Amounts and their currency

Why some amounts carry a currency mark and others do not, and what decides it.

The same "1,234.50" is dollars in Chicago, riyals in Riyadh and rupees in Meruvani. The currency is the company’s, read from the company record, picked up at sign-in and kept in step by the company switcher.

Where the mark appears is decided per table rather than per cell, because the alternative is noise:

• If the rows carry a currency column they may disagree with each other, so every amount is marked. A ledger holding a dollar invoice next to a euro one must not label both with the company’s currency.
• If they do not, every row is in the company’s currency — so it is said once, in the column heading, and the cells stay bare numbers that line up down the column.

Totals rows, line-item totals, dashboard tiles and every figure in a report or on a board carry the mark, including the compact form. A symbol is used where one is short, unambiguous and present in every font; the ISO code where it is not — so "SAR 1,234.50" rather than a glyph that renders as an empty box in the fonts a console is actually read in.