Lars Pind

internet software, coaching, and entrepreneurship

Lars Pind - internet software, coaching, and entrepreneurship
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Tools for the fortune 5,000,000

August 05, 2005 · See comments

The other tool that I’m missing in my globalized Fortune 5,000,000 world is a tool to help me manage my cash flow. After all, if DNROOC (Do not run out of cash) is good enough for Google, it’s probably good enough for me.

The reason I can’t just use Excel, apart from the usual reasons, is that I do business in multiple currencies, including both USD and EUR, and so my cash flow budget needs to reflect either current rates or what I (foolishly) predict those rates to be at the time.

For all I know, no good tool exists for this, so I’ve built one myself which queries Yahoo for the latest exchange rates, but it’s not very satisfactory overall, particularly since I didn’t bother with any UI, so I have to log into a server and edit Tcl code every time I want to update it.

From this post over at Blinksale, it seems I’m not the only one dealing in multiple currencies at the same time. How do you deal with this?

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Comments ↓

  • 1 Guan Yang // Aug 05, 2005 at 02:36 AM

    One way is to use Oanda (fxtrade.oanda.com) to hedge most of your currency exposure. For example, if you expect to receive $10k in three months, you can probably lock in at currect exchange rates with a deposit ("margin") of about $500. Oanda also has quotes that are reasonably easy to screen scrape.

  • 2 Lars Pind // Aug 05, 2005 at 03:58 AM

    Right, but I haven't done so yet, mostly because I've rarely known when the money would show up. Some clients, including large universities, would routinely pay 6 months after the due date, and I never did figure out what to do about it.