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Use Official Exchange Rates in Power BI

In this guide, we will see how to pull official exchange rates directly into Power BI from the Global Exchange Rates API. These rates come from trusted sources such as central banks and are suitable for accounting, regulatory reporting, and internal dashboards.

First of all, we will need:

  • Power BI Desktop
  • A valid API key from Global Exchange Rates. You can find it in the Developer API portal after subscribing.
  • (Optional) A preferred provider (e.g. ECB, BoE, etc.) or the base currency you want to use (e.g. EUR)

1. Open Power BI Desktop

Create a new report.

2. Connect to the data source

Go to Home → Get Data → Web

In the URL field, enter:

https://api.globalexchangerates.org/v1/latest?subscription-key=YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_KEY

Optionally you can also specify a base currency or a specific provider, for example for the ECB (European Central Bank):

https://api.globalexchangerates.org/v1/latest?subscription-key=YOUR_SUBSCRIPTION_KEY&provider=ECB

Click OK to proceed.

3. Transform the Response

We will need to transform the response as a flat table, starting from the Source select the exchangeRates record.

This will output the exchange rates as a key-value pair list.

In the ribbon, choose the To Table action from the Conversion tab.

This will generate a table with our exchange rates, we can now rename the column Name in Currency

Conclusions

We now have a table with the most recent exchange rates by official central banks, and we can use these for example to:

  • Create a calculated column to convert each value into the desidered currency.
  • Join the rates table to the transaction data using the currency code

It is also possible to:

  • Schedule refreshes in the Power BI Service to pull updated exchange rates daily
  • Use the /historical endpoint to fetch exchange rates by date.