The Home Currency feature allows you to set a default currency for your international team members so all of their expenses are automatically recorded in the currency of the country where they’re based. Employees can still select any currency when submitting expenses, and Emburse Spend will remember the currency the next time a new expense is created.
Home Currency cannot be used to reimburse international employees directly, but it will make the manual reimbursement process easier for your team. See How to Use International Mode for details.
1. Enable International Mode
To set a home currency for your international team members, please first ensure that International Mode is enabled on your Emburse Spend account. Emburse Spend cannot send money to non-US bank accounts, so International Mode will allow your international employees to use Emburse Spend while circumventing requests to connect their bank. If your company does not have International Mode enabled, please reach out to Support.
Once International Mode is enabled for your organization, follow the steps under "Admin: Activate International Mode for an Employee" in How to Use International Mode.
2. Select Home Currency
After you've enabled International Mode for the employee, you will see a Home Currency dropdown on the Edit User Profile pane when you select that user on the People screen. Choose the desired currency and click Save.
When you download .CSV exports of this team member's expense details, you will see a column listing the reimbursement amount in the currency selected, as well as a second column showing the total in USD.
All of the employee's expenses will show three amounts:
- the amount in USD
- the home currency
- the currency that was used on the expense
So if the employee is traveling, you'll be able to see all relevant amounts (the actual amount paid, the amount in USD, and the total in the employee's home currency) in one view.
3. Export International Employee Expenses
Since you will still be be reimbursing international employees outside of Emburse Spend, the .CSV exports will now show two additional columns—one for for reimbursement amount in USD, and another with the employee’s home currency—so you don’t need to do anything else to figure out what your employees are owed.
The conversion rate is based on the date of the expense. We do the conversion directly between the expense currency and the home currency (i.e., it doesn't get converted to USD first). If the expense currency matches the home currency, we just use a rate of 1 so that it will match exactly.