Guides

Which currency to invoice in, and how to say so

Who carries the exchange risk, what to write when your books are in one currency and the invoice in another, and how to stop bank fees eating the total.

Billing in the client’s currency wins work and costs you the exchange risk. Billing in yours does the opposite. The decision is yours; the mistake is leaving it implicit and discovering it in the amount that lands.

Write the currency into the total

“1,250.00” is not an amount. “1,250.00 EUR” is. This matters more than it sounds when your client’s system defaults to their own currency and a human approves from a PDF.

Use the ISO code rather than a symbol wherever there is any chance of confusion — $ alone covers the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and more.

If your accounts are in a different currency

Many tax systems require you to record the transaction in your own currency at the rate on the tax point date. Printing that conversion on the invoice — the rate, the date and the source — is a courtesy to your future self at year end, and some jurisdictions require it where VAT is involved.

Bank charges

International transfers can carry a sending fee, intermediary fees and a receiving fee. State on the invoice who bears them. If you take no position, you are taking the position that you do.

Wording you can copy

Total due: 1,250.00 EUR
Equivalent at the invoice date: 1,850,000 KRW
(rate 1,480.00 KRW/EUR, ECB reference, 28 Aug 2026)
All bank charges to be borne by the payer (charge code OUR).

Worth knowing

• This generator lets you set the invoice currency independently of the document language, and prints the ISO code next to every total.