Comparing prices and handling foreign currency - Pacten Guides

2026-08-24

Three things sit behind a good buying decision: what each supplier quoted, what their currency is worth today, and how you have chosen to cost the stock once it arrives. Supply keeps all three in one place so the comparison is honest.

PRICE COMPARE

Quotes side by side

The comparison you would otherwise do in a spreadsheet.

Under Supply → Price Compare, pick an item and see what each supplier has quoted for it, with the terms and origin beside the number — because the cheapest quote is not always the cheapest purchase.

Quoted — the price, in the currency it was given in.
Origin — where it comes from, which is what decides whether freight and duty are part of the real cost.
Terms — what was agreed about payment, so a lower price on worse terms is visible as such.
A quote from a supplier that is not yet approved is marked Unapproved — you can see it, but you cannot act on it until the supplier is.

FX RATES

One set of rates the whole workspace agrees on

So two people costing the same shipment get the same answer.

Under Supply → FX Rates, exchange rates are held per currency pair with the date they applied and the source they came from. Where a market has more than one meaningful rate, the source is recorded alongside the number rather than the two being averaged into something that matches neither.

Watch out

If there is no rate path between two currencies, a figure cannot be converted and will not silently guess — you will be told a rate is missing. Add the pair rather than converting by hand somewhere else, or the two numbers will disagree.

COSTING METHOD

How stock takes on a cost

One workspace-wide choice, under Supply → Settings → Costing.

This decides what a unit is deemed to have cost when it is sold, and it is the single most consequential setting in the app. There are two options.

Weighted average

Every receipt blends into one pooled cost per item. The simplest to run, and what most importers use. A shipment landing at a worse rate raises the cost of everything on hand, not only that shipment.

FIFO by lot

Each receipt keeps its own cost and a sale consumes the oldest first. Truer margin per shipment, and the only method that can answer what the goods you just sold actually cost.

Tip

Choose before you have much history rather than after. The two methods give genuinely different margin figures on the same trading, so switching mid-year makes the two halves of your year hard to compare.

What a shipment really cost

Costs on the way in, and the landed figure that comes out.

Import consignments →