Account setup

There's some initial work required to set up your accounts the way this app needs, but once this has been done once it all keeps working without much further manual intervention required.

Foreign currency accounts

This app uses special "tags" in the account notes or nickname to identify a foreign account's currency.

You can create a foreign currency account as normal in YNAB, and then:

1. In YNAB, left-click the account.

2. Put the three-letter currency code in angle brackets somewhere in the account's notes or nickname. For example, a U.S. Dollar account would have <USD>, and a Euro account would have <EUR>.

3. Click Save.

   

You don't need to add any currency tag to your local currency accounts (although it won't hurt anything if you do).

Once you've added these tags to your foreign accounts, click the Refresh button in this app's Accounts screen and you should see them appear in a table.

Difference accounts

In addition, for each foreign currency you use, you must create a "virtual" difference account for each type of account you use with that currency (see the Approach section in the introduction for a reminder of why).

For example, if you have Euro Checking and Savings accounts, you would need to create two difference accounts for Euros. If you have Yen Checking, Credit Card, and Asset accounts, you will need to create three for Yen.

The difference accounts are identified with a slightly different "tag" than foreign currency accounts: the three-letter currency code followed by a space and DIFFERENCE, all in angle brackets (e.g. <EUR DIFFERENCE>).

The app will inform you if you are missing any required difference accounts, so rather than worry about the above details, just create whichever ones the app says you need.

To create a difference account:

1. In YNAB, click the Add Account button.

2. Choose Unlinked.

3. In the Add Account dialog, enter:

   • Account type: the same account type as the foreign currency account
   • Notes or Nickname: should contain difference tag as described above somewhere. Since YNAB requires nicknames to be unique, this should also have the account type (outside of the angle brackets, e.g. <EUR DIFFERENCE> Checking for Euros Debit).
   • Current balance: 0

4. Click Next and then Done.

   

Once you've created the difference accounts, click the Refresh button in this app's Accounts screen again, and you should see them added to the table.

Once all the required difference accounts have been created, you can continue to the Transactions screen.

Exchange rate adjustments category

At this point, you should create a budget category for foreign currency balance adjustments due to exchange rate fluctuations. You can name this anything you want, for example Foreign Currency Adjustments. You will need to budget enough in this category to cover likely fluctuations in exchange rates given the amount of your foreign currency holdings. You can also create separate budget categories for different currencies if you wish.

The exchange rate adjustment transactions will not have a budget category set by default, but they will have their payee set to Exchange Rate Adjustments <CURRENCY>. Just set the category for one of these transactions after it's been created, and YNAB will remember that category for adjustment transactions created in the future. You can use YNAB's Manage Payees screen to set or change the automatic categorization. You can also rename the payee here, if you wish.

The adjustment payee is different for each currency, so you can set different adjustment categories for each currency if you prefer.

Currency format

Since this app is not able to change how YNAB displays currencies, amounts in foreign currencies will still be displayed using your local currency's symbol. To avoid confusion, we recommend going to YNAB's Budget Settings screen and changing the Currency Placement to Don't Display Symbol.

Making accounts look nicer

The currency tags (e.g. <EUR>) don't look so nice in account nicknames, and take a lot of screen real estate, so I like to put them in the account notes and then put the emoji flag of the currency's country in the account nickname. For example, my Royal Bank of Canada chequing account has the nickname "🇨🇦 RBC Chequing," and has <CAD> in the account notes.