You don't have many dealings with foreign currency - so you shouldn't be affected by exchange rate fluctuations, right? The answer is that in our increasingly global economy, you're likely to be wrong.

No matter how isolated your organisation seems to be from large scale foreign transactions, it's likely that at some level it will be affected. In some large organisations where exposure to the threat of currency fluctuations is a relatively new phenomena - many AP departments simply hand over the responsibility to their central banking partners. In many cases their bank will be acting with their own best interests at heart, and not those of their client. This situation is compounded when AP departments have a rigid payment system whereby invoices must be paid on or by a certain date regardless of what may be happening in the markets.