If you run a business in Lebanon in 2026, your money lives in two currencies whether you like it or not. You quote and collect most sales in fresh US dollars, you pay some suppliers and salaries in dollars and others in Lebanese lira, and your official obligations — VAT at 11%, payroll declarations, ministry filings — are denominated in LBP at the Banque du Liban rate of 89,500 LBP per USD. Dual-currency accounting isn't an advanced feature for Lebanese SMEs; it's the baseline requirement. This guide covers how to keep books in USD and LBP side by side without losing your mind — or your margins.
Why do Lebanese businesses need two-currency books?
After the financial crisis, the economy re-anchored itself on cash dollars — what everyone calls fresh USD. Prices in shops, professional fees, rents, and most B2B contracts are set in dollars. At the same time, the lira never went away: government fees, taxes, some utilities, and part of many payrolls still run through LBP.
Since early 2024 the official BdL rate has sat at 89,500, and the market rate has effectively converged with it — a genuine improvement over the years when five different exchange rates coexisted. But convergence doesn't mean you can ignore currency: you still transact in both, owe taxes in one, and think about profit in the other.
The practical result: a Lebanese SME needs to answer two questions at any moment — how much money did we actually make (in USD terms)? and what do we owe the state (in LBP terms)? One set of single-currency books can't answer both.
Why single-currency books break
The two common workarounds both fail:
- "Everything in USD" books look clean until filing time. Your VAT declaration, payroll declarations, and official ledgers need LBP figures at the applicable rate. If your records only hold dollars, every filing becomes a manual conversion exercise — and manual conversion at scale is where errors and audit exposure creep in.
- "Everything in LBP" books produce numbers so large they stop meaning anything (a $1,000 invoice is 89,500,000 LBP), and they hide your real economics. If the rate ever moves again, historical LBP figures become impossible to interpret — anyone who kept lira books through 2019–2023 knows exactly how that story goes.
What you actually want is dual-currency double-entry: every transaction recorded in its original currency, converted into your primary reporting currency at the rate on the transaction date, with both values kept forever.
What does dual-currency double-entry look like in practice?
Say your primary (reporting) currency is USD, and a mixed week looks like this:
| Date | Transaction | Original currency | Rate used | Booked in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 3 | Invoice a client for consulting | USD 2,500 | — | $2,500.00 |
| Aug 4 | Pay office rent | USD 800 | — | $800.00 |
| Aug 5 | Pay Electricité du Liban + generator bill | LBP 22,375,000 | 89,500 | $250.00 |
| Aug 6 | Buy supplies from a local vendor | LBP 8,950,000 | 89,500 | $100.00 |
| Aug 7 | Pay an employee's LBP salary portion | LBP 44,750,000 | 89,500 | $500.00 |
Every row keeps both the original amount (what actually left your pocket, in the currency it left in) and the converted value (so your P&L adds up in one currency). Your profit report reads in dollars; your LBP audit trail is intact underneath. Flip it around and the same structure produces LBP totals for filings.
The key discipline is that the conversion happens per transaction, at the historical rate for that date — not in one big spreadsheet conversion at month-end using whatever today's rate is.
Invoicing in USD, filing VAT in LBP
Lebanon's VAT is 11% (a cabinet-approved increase to 12% made headlines in February 2026, but it had not been enacted into law as of this writing — charge 11% until your accountant tells you otherwise). For a VAT-registered business the loop looks like this:
- You issue an invoice in USD — say $1,000 + 11% VAT = $1,110.
- Your books record the VAT portion ($110) as VAT collected, with its LBP equivalent at the transaction-date rate (9,845,000 LBP at 89,500).
- Input VAT on your purchases accumulates the same way, in whichever currency you paid.
- At filing time, your declaration totals come out of the ledger in LBP — already converted, transaction by transaction — instead of being rebuilt by hand from a USD spreadsheet.
Worth repeating: the current one-rate world makes this the easiest it has been in years. A stable 89,500 means conversions are predictable — which makes now the cheapest possible moment to move from ad-hoc spreadsheets to proper dual-currency books, before anything changes again.
Historical FX rates: the detail everyone gets wrong
Why insist on transaction-date rates when the rate has been pinned at 89,500 for two years? Three reasons:
- Your history isn't flat. Records from before 2024 sit at different rates. Books that retroactively apply today's rate to old transactions misstate every historical figure — and misstate your equity today.
- The future isn't guaranteed flat either. Lebanon is mid-reform; if the exchange regime shifts, books that store per-transaction rates keep working. Books that assume one eternal rate silently corrupt.
- Mixed-currency positions create real gains and losses. If you hold LBP between earning it and spending it while the rate moves, that difference is a real FX gain or loss that belongs in your P&L — something only historical-rate accounting can surface.
From the platform: multi-currency isn't an add-on in Staks — every invoice, expense, and payment carries its own currency and its historical exchange rate, and the double-entry ledger converts into your primary currency automatically. You see profit in USD, pull LBP totals when the paperwork asks, and never run a month-end conversion spreadsheet again.
Does 2026's reform moment change anything?
Directionally, yes. The banking-secrecy law passed in April 2025, a bank-resolution law followed, and parliament passed the 2026 Budget Law on 29 January 2026 — a package that includes tighter tax-compliance measures, such as advance taxes aimed at non-compliant importers and monthly electronic declarations for certain fees. The through-line is clear: Lebanon's fiscal apparatus is digitising and formalising, and businesses with clean, reconstructable books will have a much easier time than those with a drawer full of fresh-dollar receipts and no ledger.
Nobody can promise what the reform path looks like from here. But every scenario — IMF program, banking restructuring, eventual currency reform — rewards the same preparation: books that show exactly what happened, in which currency, at which rate, on which date.
FAQ
Can I just keep everything in USD and convert once a year?
You can, and many small businesses do — but it means your VAT filings are hand-built, your LBP costs are approximated, and an auditor's questions become archaeology. Per-transaction conversion costs nothing extra when software does it and saves you at exactly the moments that matter.
What rate do I use for tax filings?
The official BdL rate — 89,500 to the dollar since early 2024, and effectively the market rate too. For anything filing-specific, confirm the applicable rate and treatment with your accountant; this article is a practical guide, not tax advice.
What about my records from 2020–2023?
Keep them at the rates that applied when they happened — don't restate them at 89,500. If you're rebuilding books, record old transactions with their historical rates so opening balances mean something. It's tedious once, then done.
Do I still need an accountant if software handles the currencies?
For filings and tax strategy, yes — Lebanese compliance has too many edge cases for anyone to promise otherwise. What good software changes is what your accountant works from: a clean dual-currency ledger instead of a shoebox, which usually means fewer billable hours and fewer surprises.
Put both currencies in one set of books
Running a business in Lebanon is hard enough without your accounting fighting you. Record every transaction in the currency it happened in, convert at the historical rate, and let your reports answer both the USD question and the LBP question from the same ledger.
Related reading: how to track business expenses without a bookkeeper and quote, proforma, or invoice — what to send and when.
Staks is built for businesses that live in more than one currency — invoicing, expenses, and real double-entry accounting with historical FX rates, in one place. Start your 14-day free trial →