When adding a currency code, it’s recommended to use ISO 4217 currency codes.
You may have seen crypto-currencies using codes like ETH or BTC. While looking similar to ISO 4217 currency codes, they are not ISO 4217 codes. Beyond needing approval from the standards body to become an ISO 4217 code, cryptocurrencies are incompatible with the ISO 4217 format, which is a two letter country code followed by a letter for the currency.
| Code | Country Code | Currency Letter | Currency |
|---|---|---|---|
USD | US | D | United States Dollar |
SEK | SE | K | Swedish Krona |
EUR | EU | R | European Union Euro |
JPY | JP | Y | Japanese Yen |
ETB | ET | B | Ethiopian birr |
Since the goal of most crypto-currencies is to be independent of governments, they are incompatible with ISO 4217 on a format level.
What does this mean for choosing currency names in augr finance? Well, it depends on how you’re using augr finance.
If you’re manually adding transactions to an augrfinance file, it doesn’t mean much. augr finance will treat the currency name as an opaque string, so you can use USD, ETH, or Ethereum and all the underlying logic will run the same, as long as you are consistent with yourself.
However! If you’re importing transactions from OFX files, things are different. OFX files use ISO 4217 three letter codes to specify which currency is used. augr finance currently relies on the user defining these currencies, and an unrecognized currency is an error. So if you’re planning on importing OFX files, you must use ISO 4217 three letter codes.