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True multi-currency support
Zach Smith
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the feature request.
We've had a few customers ask for multi-currency support over the years, and it would definitely be a great feature to have. The reasons we've not implemented multi-currency support so far include:
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Need. Most of our customers use a single currency or have found a way to use Channeltivity's existing functionality to handle their multi-currency needs.
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Demand. Multi-currency is not on top of most of our customers' lists.
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Complexity. It would take several months to develop.
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Complexity. It would increase the complexity of our application and make it more expensive to maintain.
That being said, I'd love to flesh out this feature a bit more, especially around in-app conversion:
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How important is the summarization of converted amounts across multiple currencies in reports and graphs? In past conversations with customers about the multi-currency feature, the desired implementation was to keep all currencies separate and not do any automatic conversion.
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Since currency exchange rates fluctuate over time and if there were automatic currency conversion within Channeltivity, how would you specify the date and time of the conversion rate? Would it be based on the Deal close date? Or would it float based on current exchange rate until being locked in at the end of some financial period (year/quarter)? Or would someone specify the date on a per-record basis? Or would you manually set an exchange rate company-wide for a specific period?
I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you again!
Best regards,
Zach
Eric Kintzer
Zach
Re: (1) If reports/graphs do any summarization on Amount, then summarization has to be in a common currency. For the partner manager, the summarization should be done in their org currency (which would be USD for Zimbra)
Re: (2) - You are making this harder than it has to be. Use SFDC as a guide.
SFDC provides two options:
A. Multi-Currency support (exchange rates are not dated) - use whatever is defined at the moment in the metadata
B. Dated exchange rates - SFDC uses Opportunity.CloseDate as the lookup date. Analogous to deal close date. You could provide an option to the CT customer to use Deal close date or Oppo close date, if Deal is connected to an Oppo.
I could make an argument that the CT multi-currency feature might only be available for CT customers with SFDC integration and then you can use the rates defined in SFDC for either A or B - as the CT customer will want to use the same rates. Thus, you avoid the UI hassle.
There are VERY FEW SFDC customers that change exchange rates every day or even every month. In the orgs I worked in, rates were changed only once a half. CT is not, I think, a tool used by FX desks.
I hope this helps
Zach Smith
Hi Eric,
Good points. Helpful. Thank you!
If we implement multi-currency, I'm pretty sure we'll make it SFDC independent.
Best regards,
Zach
Eric Kintzer
Channeltivity Deal Amount is uni-currency, with implicit currency code depending on localization for the org. In our case, this was USD ($).
However, for vendors dealing with global partner networks, the resellers may operate in multiple currencies such as GBP, EUR, AUD, JPY, CAD, as well as USD.
If the Channeltivity org is associated with a multi-currency Salesforce (SFDC), you can't realistically map the Channeltivity OOB Deal Amount field to an SFDC currency field because you also need to map a currency code to SFDC CurrencyIsoCode. Yet Channeltivity Deal reports can't show a currency code, only Amount. So, even adding a custom field for currency doesn't really help.
Feature request: Support true multi-currency wherein all Amount fields have a required currency type; all reports and email display the currency code along with the amount, and any summarizations of Deal Amount convert to a corporate currency (using rates from Salesforce Currency table, if available).