currency. Communicate your price list in the new currency or the exchange rates the pricing will be based on, and conclude any pricing negotiations, if necessary.

Don't assume that everyone will want to switch - give them the opportunity to opt out of the currency change.

DATTO: Install the Multi-currency module

We will install the Multi-currency module to your Autotask instance.

YOU: Enable and configure Multi-currency in your Autotask instance

Before we perform the data transformation, you must enable Multi-currency at your end and complete all configuration tasks. Refer to Configuring Multi-currency. You will also need to send us an Excel spreadsheet with a list of organizations that will be assigned a new currency. We will need the following information:

  • Organization ID
  • Organization Name
  • New Currency
  • Exchange Rate

IMPORTANT  All related organizations (parent organization, sub-organizations and billing organizations) must be assigned the same currency!

DATTO: Copy your Autotask instance to a sandbox

Once you have configured your Autotask instance for Multi-currency and submitted your Excel spreadsheet, we will copy your Autotask instance to a sandbox and create your custom data modification scripts. We will run the data modification on the copy in the sandbox.

YOU: Review your Autotask instance in the sandbox

You will have 1 week to review the data and verify that everything is as you expected. You will give us the go-ahead to run the same calculations on your real Autotask instance.

DATTO: Perform the data modification on your Autotask instance

On the appointed day and time, we will take your Autotask instance offline to run the data modification scripts.

We will assign the new currency to all organizations that won't be using your internal currency. We will use the spreadsheet that you provided.

  • If you employed Strategy 1, the Unit Prices (Customer Currency) will be correct when the new currency is assigned to your customers. We will recalculate the values in the Unit Price (Internal Currency) fields by using the following formula:

Unit Price (Internal Currency) = Unit Price (Customer Currency)* Exchange Rate

  • If you employed Strategy 2, the Unit Prices (Internal Currency) will be correct when the new currency is assigned to your customers. We will recalculate the values in the Unit Price (Customer Currency) fields by using the following formula:

Unit Price (Customer Currency) = Unit Price (Internal Currency) / Exchange Rate

YOU: Confirm that the Data Modification succeeded

As soon as the data modification is complete, you will review your data and confirm that it was a success. If there are any issues, notify us immediately.

NOTE  We will take your sandbox offline to eliminate the chance that you start working in the wrong copy of your Autotask instance.