We are developing the travel website, which is used to book the flight, hotel, car etc. It’s product based software. The client (who buys our software) will become a ‘Main agency’. His total transactions will be in INR (Indian rupee currency). And total flight, hotel or car bookings are done in ‘INR’ only.
Now he has permission to create his ‘sub-agency’. The sub-agency currency may be in USD or INR etc. This means the ‘Main agency’ may have its sub-agencies through out the world. Now whenever the ‘sub-agency’ is logged in, his transaction reports should be in his currency. If his currency is ‘AUD’, the total transactions should be in ‘AUD’ only. While creating sub-agency we fix his currency, whether he belongs to USD or AUD or AED etc. It’s fixed.
When ever ‘sub-agency’ generates the ticket (in AUD), this transaction is also displayed in the main agency transaction reports. Here is where the actual problem is arising. For the ‘sub-agency’, the report should be in ‘AUD’, and for main agency it should be in ‘INR’. The main agency is ready to bear the Currency conversions profit/losses. But the ‘Sub agency’ should not lose/gain.
We are storing the ‘sub-agency’ deposits with ‘Main agency’ in his currency (USD/AUD), and when he is logged in we are displaying the fares in USD/AUD. After booking it we are deducting that amount from his available balance. But when it comes to reports, we have to display these transactions in two ways. For the main agency it should be in INR, and for sub-agents it should be his currency (USD/INR).
I have few solutions but those makes my development complicated. I am expecting better solution.
One of my solution is, while storing the transactions, storing the currency conversion rate also with ‘INR’. Now converting that to ‘INR’ with that currency conversion rate. Is it good solution?
Example : Sub agency does a ‘2.00 USD’ transaction. While storing it, add currency conversion rate also as a column into table. For example, ‘1 USD = 55 INR’. While displaying it calculate 2*55, and display it as 110 INR in main agency report.
Please suggest any better solution for this.
Calculations with multiple currencies are great fun. If you want an interesting historical note, look up ‘euro triangulation’ on your favourite search engine.
Somewhere along the line, you have to record a currency conversion rate to be used. You can choose many different techniques, and they’ll all produce slightly different answers:
Note that agencies have buy and sell rates; the difference between these (the spread) represents their margin on the deals.
In my experience (which is now 20 years out of date — predating the world-wide web), a daily rate is used in daily reports, and the daily rates are munged to create an average monthly rate used in the monthly reports.
But, of necessity, you will somewhere record the exchange rate to be used with each transaction, either with the transaction or in some separate table that can be cross-referenced according to the rules you choose to use.