Exchange rate
An invoice in any currency other than the dirham has to report its VAT in AED as well, at a stated rate. One setting on the entity decides where that rate comes from. Invoices already in AED are not affected by any of this — there is nothing to convert.
Which one do you want
The setting is Use Central Bank exchange rate, on the entity's own page.
| When this is you | |
|---|---|
| Leave it on | You want the rate the authority expects, with nothing to set up and nothing to keep up to date. This is the default, and it suits most businesses. |
| Turn it off | Your books already record the invoice at a particular rate — contracted, agreed within a group, or fixed by your accounting system at the time — and the AED you file has to match your own ledger. |
It is on unless you turn it off, including for every entity created before the setting existed. It is set per entity, so entities that need different answers can have them. Changing it affects invoices processed from then on; documents already filed are untouched.
Leaving it on
Every non-AED invoice is converted at the rate the UAE Central Bank published for the invoice's own date — not today's rate, and not the rate on the day it happened to be sent. If that date falls on a weekend or a holiday, the last published business day is used.
There is nothing to configure. The exchange rate row on PINT Mapping stays locked, and any rate held on the invoice in your accounting system is not used.
An invoice is refused only if the Central Bank has published no rate at all for that currency on or before its date.
Turning it off
The choice moves to the Currency exchange rate row on PINT Mapping. There are two ways to answer it.
| What you choose | What happens to each invoice |
|---|---|
| Point it at an invoice field | Pick the field your accounting system already sends the rate in. Every later invoice converts on its own, with nothing to type. |
| Provided at invoice level | No field is read. Each non-AED invoice waits in Staged Invoices until you enter the rate. An invoice already in AED never waits, because there is nothing to convert. |
A missing rate is never guessed. If the field you chose is empty on a particular invoice, or holds text or a zero, that invoice waits in Staged Invoices for you to supply the rate. It is not quietly filed at the Central Bank rate instead, because an entity that turned this off did so to file at its own.
Which way round you write the rate
A rate can be written two ways, and both are ordinary English: AED 3.6725 per 1 US dollar, or USD 0.272294 per 1 dirham. Accounting systems do not agree on which of the two they store, and the field name never says which you have.
You do not have to work this out. We compare your rate against the Central Bank rate for that invoice's date and apply it the right way round. The rate that gets filed is still yours — only its direction is decided.
| Where the rate comes from | What it looks like | What we do with it |
|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks | ExchangeRate: 3.6725 on a USD invoice | |
| Xero | CurrencyRate: 0.272294 on the same USD invoice | |
| Typed in Staged Invoices | 3.6725 for a USD invoice |
If you are typing a rate into Staged Invoices, write it as AED per 1 unit of the invoice currency and it is filed exactly as you entered it. Write it the other way up and it is recognised rather than rejected.
A rate that is neither — one quoted against some third currency, or per 100 units — waits in Staged Invoices rather than being filed at a figure we cannot account for.
Every currency, not just the dollar
The check is always against that currency's own published rate for the invoice's date, whether the rate is a fraction of a fils or nearly twelve dirhams.
| Currency | Published as | The other way up |
|---|---|---|
| LBP — Lebanese Pound | AED 0.000041 per 1 LBP | |
| JPY — Japanese Yen | AED 0.0246 per 1 JPY | |
| USD — US Dollar | AED 3.6725 per 1 USD | |
| EUR — Euro | AED 4.30 per 1 EUR | |
| KWD — Kuwaiti Dinar | AED 11.9489 per 1 KWD | |
| ILS — Israeli New Shekel | AED 1.2182 per 1 ILS |
Your own rate is left alone. A rate within 10% of the published one is filed exactly as your books hold it — never nudged towards the Central Bank's figure, and never turned upside down for being a few per cent out.
A few currencies trade so close to the dirham that a rate and its reciprocal are almost the same number: the Polish Zloty (PLN), Saudi Riyal (SAR), Qatari Riyal (QAR) and Turkmenistani Manat (TMT). For those we use the direction exactly as you wrote it.