Why an account's currency locks

Each account holds money in one currency, and every amount you record in it is stored that way. You pick that currency when you create the account. After the first entry, it’s fixed.

What locks it

The currency stays open for as long as the account is empty. Record the first transaction or transfer and it locks.

Go to edit the account after that and the currency sits beside the opening balance with a note: Currency is locked once the account has transactions.

Why it works this way

An amount is a number and a currency together. If you entered 100 euros and the account switched to pounds, that 100 would still read 100, now as pounds. Not one figure changed, but every one of them means something different, and every total built on them is wrong.

Locking the currency keeps your past accurate. Quidough would rather refuse the switch than quietly rewrite what you recorded.

If you picked the wrong one

It depends how far in you are.

If the account is new and you’ve recorded a thing or two by mistake, delete those entries. With nothing left in it the account counts as empty again, and the currency opens back up.

If there’s real history in there, leave it alone. Make a new account in the right currency, move what’s left across with a transfer, then archive the old one. Archiving takes it off your list without changing a figure, so its past stays true to what actually happened.

Your base currency is a different thing

An account’s currency is where the money actually sits. Your household’s base currency is only how Quidough adds things up to show you a single total, and that one you can change whenever you like.

So an account’s balance only ever counts amounts in its own currency. A converted figure never lands in it. See how currency conversion works.