How to track spending abroad in the currency you paid

Abroad, the record of your spending splits in three. The receipt says €23.40. Your card statement, a few days later, says some amount in your home currency, possibly with a fee beside it. And the cash you took from an ATM appears only as one withdrawal. If you wait for the statement to work out what the trip cost, you are reading the least useful version of it.

The fix is a habit: log each purchase in the currency on the receipt, the day you pay it, and let the conversion happen afterwards. That is how the method below works, whether you use a notebook, a spreadsheet or an app.

01Why log in the currency you paid

• It matches the receipt, so you can check it on the spot. €23.40 on paper is €23.40 in your log.
• It keeps fees visible. If you log only the statement amount, a foreign transaction fee or a bad exchange rate disappears into the price of lunch.
• It works for cash. A market stall that takes only euros has no statement line at all, so the receipt or your own note is the only record.
• It lets you budget in local terms during the trip. "About €60 a day" is easier to keep to than a home-currency number that moves with the rate.

02Card, cash and ATM: three ways the money leaves

Paying by card

Your card network converts the purchase, and your card issuer may add a foreign transaction fee on top. Your card's terms list the fee, if there is one. Log the purchase in the local currency now, and log any fee on its own, under Fees & Charges, when it appears on your statement.

Paying in cash

Taking cash out is not spending. It moves money from your account to your wallet, so log what you buy with it, in the local currency, and leave the withdrawal out. Any ATM fee is real spending and belongs under Fees & Charges. The guide on tracking cash spending has a five-minute wallet count that works in any currency.

The question at the till: "Pay in your home currency?"

Card machines and ATMs abroad often offer to charge you in your home currency instead of the local one. This is called dynamic currency conversion, and the shop or ATM operator sets the rate. In the EU, the law now requires the cost of that conversion to be shown as a percentage mark-up over the European Central Bank's reference rates before you pay. The regulation that introduced the rule says a lack of transparency had increased "the risk of payers choosing expensive currency conversion options."

The simple rule: when asked, choose to pay in the local currency. It also keeps your receipt and your log in the same currency.

03Which exchange rate to use

There are two reasonable answers, and they answer different questions.

• The rate on the day you paid tells you what the purchase cost at a fair market rate. It is the right number for budgets and for comparing one day of the trip with another.
• The amount on your statement tells you what you were actually charged, fees and the network's rate included. It is the right number for reconciling your account.

Use the first for your log, then compare with the statement once a week. The gap between the two is what the conversion cost you. If it is bigger than your card's stated fee, look for a purchase where you accepted the till's currency offer.

Sorayli works this way. It keeps the amount in the currency you paid and converts it to your base currency at a daily rate from the purchase date or, when that day has none, an earlier one. Your budgets and totals use the converted amount, and the original stays on the entry. It covers 149 currencies on every plan.

04A receipt from abroad, worked through

Logged in euros, the receipt splits into €5.35 of food and coffee, €12.45 of sunscreen, €3.00 of postcards and €3.10 for a tram ticket, less the €0.50 loyalty discount. Logged as one card line from your statement, all of it would be one number in your home currency, filed under whatever the bank guessed.

Converting is then one multiplication. At an example rate of 1 euro = 1.10 US dollars (an illustration, not a quote), €23.40 is $25.74. If your statement shows $26.48 for the same purchase, the extra $0.74 is what the conversion and fees cost you.

05A two-minute routine for the trip

1. 1Before you leave, check whether your card charges a foreign transaction fee and whether your ATM card charges abroad.
2. 2Every day, log what you paid in the currency on the receipt. Photograph receipts with several items so each line gets its own category; type anything without a receipt.
3. 3When the till or ATM offers your home currency, choose the local one.
4. 4Once a week, open your card statement, log any fees as their own entries, and check the gap between your log and the statement.
5. 5At the end of the trip, read your totals by category in your home currency. That is what the trip cost, and where.

If you live abroad rather than visit, the same method holds month after month; the Sorayli for expats page covers earning in one currency and spending in another. If you are weighing travel apps, we compare Sorayli with Toshl, Spendee and Trail Wallet.