Working out exchange rate

[bomalan]

A colleague went to India at the beginning of December.
I need to reimburse them for the costs of this trip.

All receipts are in Indian rupee. I need to work out what these costs would be in GBP.

I've found a website which tells me that the exchange rate in December is as follows:
-1 Indian Rupee = 0.009 GBP.

But if I select GBP - INR, the rate is:
1GBP = 107.6 INR

I'm assuming this means I would need to use the INR - GBP conversion to work out how much to reimburse? E.g 1 INR =0.009 GBP.

Can anyone confirm before I mess it up!!

Thank you!

It would be better for your colleague to tell you how much you owe in sterling because depending on how the payment was made, there could have been additional bank/commission exchange charges.
There is also a difference between retail bank rate, cc rates and eg XE.com

If your colleague was using money from a local bank account, then it would make sense to use INR to GBP .

Unfortunately I only have the receipts and not a bank statement or anything, which would easily show me the amount in sterling.

There are quite a lot of transactions, so perhaps he didn't have time/can't be bothered to go through them all. I'm a PA, so I don't know how much I can push to be sent the statements/get him to look.

But yes, he was using his normal UK bank account. So you think INR-GBP?

Thank you!

The two exchange rates you have quoted are the same, just expressed in the opposite directions IYSWIM.

Do you have anything in an employee handbook about foreign currency expense claims? If so, go by what that says.

If not, if it were me processing this expense claim then I would ask for (redacted) bank statements showing the actual sterling amounts that were debited from the bank account. You can phrase the request as wanting to make sure that they are properly/fully reimbursed for the true cost to them.

If the employee doesn't want to do that then I would just use today's published exchange rate i.e the 0.009 and make no allowance for foreign currency bank charges. If that means the employee is out of pocket, then tough, they had the chance to supply bank statements.

Those rates are effectively the same but the first one is less accurate because it has fewer significant figures. If you're talking about a large sum of money it would be better to use the more accurate one.

If you want to fully reimburse your colleague and they are out of pocket in £ then use the receipts to confirm that the bill was paid, but reimburse whatever your colleague actually paid in £. This should show up on their bank/ credit card statement. If you can identify this you won't need an exchange rate at all.

He will want the sterling amount I would have thought, I get reimbursed in sterling so put in the receipts with bank statements too.

I once had to reimburse a friend for a trip to Europe, and all their receipts were in euros. I double-checked the rates using a tool that can convert euros to dollars, which helped me make sure I wasn’t messing up the math. In your case, using the INR → GBP rate like you said sounds right—basically each rupee times 0.009 gives you the amount in pounds. Makes it way easier than trying to flip it the other way.

HMRC currency exchange monthly rates - GOV.UK

This is the website we use at my work for our finance system. It's reputable and gives a fixed number for the whole month rather the ever-changing daily/hourly rates you'll find on commercial sites.

You use the GBP -INR rate so 107 whatever. Divide the Rupee amount you owe your colleague by that rate and that answer is the amount of sterling you owe.

I would ask him to give you his bank statements so that you can ensure he is reimbursed the right amount and doesn’t lose out on exchange fees or bank charges.

But if he doesn’t want to do that, then yes it would be the receipt amount multiplied by the INR to GBP conversion rate. So receipt x 0.009.

Given the difference it should be fairly clear if you’ve got things the wrong way round. India is cheaper than the UK, but not by all that much for business travel in big cities, so you should expect numbers that seem reasonable for the expenses incurred.

Depending on the expenses system you are using there may also be the option to simply input them as INR and let the system do the calculations?