Setting up a checkout form that bills in the right currency

If you sell to customers in Australia and overseas, the currency on your signup form matters more than it looks. Show a US customer an AUD price and some will hesitate or leave. Let a customer flip between currencies after they have signed up and your invoices and reporting get messy.

NicelyBilled's checkout form has a small set of currency settings to deal with this. Here is what each one does and how to choose.

Where the currency options come from

You don't type a list of currencies into the checkout form. They come from the pricebooks on the plans you put on that form.

A pricebook is a market: a currency, and optionally a country or region. You set each offer's price once per pricebook. That means the same plan can be priced in AUD for Australia and USD for everyone else, with the amounts you choose rather than a straight conversion.

Checkout can only switch between currencies that every plan on the form shares. If your Starter plan has AUD and USD prices but your Pro plan only has AUD, the form only has AUD to work with.

So before you touch the checkout settings, check your pricebooks. Make sure every plan on the form has a price in each currency you want to offer. Also mark one pricebook as the default, so there is always a fallback when no country or region pricebook matches the customer.

Finding the settings

Go to Checkout Forms, open a form, and choose the Checkout config tab. The currency settings sit together under Checkout currency. You will see:

• Currency selection mode
• Default currency
• Shared currencies across selected plans (a read-only list)
• Lock currency after signup

The list of shared currencies is worth a glance first. If it is empty, you will see a warning that the selected plans share no common currency. Prices still show, but there is nothing for checkout to switch between until the pricebooks overlap.

Note that unpaid-invoice forms don't show these currency settings.

The four currency selection modes

Single currency

Checkout uses your default currency and nothing else. There is no selector for the customer to touch.

This suits you if you only bill in one currency, say AUD, or if you want every customer on one price list regardless of where they live. It is the simplest option and the one with the fewest surprises. It is also what you get if the setting has never been changed.

Customer selects

The customer picks from the shared currencies. A selector appears on the form, as long as there is more than one shared currency to choose from. If the plans only share one currency, the form tells you the switch is unavailable.

This suits you if your customers often have a clear preference, such as a New Zealand business that would rather pay in NZD, or a company that pays from a USD account. The trade-off is that the customer makes a decision at the moment you would like them to just pay.

IP hinted

Checkout suggests the currency for the visitor's location, when it matches one of the shared currencies. The customer can still change it.

For most founders selling across borders, this is the one to try first. Most people see a sensible currency straight away, and the few who want something different can fix it themselves. If the visitor's location doesn't match a shared currency, checkout falls back to your default currency.

IP forced

Checkout locks to the currency for the visitor's location, and the customer cannot change it. If no match is found, it uses your default currency.

Use this carefully. It suits cases where you really do want location to decide the price, for example when your prices differ by market on purpose. The downside is a customer travelling, or using a company card from another country, who cannot pick the currency they actually want. Location detection is also a guess, so decide whether you are comfortable with a wrong guess being final.

Setting the default currency

The Default currency is the fallback. You choose it from the shared currencies, so it can only be one your plans all support.

It does real work in three of the four modes. In single mode it is the currency everyone gets. In the two location-based modes it is what customers see when their location doesn't match a shared currency. If you sell mainly to Australians, AUD is the obvious pick. If your overseas customers outnumber your local ones, think about which currency your typical visitor would find least strange.

Lock currency after signup

The Lock currency after signup switch keeps the currency fixed once the customer has an account. When a currency is locked to an account, the selector no longer appears on checkout for that customer.

It is on by default in the form settings, and for good reason. A subscription that bills monthly in AUD should not quietly turn into one that bills in USD because someone changed a dropdown on a later visit. A locked currency keeps their invoices comparable from one month to the next and makes your own reconciliation easier.

Turn it off only if you have a reason, such as customers who legitimately move between markets and you are happy to handle the change.

How to pick for your market

Some starting points. Adjust them to your own customers.

• Almost all customers are in Australia. Single currency, AUD. Add more later when you actually have overseas demand.
• A home market plus a few overseas customers. IP hinted, with AUD as the default. Local customers see AUD, others see a likely match, and anyone can correct it.
• Several markets with deliberately different prices. Set up a pricebook per market. Consider IP hinted first, and use IP forced only if you are sure you want the price decided by location.
• Customers who tend to have a preference, such as paying from a particular account. Customer selects.

Whichever you pick, test the form before you publish it. The form's preview shows which currency it is currently using, so check that your default is what you expect. Then look at the form from the customer's side before you send people to it.

A short checklist

1. Create a pricebook for each currency you want to offer, and mark one as the default.
2. Price every plan on the form in each of those currencies.
3. Open the form's Checkout config tab and check the shared currencies list.
4. Choose a Currency selection mode.
5. Choose a Default currency.
6. Decide whether to keep Lock currency after signup on.
7. Save, then preview the form.

Keeping the setup this plain means customers see a price in a currency that makes sense to them, and you get invoices you can reconcile later.