Currency Support
In this article
Overview
CellarTracker allows you to specify a default currency for your account, as well as a specific currency on a per-purchase basis so that you can track purchase prices in the actual currency paid. CellarTracker automatically handles conversion of these purchases into your default currency using recent exchange rates, so aggregated totals and averages include all of your purchase data. Generally, when viewing individual bottle or purchase details, you see both the native price and currency as well as a price converted to your default currency. Where views show your average price, this is drawn from all of your purchases and aggregated taking exchange rates into account.
The community average value and Wine Market Journal (WMJ) quarterly average auction prices (both available only to CellarTracker subscribers) are now converted into your default currency, providing more useful valuation data for non-US users. (Previously, these were only expressed in US dollars.)
The automatic cellar valuation feature now works for all subscribers, regardless of their default currency.
Default Currency
You can change the default currency on your account from the display settings page under your profile. You can also choose a locale to use for date and number formatting, which can be independent of your default currency.
For new accounts created after December 2018, CellarTracker automatically sets your default locale and currency based on the supported languages expressed by your web browser at time of registration. You can change these defaults at any time from the display settings page.
When you change your default currency, CellarTracker provides a choice to let you update the currency of all existing purchases in the old currency to the new currency. (This is designed for users who were inadvertently tracking all of their purchases in the wrong currency.) Changing the purchase currency does NOT calculate new prices; it just updates the currency code and leaves the unit amounts alone. If you later need to make changes to your purchase currencies in bulk, you can use our bulk editing tools to make this easy.
Editing Currency
A new currency dropdown is available in all places where you can enter/edit a currency value. Simply change the value of the dropdown to change the currency. Note: changing the currency does not change the associated value, just how it is interpreted. Here's an example of the purchase form showing the updated dropdown.
Our bulk editing functionality has also been updated to allow you to edit currencies where appropriate.
We also now allow you to edit the bottle cost to set a new price that is a multiple of the existing prices. (This is very good for cleaning up currencies that might be mixed up.)
Viewing Currency
When you are looking at a view that shows a native price and currency, CellarTracker also shows the converted price where space is available. The full desktop website includes a link to a popup providing more detail on the exchange rate used (not available on mobile).
In the full desktop website and classic desktop site, you can summarize purchases by currency.
You can click on a currency to filter the purchases to just that currency.
Here are examples of the same wine shown to users in GBP (Great British Pounds), USD (US dollars) and CAD (Canadian dollars). All three examples are based on the exact same underlying data, but they are shown in the user's default currency and converted (from USD) using a recent exchange rate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do you get the exchange rates, and how often are they updated?
Exchange rates are provided by currencylayer.com. It is our goal to update the exchange rates on a quarterly basis (or perhaps even monthly). Updating exchange rates requires recomputing a very large set of cached data (for performance), so we are evaluating the appropriate frequency.
Will you preserve historical exchange rates for my purchases?
We do not currently have any plans to do time-based conversion of exchange rates, so the value of your cellar and your historical purchases could fluctuate at times based on current exchange rates.
Why can't I set a currency for individual wine values?
While we allow you to set currency for purchase price, the desired "maximum" price on a wishlist, and the revenue associated with selling a bottle, wine values are always set based on the default currency for your account. If you set values for your wines (as opposed to entering purchase prices), please take care if you migrate your default currency. Also, for our customers who are using the special restaurant markup functionality, that is also assumed to be in the default currency of your account.
What if I need to update a lot of prices and currencies?
The bulk editing features in our full desktop website make it very easy to filter purchases and update them in bulk. (Note: updating the currency code does not perform conversion on the COST, it only updates the currency code associated with the existing purchase. However, we have now also added a feature to let you bulk update the cost as as a multiple of the current values.)
Do you support bulk import of prices and different currencies?
Yes, our bulk import feature has been upgraded to support multiple currencies. We also made a number of changes so that dates and amounts are handled properly regardless of your date and number formatting settings. (Until recently the bulk import feature only handled dates and numbers properly if your system locale was set to English (United States), and that has been fixed.)
Do you support Bitcoin, Ethereum or other crypto-currencies?
No. We looked into supporting these, but based on user feedback and implementation challenges, we are not planning to add support. Anyone purchasing in one of these currencies is, most likely, translating immediately to some other currency.