Money data type in PostgreSQL?

[David Garamond]

What do people recommend for storing money amounts? I've seen people use
NUMERIC(18,3) and other use NUMERIC(18,4). Which one is more appropriate
and why? This is considering various existing currencies, some having
low rates (like IDR, in which you can have large amount up to hundreds
of trillions) and some high rates (like USD, in which you can have small
amount like 0.1 cent). Are there places/industries which involve values
lower than 0.1 cent?

And what about 'factor' field in currency conversion table? Should I use
REAL, or DOUBLE PRECISION (do we need 15-16 digit precision?) or NUMERIC
(exact numbers). The factor should range between 1E-3 (e.g. converting
IDR to USD) to 1E4 (e.g. converting IDR to pounds/euros).

--
dave


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[Oliver Elphick]

On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 07:02, David Garamond wrote:

What do people recommend for storing money amounts? I've seen people use
NUMERIC(18,3) and other use NUMERIC(18,4). Which one is more appropriate
and why? This is considering various existing currencies, some having
low rates (like IDR, in which you can have large amount up to hundreds
of trillions) and some high rates (like USD, in which you can have small
amount like 0.1 cent). Are there places/industries which involve values
lower than 0.1 cent?
I think you should match the customer's data and use whatever precision
is necessary for it. The needs of a small shop will not be the same as a
currency trader's.

You should not regard amounts in different currencies as equivalent.
You cannot add Euros to dollars and get a meaningful figure; so they
should not be in the same column. If you are handling multiple
currencies, your database design needs to be a lot more sophisticated
than having a single money column.
And what about 'factor' field in currency conversion table? Should I use
REAL, or DOUBLE PRECISION (do we need 15-16 digit precision?) or NUMERIC
(exact numbers). The factor should range between 1E-3 (e.g. converting
IDR to USD) to 1E4 (e.g. converting IDR to pounds/euros).

You should only use NUMERIC for money; any kind of floating point
representation will lose detail somewhere along the line. (I suppose
you could use BIGINT for Japanese Yen.)

--
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Isle of Wight, UK http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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[David Garamond]

Oliver Elphick wrote:

You should not regard amounts in different currencies as equivalent.
You cannot add Euros to dollars and get a meaningful figure; so they
should not be in the same column.
I plan to store amount in a column (NUMERIC) and currency id in another
(CHAR(3)). Plus another column for amount in 'standard' currency (e.g.
USD; all addition/sum will be done to this column).
You should only use NUMERIC for money; any kind of floating point
representation will lose detail somewhere along the line. (I suppose
you could use BIGINT for Japanese Yen.)

--
dave

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[Chris Travers]

Funny you mention IDR-- I happen to be in Jakarta at the moment.

Obviously different customers have different requirements, but I always
suggest trading performance for usefulness where necessary.

Obviously, the scale will need to be in accordance with the needs of your
customer (unlikey to need any for IDR; 2, 3, or more depending on industry
for USD). I would also always suggest overshooting the precision by a few
places to ensure that:
1) if there is another banking crisis, your app still performs
2) take into account future inflation
3) take into account future growth.

Best WIshes,
Chris Travers
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[Claudio Lapidus]

David Garamond wrote:

I plan to store amount in a column (NUMERIC) and currency id in another
(CHAR(3)). Plus another column for amount in 'standard' currency (e.g.
USD; all addition/sum will be done to this column).

If your system really is going to handle multiple, simultaneous currencies,
beware of constant changes in the exchange rate between them. Probably
you'll be better by never storing anything in a 'standard currency' column
and doing instead all math on the fly, referring to a separate
'exchange_rates ' table when needed (i.e. always :-). Of course, all of this
has nothing to do with the technical solution but instead with the bussiness
rules the application must follow, so they must be incorporated early at the
spec level. In the end, probably an accountant will be the most qualified
one to define these things.

With regard to precision, it is common in certain applications the need to
handle very small amounts, especially when used as factors of a larger
calculation. I've even seen once some rates defined in hundredths of cents!

hth
cl.
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[Christopher Browne]

Martha Stewart called it a Good Thing when cl******@hotmai l.com ("Claudio Lapidus") wrote:

With regard to precision, it is common in certain applications the need to
handle very small amounts, especially when used as factors of a larger
calculation. I've even seen once some rates defined in hundredths of cents!

Well, you don't need terribly much precision in the currency exchange
rate if the amount being converted is small. You only need a couple
significant digits to convert $0.24 USD to the appropriate amount in
$CDN.

But to get the pennies right on a $10,000 USD transaction converted
into GBP (UK Pounds), you need all the official precision that there
is. And if your calculation is off by 4 cents, some of those
accounting folk are liable to thrash you mercilessly over it. If you
get calculations WRONG, they get really uncomfortable, and want to
know why.
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[Greg Stark]

"Claudio Lapidus" <cl******@hotma il.com> writes:

With regard to precision, it is common in certain applications the need to
handle very small amounts, especially when used as factors of a larger
calculation. I've even seen once some rates defined in hundredths of cents!

Normally there's nothing smaller than a tenth of a cent in US currency. It's
called a "mill". (or "mil"? I forget.). Of course you have to multiply
currency amounts by floating point numbers like interest rates or such, and
that will produce strange numbers but they'll always be rounded off to at
least mills and usually cents. You never actually debit or credit partial
mills.

At least that's how I was taught it was supposed to work.
I'm sure someone somewhere isn't following it.

--
greg
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[Graham Leggett]

Christopher Browne wrote:

But to get the pennies right on a $10,000 USD transaction converted
into GBP (UK Pounds), you need all the official precision that there
is. And if your calculation is off by 4 cents, some of those
accounting folk are liable to thrash you mercilessly over it. If you
get calculations WRONG, they get really uncomfortable, and want to
know why.

What I have done is store the currency amounts as bigints, at the same
precision defined for the currency (ie cents for dollars, pence for
pounds, etc). This guarantees that you don't get any rounding errors
when storing the figures as a floating point type. When manipulating the
numbers, I use Java BigDecimals, which don't lose any precision either,
and convert back to bigints to store in the database.

YMMV.

Regards,
Graham
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[Jan Wieck]

Graham Leggett wrote:

Christopher Browne wrote:

But to get the pennies right on a $10,000 USD transaction converted
into GBP (UK Pounds), you need all the official precision that there
is. And if your calculation is off by 4 cents, some of those
accounting folk are liable to thrash you mercilessly over it. If you
get calculations WRONG, they get really uncomfortable, and want to
know why.

What I have done is store the currency amounts as bigints, at the same
precision defined for the currency (ie cents for dollars, pence for
pounds, etc). This guarantees that you don't get any rounding errors
when storing the figures as a floating point type. When manipulating the
numbers, I use Java BigDecimals, which don't lose any precision either,
and convert back to bigints to store in the database.

You won't get any rounding errors in NUMERIC either. What people should
be concerned of is to find an arbitrary precision package for the
frontend programming language they're using.
Jan

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[Craig O'Shannessy]

On Thu, 4 Dec 2003, Jan Wieck wrote:

Graham Leggett wrote:

Christopher Browne wrote:

What I have done is store the currency amounts as bigints, at the same
precision defined for the currency (ie cents for dollars, pence for
pounds, etc). This guarantees that you don't get any rounding errors
when storing the figures as a floating point type. When manipulating the
numbers, I use Java BigDecimals, which don't lose any precision either,
and convert back to bigints to store in the database.

You won't get any rounding errors in NUMERIC either. What people should
be concerned of is to find an arbitrary precision package for the
frontend programming language they're using.

I agree, I use BigDecimal's in Java, and NUMERIC's in PostgreSQL, they
seem like a perfect match. Floating point numbers are not suitable for
money in my opinion.
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