Currency and how it is converted

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Definition

Your Beacon instance has one reporting currency. Every consolidated figure — every dashboard, every forecast, every number in a board pack — is stated in it. You can bill in as many currencies as you like. Those are your transaction currencies, and every amount entering Beacon is tagged with the one it arrived in. That tag is what makes conversion possible. Two conversions, and they deliberately use different rates. The split is deliberate and it is the point of the whole model. If forward views moved with the market, you could never tell whether a forecast missed because the business missed or because a currency moved.

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How it behaves

A rate move never restates a figure you have already seen. Both amounts are kept permanently — the original in the currency it arrived in, and the converted amount at the rate that applied then. Nothing is quietly re-converted at today’s rate. A sealed figure reproduces at the rates it was sealed with. The rates in force are captured in the snapshot along with everything else. A board pack from August shows the same figures today that it showed in August, whatever the rate has done since. Forward views hold their rate for the whole year. A plan produced in the first quarter and one produced in the fourth are directly comparable, because both use the same rate. Re-setting the plan rate mid-year is possible, but it breaks that comparison, so it is reserved for a large move rather than used as routine maintenance. When a forecast meets an actual, the gap splits in two. One part is what the business did differently from plan. The other part is what the currency did. They add up to the total difference, and they are reported separately rather than one being inferred as whatever is left over.

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Constraints

• One reporting currency per instance, and it is not a setting. A company that genuinely reports in two currencies runs two Beacon instances.
• Beacon does not choose your rate source. The primary source and its backup are designated at setup and recorded, with an audit trail for any rate that is later corrected. Beacon reads what you designate; it does not publish a rate of its own.
• An untagged amount is not converted. A monetary value arriving without a currency has no defined conversion, and Beacon will not guess one.
• Changing your reporting currency is not a settings change. It restates history and re-bases every plan rate for the current year. It is a deliberate act, not a preference.
• This is not accounting translation. These rules exist so operational figures stay comparable across periods. They do not produce statements an auditor signs, and they are not a substitute for your accounting close.

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