Hi there plssecurity,
I love that you're looking for the best way to account for your suppliers and transactions in different currencies. Using the Multicurrency feature in QuickBooks Online Essentials or Plus allows you to assign currencies to accounts, customers, suppliers, and more. I want to go over this with you so you can accurately track your expenses from your US suppliers.
Once turned on, the Multicurrency feature can't be turned off. It sounds to me like you've already switched it on, but in case you haven't yet and you'd like to, here's an article on how to Turn on and use multicurrency. When you've turned it on, you can begin assigning the appropriate currencies to accounts as well as suppliers. Once an account has transactions recorded against it, you're unable to change the currency. If you've already created an account to represent your PayPal account that's used for UDS transactions, you'll likely need to make the existing one inactive and create a new one with the correct currency set.
Here's how to add a foreign currency account to your Chart of Accounts:
- From the Settings Gear choose Chart of Accounts.
- Select New.
- Choose the appropriate Account Type and Detail Type.
- Enter a Name for the new account and any other relevant details.
- Select the currency to assign to the account from the Currency drop-down menu.
- Select Save and Close
Transactions will display in the account's currency, and if there isn't a currency assigned it'll display all transactions in your home currency. Here's more on How to add a foreign currency account. When it comes to your suppliers, you can set them up with their address in the USA, but you can choose the currency that you pay them in to be CAD or USD as necessary. Similarly to how accounts work, once set up you can't change the currency of an existing supplier so you'll want to make the existing profile inactive and start fresh to assign a new currency.
To add a new supplier and assign a currency, follow these steps:
- Navigate to the Expenses menu from the left.
- Select Suppliers, then New Supplier.
- Enter the supplier's name and other relevant info.
- From the I pay this supplier with drop-down, choose the currency you use to pay this supplier.
- Hit Save when done.
Once you've complete the steps above, the transactions that are recorded with this supplier will be in the currency you've specified. You can read more on this here.
You mentioned that you use your PayPal account for purchases in both USD and CAD, and I'd just like to go over how that'll work. An account in QuickBooks can only have one currency assigned to it. So if you choose to set your PayPal account up in USD, all transactions will be recorded in USD. If you leave the account in your home currency, all transactions will be converted to home currency when you view them within the Chart of Accounts. You won't be able to view transactions in multiple currencies within one account.
Since I know that having increased capabilities within the Multicurrency feature could be beneficial to your business, I encourage you to share your thoughts with our team of product developers. Use the Gear icon, then select Feedback to share what improvements you'd like to see. We appreciate hearing from users like you and strive to make sure that our product meets your business' needs.
If you'd like to learn more or have any follow-up questions on this topic, don't hesitate to drop me another line here in the Community. I'm happy to help!
