How to mark a foreign currency bill as paid using your connected bank account

When you have a Bill in a foreign currency, you can still use your imported bank transaction to mark it as paid. Here's how.

You received a bill in a foreign currency, and entered it into Wave. Now you’ve paid it with your bank account or credit card, and want to mark the bill as paid. When you try to categorize your bank import transaction as a "Payment Sent for a Bill in Wave," the bill doesn’t show up in the list - what gives?

It’s not possible to create or edit transactions involving more than one currency on the Transactions page, so you’ll have to take an extra step to categorize your imported transaction as a Bill Payment. Here's what to do.

1. When you see the bank transaction for the bill payment in Accounting > Transactions, make a note of the amount you paid in your home currency.
2. Next, navigate to Purchases > Bills, locate the foreign currency bill, and select Record a Payment.
3. In the payment window, select the bank or credit card account that you used to pay the bill in the Payment Account field. When you select an account which is in a different currency than the bill, the options change, and you are given a field for the exchange rate. In that field, adjust the exchange rate so that the Amount equals the amount of the actual payment.

   To determine the right exchange rate, divide the amount that you paid in your home currency by the amount listed on the bill in the foreign currency.

   See an example of the calculation

   In this example, the foreign currency bill was for US $2,000. The payment that came through in CAD was $2,660. 2,660 divided by 2,000 = 1.33, which is the exchange rate we need to enter in order for the converted bill amount to exactly match what we paid in our home currency.

4. Now, navigate back to Accounting > Transactions. Select the bank import transaction and the manual bill payment that you just created, and click Merge.

And there you go! The bill is marked Paid, and the bank import transaction is correctly categorized.