Multicurrency Default Currency Code

Question

As per the Salesforce help article: "Upon enablement, all the existing records are stamped with a default currency code that you provide in your enablement request. For example, if your organization contains records using USD and EUR, switch them all to the same default currency code before enablement. Support for this type of conversion is also available as a Salesforce paid implementation service."

My query is if we have already switched all the records which were previously in USD and EUR to one currency say USD, then what is the purpose of "all the existing records are stamped with a default currency code that you provide in your enablement request." statement.

Please explain.

Answer 1

When multi-currency is enabled, no records are allowed to have a "null" CurrencyIsoCode. As such, all records will be stamped with the default currency as soon as this feature is enabled. You then need to set the currency for all records that do not have the default currency to their correct currency. When you do this, the values will be converted from the default currency to the new currency. This is why you need to set the currency values to the default currency value before enabling this feature.

For example, let's say an opportunity has EUR 100. If you don't convert this to the US equivalent (currently 111.37), then after this feature is enabled, it will be set to USD 100. When you then go to set the CurrencyIsoCode for the opportunity to EUR, it will be converted to EUR 89.79. The number will not be incorrect.

That's why enabling multi-currency is a three step process. First, convert all values from their native currency to the default currency. Second, enable this feature, which the system assumes all values are in the default currency. Third, update the currency code for all records that are not in the default currency. Salesforce takes care of the conversion of the values for you as long as you converted them beforehand, otherwise you would need to reload the values afterwards.