Most UK businesses settle in pounds — but if you sell to an American customer, a German agency or an Australian SaaS vendor, you'll want to invoice in their currency. 4invoices supports GBP as your home currency with USD, EUR, CAD, AUD invoicing for export customers. Each invoice records the FX rate on the issue date — the rate HMRC expects you to use when converting back to GBP for VAT returns and accounting.
Selling to US, EU, Canadian or Australian customers
Set the currency on the invoice (or at the customer level for repeat invoicing). 4invoices renders the invoice in the chosen currency with the right thousands separator and decimal style. The customer pays in their currency via Stripe (which handles the conversion at their end with their card-network rate).
VAT return — converting non-GBP sales back to pounds
HMRC requires you to convert foreign-currency sales to GBP for the VAT return, using either the period-average rate or the day-of-supply rate. 4invoices stores the FX rate at the moment the invoice is issued (from a daily fix — published rates from HMRC + Bank of England) and uses that for the conversion. The Box 6 (sales) and Box 7 (purchases) figures on your MTD VAT return are computed correctly without manual adjustment.
Customers who want to pay you in their currency, not yours
If you issue a £1,000 invoice but the US customer wants to pay in USD, give them a Stripe Connect or Wise multi-currency receiving account. We display the GBP invoice with a 'Pay in USD' button that converts at the live rate (Stripe rates are typically 1.5% above mid-market — for higher volumes, Wise routes through real interbank). The reconciliation matches the GBP invoice value, with the FX gain/loss recorded.
Currency mechanics, properly explained
Most UK SMBs work in pounds because their customers, suppliers and bank are in pounds. The friction starts when you make your first export sale: do you invoice the customer in pounds and let them deal with their FX, or do you invoice in their currency and deal with the FX yourself? The answer depends on volume and which side has more leverage — established US customers expect USD invoices, while small ad-hoc European buyers will accept GBP.
Whichever direction you go, the accounting needs to be right. UK GAAP and FRS 102 (the small/medium company standard) require foreign-currency transactions to be recorded at the spot rate on the transaction date. For invoicing software, that means storing the FX rate at the moment the invoice is issued — not the rate today when you happen to check, and not the rate when the customer eventually pays. 4invoices stores the rate at issue and at payment, and shows the FX gain or loss between those two as a separate line in your reports.
VAT treatment is independent of the currency. A B2C sale to a Polish consumer is now (post-Brexit) an export — zero-rated UK VAT, with the customer paying import VAT in Poland. A B2B sale to a French business is reverse-charged — zero-rated UK VAT, the French customer accounts for VAT in France. Both work the same whether you invoice in EUR or GBP. We get the VAT field on the invoice right based on the customer's status, not the currency.
Frequently asked
Do you support exotic currencies like AED or SGD?
Currently the core supported list is GBP, USD, EUR, CAD, AUD, NZD, CHF, JPY, SEK, NOK, DKK. Other currencies can be enabled on Enterprise plans on request. The FX rate source is the Bank of England daily reference rate for major currencies, with fallbacks to ECB and Bloomberg for currencies BoE doesn't publish.
What rate do you use — mid-market, ECB, or your bank's rate?
We use the daily reference rate published by the Bank of England (HMRC's recommended source for VAT-compliant FX). For EUR specifically, you can switch to the ECB daily reference rate if your accountant prefers that source. For settlement (when the customer actually pays), the rate is whatever your payment processor delivered.
Can the customer pay in a different currency than the invoice currency?
Yes via Stripe Connect, which auto-converts at the card-network rate. The invoice records both: the issued amount in invoice currency, and the received amount in your settlement currency, with the FX gain/loss computed.
Issue your first multi-currency invoice today
Free trial. Set up GBP plus your most common export currency, test on a real customer, see the FX handling end-to-end.