How I set up QuickBooks for Bureau De Change – Learn the simple way to deploy financial software solution for currency exchange business or money exchanger on the cloud or desktop!
What makes a great financial software consultant is not the excellent knowledge of accounting and finance, but the exceptional skills in understanding clients’ IT needs and customizing an existing low-cost off-the-shelf software that will deliver the right solution. This is the reason BigResources Solutions is the leading accounting software partner in Nigeria – we have deployed more QuickBooks compared to other accounting software.
QuickBooks is not only simple to use, it is flexible in building a custom chart of accounts, tweaking certain account types and redesigning windows. Also, seeing the result of your customization instantly makes it one of the best accounting software used in Nigeria. One sector where we have demonstrated a high level of competence in QuickBooks customization is in financial service – currency exchange business popularly known as a bureau de change.
Although I have initially posted a general article on accounting software for bureau de change, this review is more detailed as I will be using what implementing QuickBooks for a local bureau de change in Lagos was like, to help you get yours right.
Bureau de change, even though they are into foreign currency transaction, should be treated like a retail-based business in other to get your accounting software set up right. This is based on the premise that they buy products too (currencies), and resell to customers. But, if you do not follow the steps outlined here, you might not only end up generating wrong financial report but also experience multiple problems caused by dual accounts that mimic your bank and inventory account respectively where in actual sense, what you have in your domiciliary account (which is where you sell currencies), should be the same as your stock balance (currency on hand).
So in your statement of financial position (balance sheet), you are expected to treat your bank balance as currency stock on hand.
Setting up QuickBooks for BDCs:
- To load all currencies (USD, EUR or Pounds), create an item for each of these foreign currencies, enter quantity on hand (or a bank) and map it to “their individual bank account under asset account”; this is the field that merges the stock and bank account feature in one account head. The advantage of following this tip is that when you buy more currencies, your bank balances will increase and the quantity on hand will as well increase by units added. Also, when you sell via bank transfer to SMEs or individual customers, your bank balance is debited and stock on hand falls by the same sales value.
- Talking about buying and selling more currencies, I activated the exchange rate (used Naira as the home currency) and added normal current account (Naira) and domiciliary accounts (USD, EURO & GBP); this makes it easy for clients to buy currencies from CBN or other BDCs, using the Naira account at official or parallel market rates, into their domiciliary accounts. On sales, the invoice and receipts are there to track credit and cash transactions.
- On inventory report, you can always refer to different reports; stock valuation (currency on hand and their value), stock activities (transaction details of each foreign currency), physical stock count (to check what you have in the bank and the value reported in QuickBooks for reconciliation purposes).
- Adding to sales, you can view account receivables and the transaction history of your top customers.
- Also note that you need to update your rate for USD, EURO, GBP manually as the exchange rate fluctuates. This gives rise to exchange rate gain/loss or unrealised gain or loss.
- The banking features in QuickBooks let you transfer fund between accounts and also reconcile bank statements.
Finally, the overall report section shows the actual profit or loss position of your bureau de change with trend analysis.
While these will help you get started, faster and in the right way, you can also contact us if you have questions or want us to implement QuickBooks for your BDC.
Send a mail to bigresourcessolutions@gmail.com or info@accountingsoftware.com.ng or call 08105090001