# Your own exchange rate

> Use the rate you actually paid instead of the reference rate — and how reference rates work.

Source: https://asienta.app/en/docs/own-rate/

## Reference rates

For every currency picked from the list, Asienta loads a reference rate automatically every day. The latest loaded rate is the one offered in the entry panel.

Reference rates come from central banks and are published once a day, so they can differ from a live quote by that day’s movement. That is why the rate you actually got always wins.

## Set your own rate

When an expense or income is in a currency other than your base currency, the panel shows the reference rate under the amount — for example **Reference rate: 1 EUR = 1.0890 USD** when your base currency is the euro.

1. Click **Own rate**.
2. Type the rate you got, in the same direction — how many units of the entry’s currency one unit of your base currency bought, such as `1.0850`.
3. Record the entry as usual.

Your rate is stored with the entry exactly as typed. **Use reference** switches back.

For an [exchange](/en/docs/currency-exchange/) you don’t type a rate at all: it follows from the amounts given and received.

## When there is no reference rate

If no reference rate exists for the entry date — for example, a currency you added yourself, or a date before you added the currency — the panel asks for your own rate. That rate is required: an entry can’t be expressed in the base currency without one.

## Rates are fixed on the entry date

An entry keeps the rate of its date. Changing a currency’s reference rate later, in [Currencies](/en/docs/currencies/), applies from today and doesn’t rewrite the past.