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Exchange Rates for Slovakia (ECB/NBS, VÚB, Tatra banka)

Downloads the ECB reference rate a Slovak company values foreign currency at, sets the provider up for you, fills weekends and holidays, and adds the VÚB and Tatra banka rate lists.

What it is for

A Slovak company keeps its books in euro and converts every foreign-currency invoice, payment and balance at the reference exchange rate (referenčný výmenný kurz) set by the European Central Bank and published by Národná banka Slovenska. Odoo needs that rate for every day on which a document is dated.

This module builds on the OCA rate-update framework (currency_rate_update), which already knows how to download the ECB rates. It adds what a Slovak company needs on top:

• the provider is created for you when the module is installed, so the rates start arriving without anybody filling in a form;
• weekends and public holidays get a rate, carried forward from the last day on which one was published;
• two commercial rate lists, VÚB banka and Tatra banka, for when you want to see what a bank actually charged rather than the statutory rate.

It works on Community and Enterprise alike; it does not need Odoo Enterprise's own automatic rates.

Legal background

• Accounting. Assets and liabilities in a foreign currency are converted to euro at the reference rate set and announced by the ECB or by Národná banka Slovenska "v deň predchádzajúci dňu uskutočnenia účtovného prípadu" — on the day before the transaction — and at the balance-sheet date at the rate of that day: § 24 ods. 2 of the Accounting Act. A purchase of foreign currency for euro may instead be valued at the rate it was actually bought at (§ 24 ods. 3).
• VAT. A taxable amount invoiced in a foreign currency is converted at the same ECB/NBS reference rate announced on the day before the tax liability arises, unless the company has notified the tax office that it uses the customs rate for the whole calendar year: § 26 ods. 1 of the VAT Act.

So the statutory source is the ECB service. The VÚB and Tatra banka lists are commercial rates; they are not the reference rate. The module applies the preceding-day rule to a Slovak company's documents — see Which day's rate a document takes.

What installation sets up

On installation, every company whose country (or fiscal country) is Slovakia gets an ECB provider, provided the database already has at least one active foreign currency the ECB publishes. The provider:

• quotes the currencies already active in the database that the ECB publishes, never the company's own currency — it does not activate new ones;
• runs daily;
• has Fill non-publishing days switched on.

A company that already has an ECB provider, even an archived one, is left alone: archiving it counts as a decision. A company with no active foreign currency gets no provider, because there would be nothing to download.

The providers are listed in Accounting → Configuration → Currency Rates Providers — on Community without full accounting the root menu reads Invoicing. The screen and its labels come from the OCA module and are in English.

If you activate a currency after installing the module and the list is still empty, create the provider yourself: New, Provider = European Central Bank, pick the Currencies, leave the interval at 1 day, save. The list also has a button for this, Create the Slovak default provider, shown even when the list is empty; it creates only what is missing and needs Settings rights (anyone else gets a message saying so). With the Czech module also installed, the list shows only one of the two buttons; the other stays in the Actions menu of a selected row. To add a currency to an existing provider, edit its Currencies field — the action never changes a provider that exists.

Automatic downloads also need Automatic Currency Rates (OCA) to be ticked in Accounting → Configuration → Settings, block Currencies. It is ticked by default.

Day to day

Once a day the rates for the provider's currencies are downloaded and stored as the currency's rates (Accounting → Configuration → Currencies), each under the day the ECB announced it. Which of them a document takes is described in Which day's rate a document takes.

To load rates for past dates — a history import, a late invoice — open the provider and click Update Rates Now, choose the Start Date and End Date, and confirm. The ECB service supplies its full history.

When a download fails, the error is posted in the provider's chatter and the next scheduled run tries again.

Which day's rate a document takes

In a company whose country or fiscal country is Slovakia, a document takes the reference rate announced on the day before the day that decides it — the newest rate dated before that day:

After a weekend or a holiday the "day before" has no rate of its own, so the last rate announced before it applies — the same rate Fill non-publishing days copies onto those days, so the result does not depend on that option.

The year-end revaluation is not shifted: balances are valued at the rate of the balance-sheet day itself (§ 24 ods. 2 písm. b)), which is what the revaluation reads.

The rate of a draft invoice is recalculated when its date changes; a posted document keeps the rate it was posted with. A company outside Slovakia keeps Odoo's own rule (the rate of the document's date).

Weekends and holidays

Neither the ECB nor the banks publish rates on weekends and holidays. With Fill non-publishing days ticked on the provider (the default), after every download each calendar day in the downloaded range that has no rate gets a copy of the last rate before it. A day that already has a rate is never overwritten by the fill, and a filled day is overwritten as soon as a rate for that date is actually published.

The fill only carries a rate forward. If the range starts before the first rate the database has, those first days stay empty.

The option is available on every provider, not only the Slovak ones, and is also picked up by the Czech currency_rate_update_cz when both are installed.

Commercial bank rates (VÚB, Tatra banka)

Two further services appear in the provider's Provider field:

Use them to see what a conversion at that bank would cost. They are not the statutory reference rate, so do not let them value your documents: a company's rate table holds one rate per currency and day, and two providers quoting the same currency for the same company overwrite each other's rates. Put a commercial provider in a separate company, or quote currencies the ECB provider does not.

The download and parsing of both feeds live in currency_rate_sk_base, installed automatically.

Limitations

• The election under § 26 ods. 1 of the VAT Act to use the customs rate for a whole calendar year is not supported; such a company has to enter the rate on its invoices by hand.
• The preceding-day rule covers invoices, bills, payments, bank-statement lines and journal entries. Purchase and sales orders, and other places where Odoo shows a converted amount for information, still use the rate of their own date.
• The ECB publishes rates for about thirty currencies. Národná banka Slovenska also announces rates for some currencies the ECB does not; those are not downloaded.
• The VÚB and Tatra banka feeds are web pages run by the banks, not documented interfaces. A change on the bank's side stops the download until the module is updated.
• A provider is created automatically only on installation and by the action described above. Currencies activated later are not added to an existing provider.