If your business works with more than one currency, you presumably use TallyPrime, Zoho Books, or QuickBooks Online. You could, for example, send bills to customers in other countries, pay vendors in other countries, or obtain tuition payments from students in other countries—often alongside an Forex API to ensure accurate conversions. All of these systems can keep track of money in more than one currency.
But even while they have basic functionality, they don’t usually do a good job of keeping track of currency rates in real time.
That’s where a live Forex API like IBRLIVE truly comes in handy.
Why It’s Important to Know the Right Exchange Rates
In today’s fast-paced world economy, the value of money changes all the time. Using archaic or set rates can cause:
- Invoices that have the wrong prices
- Headaches from reconciling
- Paying for products in other nations and losing money
- Not obeying the rules in your area
You need real-time FX data to get the numbers correct, no matter if you’re billing in USD, reconciling payments in EUR, or filing taxes in INR.
How Tally, Zoho, and QuickBooks Handle FX (and What They Don’t Do Well)
TallyPrime: It works, but you have to do it yourself.
- How It Works: It works with ledgers for other kinds of money. You have to enter the currency rates manually in the “Exchange Rates” section.
- Tally’s ability to automate: Tally permits third-party connections over XML/HTTP, which is great for connecting a real-time FOREX API like IBRLIVE.
- Limitations: There is no built-in automation, and rates have to be entered every day to be up to date.
Zoho Books: Easy Auto-Feed
- How It Works: You provide each contact a currency, and Open Exchange Rates automatically gets the rates.
- Limitations: It only works with one feed, only gives mid-market prices, and is only available in higher-tier programs.
QuickBooks Online: Good, but Not Great
- How It Works: It gets pricing from IHS Markit every four hours and updates invoices depending on those prices.
- Limitations: Can’t see RBI rates or bid/ask spreads; doesn’t get updates in real time; and isn’t very flexible.
The Issue with Built-in Rate Handling
These systems have solid frameworks, however they don’t always have:
- Accuracy in real time: Delayed rates might use data from yesterday to execute a transaction that happens today.
- Automation: Typing in data by hand takes a long time and is easy to get wrong.
- Reliable reconciliation: Problems arise when platform rates and bank rates are not the same.
- Real-world specifics: Business buyers need to see bid, ask, or mid-market pricing, not just midpoints.
IBRLIVE: A Real Time Forex API That Works Right Away
It is easy for developers to use the IBRLIVE FOREX API, which is built for speed and accuracy.
The main benefits are:
- Live Interbank Data: Rates change right now, just like the market does.
- Bid, Ask, and Mid Rates: These are important for accurate financial reporting when you buy or sell something.
- Integration with REST APIs: You can easily connect to accounting software using an API or middleware.
- Plans that don’t cost much: Start at just $9 a month, which is perfect for small businesses and freelancers that work in more than one country.
An exporter who uses QuickBooks and IBRLIVE is an example from the real world.
- An invoice for ₹75.50 was sent out on June 1.
- We got a payment of ₹76.20 on June 3.
- Without an API, you have to change and write down a ₹700 gain by hand.
- IBRLIVE instantly pulls in the most recent rate and records the increase straight immediately, so you don’t have to guess.
Why would you want to connect to a FOREX API in real time?
- Accuracy: Get pricing based on the market right now, not what it was like four hours ago.
- Efficiency: Stop looking things up and entering in data by hand every day.
- Compliance: To pass an audit or pay taxes, you need to reach the benchmark rate.
- Scalability: As the number and complexity of FX reports rises, keep them tidy.
The Main Point
TallyPrime, Zoho Books, and QuickBooks all have built-in support for more than one currency, but they aren’t geared to keep up with changes in the forex market in real time.
By integrating a real-time FOREX API like IBRLIVE, businesses can:
- When reconciling, don’t make costly mistakes.
- Make sure that daily rate updates happen on their own.
- Be in charge of FX reporting
- Make compliance more precise
IBRLIVE turns static accounting software into a dynamic, internationally aware platform that is perfect for exporters, schools, SaaS companies, or anyone who has to deal with payments across borders.
And it doesn’t cost much.
