NetSuite Multi-Currency Explained: A Guide for UK Businesses

The UK is an international economy — in the 12 months to the end of May 2025, the total value of UK trade (imports plus exports) was £1.8 trillion, representing a 3.0% increase from the previous year. As your UK business expands to Europe and globally, a variety of complexities related to dealing with multiple currencies and fluctuating exchange rates can occur.

Using the NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform simplifies multi-currency dealings. See how NetSuite multi-currency handling works, how to configure it within NetSuite, and how to enhance its power with a dedicated accounts payable automation from Tipalti.

What is Multi-Currency Accounting?

In brief, multi-currency accounting entails tracking and managing financial transactions in multiple global currencies. For UK firms that transact with foreign vendors, sell to buyers globally, or run branches overseas, handling multiple currencies in their bookkeeping systems and financial statements is hence a necessity. 

The main challenges with multi-currency bookkeeping are: 

• Currency rate (FX) fluctuations: Currency values change daily, affecting your company’s assets, liabilities, earnings, and spending. These rate fluctuations impact the general ledger and require careful management.
• Consolidated reporting: If you run several subsidiaries or entities using different currencies, you need a solid method to combine their financial data into one clear picture for your parent firm’s financial reporting.
• Regulatory compliance: Every country has its own unique financial laws and reporting requirements. For example, in the UK, the VAT reporting process under Making Tax Digital (MTD) rules is entirely digital. 

Well-organised multi-currency accounting provides a clear and precise view of your firm’s financial well-being, helps reduce risks, and enhances the decision-making process of management and finance departments.

What is the NetSuite Multi-Currency Feature?

Oracle NetSuite’s multi-currency handling tool is a key function within the NetSuite ERP environment, enabling businesses to manage transactions, create reports, and track finances across multiple local and foreign currencies.

The feature is especially helpful for companies operating in global markets that deal with partners, suppliers, or buyers in other countries and need to manage foreign currency transactions smoothly and efficiently.

Key Capabilities of NetSuite Multi-Currency

The NetSuite multi-currency feature helps to ease doing business and accounting globally. Here are a few of the top functionalities that NetSuite or NetSuite OneWorld customers enjoy:

• Consolidated exchange rates: The tool ensures that currency amounts are accurately translated from subsidiaries to parents or holdings, facilitating consolidated reporting. When using Multi-currency suppliers and customers: NetSuite firms to link multiple currencies of each subsidiary and its parent.
• currencies to a single customer or vendor. This means you can trade in different currencies with the same partner and take payments from clients in various currencies.
• Base currency revaluation: Fluctuations in exchange rates between your home currency and foreign currency used in transactions can affect your base (home) currency valuation. NetSuite can assist with automatically revaluing open foreign-currency positions during each accounting period, adding the difference to a realised or unrealised gain/loss account.
• Currency exchange rate integration: NetSuite’s currency exchange integration feature refreshes exchange rates each day using your chosen provider. This daily update brings more accurate reporting and conversion of local currency in your systems.
• Global compliance: The software helps your firm adhere to local laws and compliance regulations in various countries, ensuring your business remains aligned with local financial reporting standards and regulations.
• Efficient currency conversion: Effectively handles currency changes for transactions like sales, purchase orders, invoices, and expenses using current exchange rates, enabling accurate reporting.
• Seamless integrations: The multi-currency tool seamlessly integrates with other NetSuite modules, covering financials, procurement, sales, and inventory management, thereby streamlining global business processes.

How to Set Up Multi-Currency in NetSuite (Tutorial)

According to the official NetSuite documentation, setting up multi-currency features involves several steps to enable and configure how your business handles global finances. 

It begins with activating the core feature and then requires further configuration depending on whether you are managing global e-commerce or processing multi-currency payments.

First, an administrator must perform the foundational setup to enable the functionality across the business, which works as follows:

Step 1 – Enabling the Multi-Currency Feature

• In NetSuite, navigate to Setup > Company > Enable Features.
• On the Company subtab, check the Multiple Currencies box and click Save.

Step 2 – Creating Currency Records

• NetSuite includes default records for major currencies like GBP, EUR, and USD.
• To add others, go to Lists > Accounting > Currencies > New and enter the unique details for each new currency, such as its name and ISO code.

Step 3 – Defining Exchange Rates

• Manually set exchange rates by going to Lists > Accounting > Currency Exchange Rates.
• Here, you can define the rate between your base or primary currency and each foreign currency.

Step 4 – Assigning Currencies to Multiple Subsidiaries

• In a NetSuite OneWorld account, each subsidiary must have a base currency assigned to it. 
• This is managed under Setup > Company > Subsidiaries.

Step 5 – Configuring Currency Revaluation (Optional)

• Set up rules for how NetSuite adjusts the value of foreign-currency-denominated accounts to ensure your financial statements remain accurate, especially for month-end closing.

Step 6 – Setting up Foreign Currency Bank Accounts (Optional)

• To transact in foreign currencies, set up corresponding bank accounts under Lists > Accounting > Bank Accounts.

Once this foundation is in place, you can configure it for specific business needs. The official NetSuite documentation outlines that multi-currency payment processing typically involves using the Electronic Bank Payments SuiteApp to process payment files for suppliers and employees. For a SuiteCommerce web store, additional steps are required to assign the currencies that are displayed to shoppers.

It is important to distinguish this initial setup from managing transactional approvals. While the steps above enable the core FX feature, tools like the SuiteApprovals SuiteApp or custom SuiteFlow workflows create rules for approving individual transactions, which can include criteria based on the transaction’s currency.

Enhancing NetSuite’s Multi-Currency Handling Capabilities with Tipalti

While NetSuite provides a robust foundation for multi-currency accounting, UK businesses can unlock even greater efficiency and control by integrating a dedicated accounts payable automation solution like Tipalti.

Tipalti was named NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Growth Partner of the Year 2024. Tipalti extends NetSuite’s capabilities to automate the entire AP and payments workflow, from supplier onboarding and invoice processing to global payment execution and reconciliation.

Here is a quick comparison:

By integrating Tipalti, you are not just adding a feature; you are upgrading your entire financial operations infrastructure to handle global scale with less manual effort and greater accuracy.

Automate Multi-Currency Processing with Tipalti and NetSuite

The importance of streamlined global payables cannot be overstated. An optimised process is vital for maintaining strong supplier relationships, ensuring compliance with bodies like HMRC, and enhancing financial performance. Integrating an automation platform like Tipalti with NetSuite helps fine-tune these international payment systems.

Utilising Tipalti Integrations with NetSuite — a Case Study 

As a UK-based property technology company, Plentific faced significant manual work as it scaled across multiple global entities. The finance team was spending days on payment runs to handle hundreds of monthly invoices across dozens of countries, using a manual PO process managed entirely via email.

By implementing Tipalti’s Procurement and AP Automation solutions, Plentific automated its entire procure-to-pay workflow and seamlessly integrated it with NetSuite. This created a single, unified system for all accounting and payments across its international jurisdictions. As a result, the company significantly reduced its manual workload and accelerated the monthly financial close, freeing the finance team to focus on strategic growth.

By embracing automation, businesses can transform their finance function from a cost centre into a strategic growth driver.

Regardless of your business size, if you operate globally, exploring the capabilities of NetSuite’s multi-currency transactions feature and its integration with a leading automation platform like Tipalti is crucial for unlocking global success while ensuring maximum compliance with local regulations.