Your base currency is the currency every amount, invoice and report is kept in. You pick it when you create your workspace. If you picked the wrong one, you can change it here — as long as you have not recorded anything yet.
Before you start
- You need the Company settings permission.
- The currency can only be changed while the company has no transactions: no sales, purchases, receipts, expenses, journals, opening balances or stock. Importing customers, suppliers or items with opening balances or stock counts as a transaction, so fix the currency before you import balances.
Steps
- Go to Setup → Preferences and open the General tab.
- In Base Currency, pick your currency from the list (type part of its name or code to search, e.g. euro or KES).
- Press Save. The Currency Symbol and Main Currency Name fill in by themselves from the currency you picked, and every screen and printout uses them.
Tips
- Under the box you will see either Can be changed until the first transaction is recorded or Locked. When it says Locked, the box is read-only.
- To trade in a second currency (for example a supplier who bills in US dollars), keep your base currency and add the other one under Setup → Currencies instead.
- The Minor Currency Name (cents, pence…) is typed by you and can be changed at any time.
Common problems
- "The base currency cannot be changed because this company already has … recorded" → Every amount is stored as a number in the base currency. Changing it now would relabel those amounts (100 dollars would suddenly read 100 euros) without converting them, so it is refused. If you are still trying things out, start a new company with the right currency; otherwise add the other currency under Setup → Currencies.
- The Base Currency box is greyed out → The company already has transactions; see the point above.
- The symbol did not change on a printout → Reopen the document after saving; screens that were already open keep the old symbol until they reload.