Grzegorz GRACZYK
Junior ERP Software Developer at RSM Poland

Well, after a great deal of effort, our team has finally managed to automate the process of downloading foreign exchange rates into the NetSuite system.

In Poland, the process of converting sales and purchase invoices issued in a foreign currency is a complex process. The provisions of the Goods and Services Tax Act define the method of settling such invoices in a foreign currency. In accordance with the above provisions, when it comes to the booking and settling of invoices issued in a foreign currency, the average exchange rate of a given currency, published by the National Bank of Poland (NBP) or the European Central Bank (ECB) on the last business day preceding the day the tax obligation arises should be taken into account. An exception may be issuing an invoice in a foreign currency with different dates of tax obligation commencement and the date of issue.

The huge advantage of the NetSuite system is that not only does it operate in the basic currency, but it also enables the addition of new currencies to the system. Moreover, the system allows editing the already defined currencies. In addition, it is possible to manually edit the currency exchange rates. The NetSuite system offers several ways to update the exchange rates, including a manual adjustment using the menu (Lists -> Accounting -> Exchange rates) or by importing data from a file with a CSV extension.

From the point of view of an outsider, all the methods described above may seem a bit time-consuming. With our customers in mind, in the location package, our company prepared the option of downloading foreign exchange rates automatically based on the data saved in JSON or XML formats via an application programming interface (API) from the website of the National Bank of Poland (NBP). At night, our script downloads all up-to-date foreign exchange rates for currencies that have already been defined in the system. It is a facilitation that has significantly improved the automation of invoicing in a foreign currency.

It is also worth noting that the NetSuite system allows the export of foreign exchange rates into a CSV or a PDF file or as an Excel document. A wide spectrum of possibilities as regards the filtration of foreign exchange rates in a given time interval enables the generation of a report with the foreign exchange rates adjusted to our needs and expectations.

You can read more about Oracle NetSuite localization package here.