We hear this a lot from US-based forwarders, who will only post invoices from overseas agents in USD, rather than in the native currency specified on the invoice (EUR, AUD, JPY, CAD, etc.).


If this is your policy, you should change it. BravoTran will not be able to automate these invoices for you, since it is designed to read the invoice as-written and match to accruals as-entered. Completely separate from BravoTran, this policy creates significantly more work for your team.


Within BravoTran

We made the specific design decision early on to not support this manual currency adjustment process for three reasons:

  1. We do not want to have a set of exchange rates maintained separately from your forwarder TMS (e.g. CargoWise).
  2. We want the data extracted from invoices to be easily auditable at any point in the future.
  3. We don't want to accommodate a bad customer process.


Regarding point 1: Keeping data in sync is already difficult. There is no easy means of extracting current exchange rates from most forwarder TMSes, so these would either have to be updated manually or would require a separate parallel integration from the source of your exchange rate information. This would have to be updated regularly, or risk that invoices get posted incorrectly.


On point 2: Exchange rate data fluctuates daily, or sometimes even more frequently. This makes understanding why certain charges were previously extracted difficult and non-transparent to the user.


Lastly on point 3: Every common forwarder TMS accommodates easy exchange rate conversions. Not using these creates a slow, error-prone process, discussed below.


Invoices posted this way can be handled in BravoTran, but must be manually reviewed and converted by your AP team. This is still faster than processing them outside of BravoTran, but is a far cry from the efficiency that most of our customers want to achieve.


In Your TMS

Think about the process that is required to post foreign currency invoices in your local currency:

  1. Your operator must manually convert an expected cost in a foreign currency to the local amount, and enter it as an accrual.
  2. Later, when the invoice arrives, your AP team must manually convert the invoice as written into your local amount. Usually exchange rates will have moved somewhat since point 1, so the amounts won't match exactly.
  3. Finally, when you pay the invoice, you will have to convert back once again to the overseas currency, since this is what your vendor expects to be paid in.


Each of these steps is performed manually, usually using a handheld calculator, with rates that are typically maintained in an Excel spreadsheet that must be distributed to all relevant users at some regular cadence.


In contrast, compare this to the process required to post foreign currency invoices in the foreign currency:

  1. Your operator accrues expected costs exactly as quoted.
  2. The invoice is received and is processed, exactly as written.
  3. When you pay the invoice, you pay the foreign-denominated amount, recording the final exchange rate.


Exchange rates can be updated automatically in your forwarder TMS, eliminating any need for manual conversions. Discrepancies between the exchange rate when quoted and the final exchange rate when paid are usually small, and automatically accounted for in every common forwarder TMS.


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Typically forwarders that have this arrangement implemented it early on in their history, when they were less familiar with the currency conversion functionality of their TMS. If you're big enough to be using BravoTran, you're big enough to understand how currency conversions work in your TMS, which will give you the best possible accruals process and guarantee the best automation from our AP automation.