Help Center / Organization Setup

Currency Settings

This article explains how currencies are configured in Light, including local currency setup on entities and FX-related account configuration.

Understanding currency in Light

Light supports multi-currency accounting:

  • Base currency: The company-wide reporting currency, set when your company is created (it cannot be changed afterwards)
  • Local currency: Each company entity's operating currency, set during entity creation
  • Transaction currency: The currency transactions are posted in (may differ from local currency)
  • Exchange rates: Conversion rates between currencies for translation and revaluation. Light applies daily ECB rates by default; you can override these with custom FX rates, set daily or monthly

Configuring local currencies for entities

Each entity has its own local currency, set when the entity is created:

  1. Go to Settings (gear icon) → Entities
  2. Click + Create entity (for new entities) or click an existing entity and then Edit
  3. Select the Local currency from the dropdown. This field is required — you can't save the entity without it, and there's no default
  4. Click Create or Save

The local currency is the default currency for all transactions at that entity. Transactions can be posted in alternative currencies with automatic conversion.

Good to know: Local currency cannot be changed after entity creation. If you need to change it, you'll need to create a new entity.

FX account configuration

Light uses designated accounts for foreign exchange gains, losses, and revaluations. These are configured in the Account defaults tab:

  1. Go to Accounting → Chart of accounts
  2. Click the Account defaults tab
  3. Configure the following FX-related accounts:
    • FX loss: Account for realized foreign exchange losses
    • FX gain: Account for realized foreign exchange gains
    • FX unrealized: Account for unrealized FX gains and losses
    • Currency translation adjustment: Account for currency translation differences
    • Rounding: Account for rounding gain/loss on currency conversions

These accounts receive the gain/loss entries generated during currency conversions and period-end revaluations.

Enable revaluation on an account

To include an account in period-end FX revaluation, turn on revaluation from its edit form.

  1. Open Chart of accounts, then open the account you want to revalue
  2. In the FX settings section, set Entity revaluation settings to Revalue (the other option is Do not revalue)
  3. Set Group revaluation settings to the exchange rate type you want applied at group level
  4. Click Save

Only accounts set to Revalue are picked up by the FX revaluation task below.

Currency revaluation

At period end, Light revalues balances held in non-local currencies to current exchange rates and posts the difference as unrealized gain or loss:

  1. Navigate to Accounting → Accounting periods
  2. Click on the period you want to revalue
  3. In the Tasks view, find the FX revaluation task
  4. Click Run revaluations. If the task has already run for this period, the button reads Re-run revaluations

Light identifies every account set to Revalue that holds a non-local currency balance, calculates the unrealized gain or loss, and posts adjustment journal entries automatically.

Before you can run this task, two things must already be done:

  • The previous period's FX revaluation task must be completed for all entities. If it isn't, you'll see: "Fx revaluation tasks in previous periods are still not completed." There's no way to force-run or skip this — the only fix is to go back and complete the earlier period's FX revaluation first.
  • The current period's lock tasks (AP, AR, and JE) must also be completed. If they aren't, you'll see a separate error: "Lock tasks for accounting period are still not completed."

Tip: Run FX revaluation before closing other period tasks, so your financial statements reflect current rates — but plan for the fact that periods must be revalued in period order; you can't skip ahead.

Best practices

  • Set each entity's local currency to match its primary operating country
  • Configure FX account defaults before posting multi-currency transactions
  • Run FX revaluation at every period close, in period order — you cannot revalue a period until the prior one's FX revaluation is complete
  • Set Entity revaluation settings to Revalue on every balance sheet account that holds foreign currency balances
  • Verify exchange rate accuracy before processing large transactions

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