---
title: How to set currency and year
canonical: "https://cloudmonitor.ai/docs/how-to/how-to-set-your-currency-and-financial-year/"
description: "Set the reporting currency, financial year start and time zone for your workspace — and understand what changing currency breaks."
---

Two settings under Settings ▸ **Workspace Settings** ▸ Account change how every number in
CloudMonitor is presented. Both are worth setting once, early, and then leaving alone.

:::note[Admins only]
You need the **Admin** role to do this. Admins are set in Settings ▸ Users & Access. If you don't
see the screens below, ask an admin in your organization.
:::

## Financial year start

Set the **day** and **month** your financial year begins. The day list adjusts to the month you pick,
and February allows the 29th.

This drives the accounting presets in the top-bar Period filter:

> Drives Financial Year to Date, Quarter to Date, Last Quarter, and Previous Financial Year.

Get it right and "Financial Year to Date" means what your finance team means by it. Get it wrong and
every accounting-period figure in the product is quietly measuring the wrong window — which is the
kind of error that survives a long time because nothing looks broken.

Changing it re-bases the presets immediately, with no reload. The Period chip shows the dates
alongside the name for these presets, so you can check the boundaries landed where you meant without
opening the picker.

If one of these presets isn't offered, it's because it would land part-way through a month that
CloudMonitor only holds as a monthly total — see
[older periods come in whole months](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/global-filters/). Nothing is wrong with
your financial-year setting.

## Reporting currency

Pick the currency every figure is shown in. A live preview shows example amounts at each level of
precision — totals rounded to whole amounts, ledger rows keeping a decimal so they still add up, and
per-unit rates keeping enough decimals that a sub-cent cost never reads as zero.

:::caution[Currency is never converted]
The setting's own help says it plainly:

> Changing currency swaps the symbol only — amounts are never converted.

Change from USD to EUR and a figure showing `$1,000` becomes `€1,000`. It is the same number with a
different symbol in front of it. No exchange rate is applied anywhere in CloudMonitor.
:::

### What changing it breaks

Every budget stored in the old currency stops being evaluated. On the Budgets list they show
**Requires repair** instead of an amount, and on
[Budgets & Forecasts](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/reports/budgets-and-forecasts/) you'll see a banner
saying no budget can be evaluated.

Fixing each one means opening it, retyping the amount in the new currency, and ticking the box
confirming you did the conversion yourself. Save stays disabled until you do.

So: **set the currency before you create budgets.** If you must change it later, plan to repair every
budget in the same sitting — a half-repaired set is worse than either state, because some budgets
alert and some silently don't.

## Time zone

Also on this card. It affects how dates and times are presented.

## Saving

Each card has its own **Save** and saves only its own settings, so you can change the financial year
without touching currency. You'll see **Settings saved.** on success.

## Also on this screen

| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Account** | Customer name and tenant ID (read-only), plus everything above |
| **Branding** | [Your own logo](/docs/how-to/how-to-add-your-own-logo/) |
| **Features** | [Turning optional modules on and off](/docs/how-to/how-to-turn-modules-on-or-off/) |
| **Anomaly detection** | The two thresholds that decide what gets flagged |
| **Billing** | Your plan and seat usage |

Some tabs only appear when there's something in them for your workspace, so your list may be shorter.

### Anomaly detection thresholds

Worth knowing about while you're here. A cost anomaly is only raised when a change clears **both** a
minimum cost value change and a minimum percentage change.

Both, not either — which is why a huge percentage swing on a trivial amount stays quiet, and so does
a small percentage move on something enormous. If the
[Anomaly Inbox](/docs/using-cloudmonitor/reports/anomalies/) is too noisy or too quiet, these two
numbers are the dial.