Hey techies...got a question for you. Is there any type of software that can pull HISTORICAL currency exchange rates and apply it to your spreadsheet?

I know there are things out there that allow for real time rates, but I have yet to find anything related to historical rates.

I'm an accountant for a small international business and basically what I'm trying to do is to be able to take expense reports from our foreign workers (we use excel) and convert their monthly expenses to a daily exchange rate based on the date of the listed expense. I would love to be able to do this without having to look up that rate every time for each and every expense. Because of how tedious that is, we just use the rate from the last day of the month.

Any help is appreciated.

P.S. I've looked on google and am not having much luck / don't know where else to look.

8/12/2010 4:58:37 PM

I googled "HISTORICAL currency exchange rates" and the first result was http://www.oanda.com/currency-data

Quote :

"Daily exchange rates are available for all active currencies and four metals, for any date since 1990. "

8/12/2010 5:26:39 PM

Quote :

"I would love to be able to do this without having to look up that rate every time for each and every expense. Because of how tedious that is, we just use the rate from the last day of the month. "

i'm not sure why this is tedious. have a table with exchange rates by date and just use a vlookup function to pull the rate from a date in another cell. there is no reason to do it by hand. am i missing something?

8/12/2010 5:34:27 PM

Yeah IF you already have a rate data table this is insanely easy. But the op doesn't have a data table available.

8/12/2010 6:04:21 PM

Unfortunately I can't contribute to solving the OP's problem, but it does bring to mind the question of why wouldn't this type of thing already exist... I mean to say, surely the OP isn't the only person who has needed to do this. Hmmm


For example, if you needed Euro exchange rates, could you pull some data from this --> Ctrl + C into a worksheet in an Excel file and make it a VLOOKUP table?
http://www.exchange-rates.org/history/EUR/USD/T

[Edited on August 12, 2010 at 6:12 PM. Reason : for example...]

8/12/2010 6:10:51 PM

^^ ah i get what they're asking then, and i have no idea if there are products that automatically import exchange rates

8/12/2010 6:29:08 PM

if 6 months of data is all that is needed...then a combination of ^ plus utilizing the "get external data" feature in excel would be best.

MrLuvaLuva, how many different currencies are you using?

send me a PM and I can email you a very basic file which can do what you're wanting.

8/12/2010 6:31:26 PM

we use Oanda currently, and vlookup is doable but still involves alot of work to maintain it, but I don't know.

HaLo, off the top of my head we use the following currencies: USD, Euro, Thai Baht, Aussie Dollar, Malaysia Ringgit, Singapore Dollar, Hong Kong Dollar, Chinese Renminbi, occasional Swiss Franc, occasional South African Rand, and occasional Swedish Krona. (roughly 11 or so, we may have used others at times)

I'll PM you..Thanks.

8/13/2010 8:59:41 AM

You guys know that excel supports web query data lists right?

You add a web data query, put in the URL, and set up the scraping filter visually. It's easy as he'll and keeps this kind of data always up to date

8/13/2010 1:00:43 PM

^ what I've done in the sample I setup.

8/13/2010 5:07:29 PM

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7142745/Test%20Currency%20Lookup.xlsx

8/15/2010 11:10:41 PM