Introduction
Each organisation has a base currency in Mercury which is set at the point of the system being setup. This cannot be changed once set and the value is set to 1. You can only have one base currency. For a UK based company, this is likely to be GBP, for a US based company USD etc.The base currency allows business to utilise further currency types in Mercury such as on vacancies and Placements and report financial figures back in the base currency (normalised base) using currency conversions. As an example, a UK company would have their currency base set as GBP but may have a vacancy in the US which on the vacancy has a salary of $50,000. If a USD currency has been setup at $1 = £0.81 GBP then the business will be able to use the normalised base to see the values of the USD in GBP
Example of a permanent vacancy created in USD that has a salary of $50,000 with a 15% fee
Example of a contract vacancy created in USD for 4 weeks with a daily pay of $500 and charge of $600
Currency conversions and FX Spot Rates are two different things.
Currencies in Microsoft Dynamics are used to translate currency-type values on a record to the base currency. This is standard Dynamics functionality.
Currencies need to be created and maintained by an administrator in the following location. Please be aware of the following 2 points
- Currencies don't automatically update unless you have additional functionality / integration to achieve this.
- If you create or update a value, it will not retrospectively change existing records, it will only be applied to new records or records having values updated.
FX Spot Rates are used on records that have multicurrency, eg. Placements that pay in one currency but charge in a different currency. They are used to normalise the rates to a single currency to run the calculations on. This is Mercury functionality so is maintained separately.
FX Spot rates need to be created and maintained by an administrator in the following location. Please be aware of the following 2 points
- FX Spot rates don't automatically update unless you have additional functionality / integration to achieve this.
- If you create or update a value, it will not retrospectively change existing records, it will only be applied to new records or records having values updated.
Currencies vs FX Spot Rates
Currencies in Microsoft Dynamics are used to translate currency-type values on a record to the base currency.
FX Spot Rates are used on the records that have multicurrency support, eg. Placements, Shortlists, Vacancies, to translate between the individual values (in the field currency) and the normalised values (in the record) currency, so need to be maintained separately.
Example scenarios
Here are some example scenarios, involving the charge rate on a Placement. The Placement has a record currency, and the charge rate has its own currency field. For these examples, the base (system) currency is GBP:
1. Record currency is GBP, charge rate currency is GBP:>> Neither Exchange Rate nor FX Spot Rate are needed.
2. Record currency is GBP, charge rate currency is USD:
>> FX spot rate is needed for GBP/USD; exchange rate in the USD record is not used.
3. Record currency is USD, charge rate currency is EUR:
>> FX spot rate is needed for USD/EUR; exchange rate in the USD record is used for base currency amounts.
4. Record currency is USD, charge rate currency is GBP:
>> USD/GBP exchange rate is used to get from visible figure to normalised figure (currency field), then exchange rate in USD currency record is used to get from there to the base currency (so the visible figure and base figure may not be equal).
Similar examples
Here are a some other scenarios where the base currency of the system is GBP:
1. Pay, Charge and GP currencies are GBP:
>> Neither Exchange Rate nor FX Spots Rate are used.
2. Pay, Charge and GP currencies are EUR:
>> Exchange rate used for EUR
>> GBP conversion on GP for GP Normalised (Base). FX Spot Rates not used.
3. Pay currency is GBP, Charge currency is EUR, and GP currency is GBP:
>> FX Spot Rate is used for EUR
>> GBP conversion on charge rate. Exchange rates not used.
4. Pay currency is GBP, Charge currency is EUR and GP currency is EUR:
>> FX Spot Rate is used for GBP
>> EUR conversion on Pay rate, then exchange rate used for EUR
>> GBP conversion on GP for GP Normalised (Base)
How to update and manage Exchange Rates in Mercury
To update Exchange rates to calculate Gross Profit Normalised (Base) from Gross Profit Normalised, you need to update the Exchange Rates on the Currencies. This can only be done by System Administrators.
Currencies
Currencies is a separate entity. It can be accessed via Search on the top bar, and selecting the advanced filters from the bottom of that menu:
In the new Search box that opens, search for the table called Currencies:
From here, the Exchange Rates can be updated and new Currencies added:
FX Spot Rates
Mercury also has FX Spot Rates to handle situations where Pay and Charge are in different currencies. These will also need to be updated to reflect any new exchange rates:
How to update Exchange Rates (alternative method)
FX Spot rates are only used when the Pay and the Charge rates on Placements are in different currencies.
To update exchange rates to calculate Gross Profit Normalised (Base) from Gross Profit Normalised, you need to update the exchange rates on the currencies themselves:
Go to Power Platform > https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/environments.
Select your Production Environment.
Click Settings from the top menu:
Select the Currency you want to update and amend the Exchange Rate:
You will also need to update the FX Spot rate in Mercury to handle Pay and Charge in different currencies:
Reporting
Here is a quick summary on how to report, for example, on all Vacancies and Placements.
Once currencies are set up, it's then just a case of using the (Base) fields on any entity. So, in Vacancy, you could use Gross Profit (Base) and it would show the values across the board in converted base currency, for example, GBP.
The important point is that the (Base) value is set when a currency field changes. So if you've not set it up before now, you could do a bulk update for all current open vacancies etc.
You can just choose the (Base) values to get what you want, BUT, if you are reporting on them now, you'd see the wrong conversion if not set before now, and if you set it now, the values won't have changed as the currency value on those records would need an update to trigger the (Base) conversion.
Extra notes and information
1. Pay and Charge need to be the same currency on the Placement. Mixing a pay and a charge currency is not advised as it could lead to issues.
2. When a Vacancy has no currency set, and a Placement is generated, the Placement will resort to the currency of the local system or whichever personalised setting the base currency is set to.
3. There can sometimes be Agreements where the currency is different from the one on the Placement, which can explain why the currency changes on the Placement.
4. When shortlisting the Candidate for a Vacancy, the currency will need to be the same as the Placement. If not, then the Placement currency will change to the Shortlist currency.
5. When an Agreement is attached to the Placement, and the currency of the Agreement record is in GBP, then the Placement will also resort back to the default record. The best thing to do in this scenario is to remove the currency from the Agreement record and leave it blank, which will then allow the Placement to have the correct currency.
6. When the base currency is blank on the Vacancy record, the related Shortlist record, when created, will be set to the default currency in the user's personalisation settings. If this is blank, the currency will be set to the system default currency.