An expense tracker for expats: one ledger across two currencies

A tracker that handles more than one currency still has to add everything up in one of them. Sorayli calls that your base currency. Totals, budgets and charts are shown in it, and each purchase in another currency is converted into it, while the amount and currency you actually paid are kept beside the converted figure. The rate rules and a worked trip are on the multi-currency tracking page. This page is about the part a trip never tests: living abroad for years, with a salary, rent, savings and family in different currencies.

01Pick the currency you judge the month in

Ask one question: in which currency do you decide whether a month went well? For most people abroad, that is the currency their rent and salary are in. It is not always.

If you are still unsure, pick the currency your rent is paid in, since rent is usually the largest line.

Choose on purpose, because on the Free plan the choice stays. You pick the base currency during setup on every plan. In the iPhone app the first suggestion follows the country on the setup screen, so check it rather than accept it. Changing the base currency later takes Pro or Family. When you do, Sorayli converts your past purchases again at each one's own date, leaves the amounts you paid untouched, converts budget limits at today's rate and resets budget alerts. Bank figures you typed in are replaced by rate-based ones, and a purchase with no rate for its date keeps its old figure.

02Record foreign receipts in the currency printed on them

Take someone in Lisbon, paid in US dollars by a remote employer, with the dollar as base. Nearly every receipt they collect is in euros, like this one.

The six lines come to €29.60, the loyalty card takes off €1.20, and €28.40 is what was paid. The prices already include tax, so nothing is added on top. When the scanner reads a discount like this, it spreads it across the lines so they add up to the €28.40 you paid. At the rate feed's published rate for September 12, 2026 (1 EUR = 1.1598 USD), €28.40 is $32.94. Each line is converted and rounded to the cent on its own, so the six entries add up to $32.95. A cent of drift per receipt is normal.

When you scan a receipt, the receipt scanner reads the currency printed on it and shows it on the review screen before the purchase is saved, and you can change it there. Each line becomes its own transaction, grouped under the receipt. The conversion uses a daily rate for the purchase date, or the most recent earlier one if it is no more than 7 days older. Once saved, the converted figure stays put unless the purchase is edited, you enter your bank's figure, or you change your base currency.

Typed entries have shorter lists than scans. The iPhone form offers your base currency plus 12 common ones (USD, EUR, MAD, GBP, JPY, CNY, INR, CAD, AUD, CHF, AED and SAR). The web form offers 11 and starts on the default currency for new transactions that you set in Settings, so set that to your local currency if your base is your home one. If you live somewhere whose currency is on neither list, such as Thailand, making it your base currency means the iPhone form always offers it.

If you pay abroad with a card from home, your bank converts at its own rate and may add a fee, so your statement will rarely match Sorayli's figure to the cent. In the iPhone app you can open the transaction and enter what your bank actually charged; it is marked as manual, and "Reset to the day's rate" undoes it. The web has no screen for this. It is worth doing for rent, flights and large purchases, and not for every coffee.

03Count money sent home as spending

Money you send to family leaves your budget the day it leaves your account, so record it as an expense. Sorayli's add forms offer Expense or Income, and that fits: a transfer to someone else is not money moving between two of your own accounts.

1. 1Record the amount that left your account, in the currency it left in. What arrived on the other side, in their currency, is their record, not yours.
2. 2Record the provider's fee as a separate expense. After a year, the fees add up to a number worth knowing when you compare providers.
3. 3Keep the provider's receipt. In the United States, for transfers abroad over $15, providers must tell you the fees, the exchange rate and the amount expected to be delivered before you pay, and again after. Check your own country's rules.
4. 4File transfers under a category of their own. You can create categories on any plan, so make one called Money sent home instead of hiding transfers inside Gifts & Donations.
5. 5If you send a set amount each month, a monthly budget on that category shows where you stand against it, in your base currency.

The provider's exchange rate is a cost too, even though it never shows up as a fee. The one way to see it is to compare the amount delivered on two providers' quotes for the same transfer, on the same day.

04Read each month in one currency

With one base currency and every entry kept in the currency paid, a month becomes three numbers: income, spending and what is left. Here is the Lisbon month, in dollars.

In a month when the euro strengthens, the same rent costs more dollars. That is not an error. The ledger shows what your life cost in the currency you judge it in, and a figure already saved is not revalued when rates move afterward.

In Sorayli, the Transactions screen on the web and in the iPhone app filters by type, category and date, and shows a total for what is filtered in your base currency. Analytics has a currency filter: choose EUR to see only the euro purchases at their original amounts, or All to see everything converted. On the web, that filter and the custom date range work on every plan, while the charts on the Analytics page need Pro or Family.

A monthly close for a two-currency life

1. 1Scan or type the receipts still in your wallet, each in the currency printed on it.
2. 2Read your card statements for charges in a currency other than the card's, and on iPhone enter the bank's figure for the large ones.
3. 3Add every transfer home and its fee.
4. 4Filter the month and read income, spending and what is left, all in your base currency.
5. 5Filter by your Money sent home category from January to date, so the year's total never surprises you.

The monthly money review goes through the full version of this close. If part of your income is freelance work paid by clients abroad, receipts and records for freelancers covers what to keep for an accountant.

05What to expect, and what Sorayli does not do

• It never connects to a bank, local or back home. Every entry is one you add: scanned, typed, added through the assistant, or imported from a CSV file in Sorayli's own export format, where each row can carry its own currency code.
• The rate comes from a public daily feed. It is not your bank's rate or your card network's.
• A purchase in another currency dated before March 2, 2024 may have no rate. Sorayli then refuses to save it rather than guess, which matters if you back-fill earlier years.
• Sorayli runs on the web and in the iPhone and Android apps, which share one ledger. The phone apps cannot save without a connection, so on a trip home with no data, keep the receipt and add it later.
• Free includes 10 receipt scans a month, unlimited typed entries and 2 budgets. Pro, at $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year, scans without a monthly allowance within a fair-use cap of 300 a month. Compare the plans.