Does Looker have native currency conversion?

[LookerExperts]

Knowledge Drop

Last tested: Dec 5, 2019
 

The Problem

I have currency data in my database, for example the cost of items. I would like to convert this to different currencies when I explore the data in Looker.

For example, maybe I have item prices saved in United States dollars ($) but I would like to see them in Japanese yen (¥).

Explanation

Looker doesn't provide any currency conversion at runtime. This would be a feature request.

Workaround

For a one-off request, you can hard-code the conversion into the LookML, as arithmetic in a number dimension.

dimension: cost_yen {
type: number
sql: ${cost_usd} * 108.134;;
value_format: "JP¥ 0"
}

(The value_format was built by referencing these docs and the conversion was found with this website.)

If you want something more dynamic and up-to-date, you'll need to build currency conversion into your ETL. That is, extract the current currency conversion into your database so that you can treat it as a dimension.

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