Managing multi-currency invoices for international clients

Winning a client in another country is good news that arrives with an awkward question: what currency do you invoice in?

Billing in your currency and letting them absorb the conversion is simplest for you and slightly rude to them. Billing in theirs is more professional and more competitive — and it is what most clients quietly expect.

What IsiroBooks does today

Every invoice, estimate and bill carries its own currency code, independent of your company's own. So you can issue an invoice denominated in USD, GBP or EUR to a client abroad while your business continues to keep its books in Canadian dollars. The document your client receives shows their currency; your records show what you issued.

That covers the common case for a Canadian consultancy, agency or software business with a handful of clients elsewhere: you want to look local to them without running a second set of books.

Where it stops — and we would rather tell you plainly

IsiroBooks does not currently do automatic exchange-rate conversion, and it does not consolidate foreign-currency balances into your home currency on reports. There is no rate feed and no realised or unrealised gain calculation.

In practice that means: the currency travels with the document, but your reporting stays in your own currency. If you need consolidated multi-currency reporting with automatic FX gain and loss, that is a real accounting capability and we do not have it yet. We would rather you knew that before you signed up than after.

Working well within it

A few habits make the current behaviour comfortable rather than limiting.

• Agree the rate in the contract. If you invoice in a client's currency, say which rate applies and when it is struck. This removes almost every payment dispute before it happens.
• Record what actually landed. When payment arrives, the deposit in your bank is in your currency. Recording the real amount received keeps your books true even though the invoice was denominated elsewhere.
• Treat the difference as a cost of doing business. Bank spread and conversion fees are a real expense. Capture them as one, and you will see what international work genuinely earns.
• Check aged receivables by client, not just by total. Cross-border payments are slower. Knowing which specific invoice is late matters more when the round trip is two weeks.

The honest summary: invoice internationally with confidence today; do your consolidated FX reporting elsewhere until we ship it.