UK HMRC Exchange Rates
We have recently added currency exchange rates published by UK HMRC to our Oracle E-Business Suite integration and our FXLoader Cloud Service for integration with Oracle ERP Cloud, JD Edwards, Workday and other ERPs.
What are HMRC rates?
The UK HMRC is the tax authority in the UK responsible for VAT, corporation tax and personal tax; HMRC stands for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for those who’ve never heard of it. They are published from this page https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/exchange-rates-for-customs-and-vat
Exchange rates are published monthly one or two days before the first day of the month, with weekly updates for currencies that have large movements within the month. Pretty much every tradable currency is included with a rate to the British Pound (GBP).
As you might imagine, this is a service provided for free by HMRC, on a web page, in CSV format and as an XML feed.
A UK company might want to use these FX rates in their ERP or Financial application as the official rates for converting foreign currency transactions to GBP. The HMRC website states:
“You should use these exchanges rates if you have to convert any foreign currency to sterling for customs and VAT purposes.” (sterling is another name for GBP, in case you were wondering).
However, our understanding is that market FX rates from a reliable source are also acceptable for all types of statutory reporting in the UK.
When would you use UK HMRC rates?
You might choose to use HMRC rates for your UK company if:
- Your UK company is keen to use the official published rates for reporting
- You are happy with rates updated monthly, with optional weekly updates
Within a multi-national, we’ve seen this done in a couple of different ways; you can use HMRC for GBP rates only with other combinations coming from a source of market rates, or you can load HMRC rates into a separate rate type (if your ERP supports this) to be used by the UK companies only.
How does FXLoader incorporate UK HMRC rates?
UK HMRC is available as a source within FXLoader for Oracle E-Business Suite and the FXLoader Cloud Service.
You can schedule it once per month to pick up rates for the month only, or once per week to also add in any weekly updates HMRC provides. You can also mix these with rates from other sources, such as market rates, using one of the scenarios mentioned earlier.
As FXLoader allows triangulation, you can optionally create cross-rates for non-GBP combinations.
There is no subscription charge for the UK HMRC rates.