SQL Reporting Services: be very careful with using "c" formatting for currency

While on site this week, another common problem that I see everywhere arose again.

When you need to format currency, you use the “c” format right? It’s in nearly every set of course materials I’ve ever seen.

In many cases, that’s wrong!

Take a long hard think about whether you really want the monetary values that you display automatically converting to the client system’s currency. If you are reporting financial figures, for example, is it really appropriate that they should mysteriously suddenly change from dollars to yen because the client is based in Zama City rather than in New York City? Not likely. A million dollars in sales might be good but a million yen in sales not quite so good :-)

2008-03-14