FetchXRates - smart exchange rate provider

Most Excel users know they can fetch exchange rate data using Microsoft Excel’s STOCKHISTORY function.

And for simple cases, it works well.

You enter a currency pair, pick a date range, and Excel gives you historical rates. For a quick lookup or a small personal spreadsheet, that may be enough.

But finance work is rarely that simple.

What if you have thousands of transactions across different dates? What if the file has multiple currencies, missing dates, monthly average requirements, audit references, or needs to be converted into a clean output file for reporting?

That is where the question becomes more interesting:

Is STOCKHISTORY really the best way to handle Excel currency conversion, or is it just the easiest place to start?

To my surprise, there are very few options for converting currencies directly inside Excel in a way that feels practical for real finance work.

So I started building my own tool.

I sourced historical exchange rate data from official sources such as the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, Banca d’Italia, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Then I built an Excel conversion utility using Angular, designed to make the process simple for finance users rather than forcing them to work with formulas, manual lookups, or copy-pasted exchange rate tables.

The workflow is straightforward. A user uploads their Excel workbook, selects the sheet they want to convert, my tool auto identifies and maps the key columns such as transaction date, amount, source currency (if present). We just need to select target currency, but we also have the option to change the mapping , source currency etc if required. The tool applies the relevant historical exchange rates automatically by date or by monthly average.

The output is not just a modified value column. The generated Excel file can include converted amounts, applied exchange rates, formulas, and separate reference sheets showing the rates used for the conversion. This makes the file easier to review, easier to audit, and easier to share with finance teams, accountants, or management.

The idea was not just to fetch exchange rates. It was to turn exchange rate data into a practical Excel workflow.

Also, FetchXRates is designed to make API access free and affordable.