Freight operations guide
One load, three currencies, one honest total.
A load that crosses a border rarely stays in one currency. The carrier invoice, the fuel, and the port or clearing fees can each be billed in whatever currency the supplier trades in — and the exchange rate on the day you record the invoice is almost never the rate on the day the payment actually clears. Neither number is wrong. Losing track of which is which is how a load looks profitable on paper and is not.
- 1
Keep each cost in the currency it was billed in
Do not convert on entry. Every invoice keeps and displays the currency it was issued in, and costs are never silently summed across currencies — a USD carrier bill and a NAD workshop invoice stay two totals, not one.
- 2
Record the billing rate as its own fact
The exchange rate at the time you booked the invoice is a real number worth keeping, separate from the invoice itself. IPP holds it as an additional record beside the invoice — it never edits the invoice’s own figures.
- 3
Add the settlement rate when the payment actually clears
Weeks can pass between billing and settlement, and the rate moves in that window. Record the settlement rate and its date once you have it; both rates stay true at their own moment, and neither overwrites the other.
- 4
Use a reference rate only as a starting point
If you do not have your bank’s own rate yet, a lookup can suggest one — including the NAD/ZAR peg, where it applies — to pre-fill the field. It saves nothing on its own; you still confirm the number from your bank advice.
- 5
Read the difference by direction, not by feeling
Billed amount, settled amount, and the difference between them — higher, lower, or unchanged — is what the record shows. It is deliberately not labelled a gain or a loss, because how that difference is treated is an accounting decision, not a data one.
- 6
Let the trip total reflect what actually happened
When a load’s revenue and its tagged costs share a currency, or a cost carries a recorded billing rate into the revenue’s currency, the load’s margin can be computed from real numbers instead of an assumption baked in at upload.
A simple cross-border example
A load carries a USD 1,400 carrier invoice, a NAD 2,000 workshop invoice, and a ZMW clearing fee. Each stays in its own currency on the invoice list. The carrier invoice is billed against a rate on the day it is recorded; six weeks later, when it settles, the rate has moved, and the settlement record shows the difference — higher or lower, with the date it was recorded. These are fictional amounts, not a customer’s rates.
The settlement record sits beside the invoice. It does not change the invoice total, and it is not sent to QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books — it is a reference for the person reconciling the load, not an export field.
See a multi-currency load in the sample workflow