Currency of the award

A call is published in the funder's currency and pays in it. A Japanese grant pays yen, an Indian grant rupees, an American award dollars. Bemzu stores every amount exactly as published and never rewrites the stored figure.

The converted number shown beside it is a display, computed from a published reference rate whose date is shown with it. The separation is deliberate: the conversion is a convenience for comparing opportunities across systems, while the stored figure is the fact. Rates move; what the funder committed does not.

For planning, the original is the number that matters. An organisation whose costs are in euros and whose award is in yen carries the exchange risk for the project's whole duration, and a three-year project can absorb a double-digit swing. Exchange losses are typically not an eligible cost, so that risk sits with you.

Units of account differ too, not just the currency. Indian documents are written in lakh and crore, Japanese amounts frequently in thousands of yen, Korean in hundred-millions of won. Reading the digit grouping as though it were Western notation is a factor-of-ten error, which is why the stored value is always a plain number of the base unit.

Where no reliable rate exists for a currency, Bemzu shows the amount unconverted rather than applying a substitute. An honest "not converted" is more useful than a confident wrong number, and it is visible rather than silent.