The Budget Reference Rate, commonly known as the ‘budget rate’, is the predetermined exchange rate that a company uses for pricing purposes throughout an entire budget or campaign period. This rate is typically established before the campaign commences and serves as the foundation for setting product or service prices.

The budget rate provides stability in pricing decisions by eliminating the uncertainty of fluctuating exchange rates during the operational period, allowing businesses to maintain consistent profit margins regardless of currency market movements. It can be the current spot rate, the current forward rate, an off-market rate, or a market-consensus rate. Even if a firm does not use an explicit benchmark, its budget necessarily contains at least an ‘implicit’ FX rate if foreign currency-denominated transactions are planned.

For firms that set stable prices for the year at the start of their annual budget, the budget coincides with the annual ‘campaign’. In this case, protecting the budget rate (with FX hedging) is the same as protecting the campaign rate

However, in firms that conduct more than one campaign per budget period —for example, a fashion company with several collections or ‘seasons’ per year— an important distinction arises. To the extent that they need to protect a budget rate, this rate should be the budget rate of each individual campaign, rather than the annual budget rate.

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