The dispute is never about the receipt
A team spread across five countries produces receipts in five currencies, and the awkward conversation is never whether the taxi ride happened – it is which exchange rate turns it into the payout currency. Convert at the wrong moment and someone quietly loses a few percent; leave it to each person's judgement and every report becomes a small negotiation. The fix is a policy, chosen once, written where everyone can see it.
The three defensible rate dates
- Transaction date – the rate on the day the money was spent. Fairest to the spender, matches the receipt, and is the convention most finance teams default to. Its cost: a rate lookup per line.
- Submission date – one rate for the whole report. Simplest to run; drifts from reality when reports are filed late.
- Card-statement rate – what the person's bank actually charged, read from their statement. Most accurate to real cost, but unverifiable at scale and different per bank.
Any of the three works. What doesn't work is not choosing.
A policy snippet to copy:
Expenses in foreign currencies are reimbursed in [BASE] at the exchange rate of the transaction date, using [SOURCE]. Attach the receipt; the sheet computes the rest.
For [SOURCE], name something checkable: the ECB publishes free daily reference rates (noting they are "published for information purposes only"), or your accounting system's rate table.
The sheet that implements it
Same skeleton as the multi-currency invoice tracker: date, description, amount, currency code, rate, base amount. With a transaction-date policy, the rate column fills itself in Sheets:
=INDEX(GOOGLEFINANCE("CURRENCY:"&D2&"SGD","price",A2),2,2)
– swap SGD for your base, then freeze the column (paste special → values) once the report is approved, so approved reports never recompute. Google's standing caveats apply and are fine at reimbursement precision: the live quote is "delayed by up to 20 minutes", and Google "cannot guarantee the accuracy of the exchange rates displayed". The historical exchange rates guide covers the formula's quirks.
The reviewer's check becomes mechanical: does the rate column match the policy source for those dates? No negotiation, because there is nothing to negotiate.
The everyday version of the problem
Most currency questions on a remote team never reach a report – they happen mid-conversation: is this conference ticket within budget, what does the contractor's day rate come to, can we expense this tool at that price. Currency Converter answers those where they happen – a sidebar inside Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Slides and Sheets, live rates for 180+ currencies, unlimited and free in the sidebar, no sign-up – so the policy sheet stays for reports, and the sidebar handles the sixty-second questions. For the transaction-date lookups themselves, its Premium Sheets formula offers historical rates back to 2000 as an alternative to GOOGLEFINANCE.
Sources
- GOOGLEFINANCE – Google Docs Editors Help – read 2026-09-16
- Google Finance disclaimer – read 2026-09-16
- ECB euro foreign exchange reference rates – read 2026-09-16
- Currency Converter by 8apps – product claims, read 2026-09-16