Multi-currency invoicing for EU freelancers — getting FX and VAT right

Plenty of European freelancers bill clients abroad in their currency — USD for the US startup, GBP for the London agency — while keeping their own books in euros. That's perfectly fine, but it quietly creates three questions most spreadsheets get wrong: which exchange rate, what VAT base, and how to reconcile when the payment lands.

Invoice in their currency, report in yours

There's no rule that an invoice must be in euros. You can issue in USD, GBP, CHF — whatever the contract says. What the tax authority cares about is that your VAT and your books are expressed in your base currency with a defensible exchange rate.

So a multi-currency invoice really carries two amounts: the face amount the client pays (their currency) and the base-currency equivalent you report on. Keep both, and the rest is bookkeeping.

Which exchange rate?

The safe default across the EU is the rate on the invoice date (the tax point), using a published source — typically the European Central Bank reference rate or your national bank's published rate. The key word is consistent: pick the rule, apply it every time, and store the rate you used with the invoice so it's reproducible months later.

Eurobillr stores the converted, base-currency equivalent on every row (the base_amount) at the rate for the document's date, so your reports aggregate cleanly no matter how many currencies you billed in. You never hand-convert a line into a spreadsheet.

The VAT base on a foreign-currency invoice

VAT is calculated and reported in your base currency. For a 0% reverse-charge export to a business customer that's mostly academic — there's no VAT to convert — but the net amount still lands on your VAT return and recap listing in euros, so the rate still matters. For anything that does carry VAT, the tax amount is the converted figure, not a re-quote at payment time.

The reconciliation trap

Here's where freelancers lose hours: you invoice 1,000 USD, and three weeks later 1,000 USD lands as €921 instead of the €930 you booked. That €9 isn't a VAT problem — it's an FX gain/loss, and it belongs in your accounts as exactly that, not as a discount or a write-off.

Two habits keep this clean:

• Book the invoice at the invoice-date rate (what you owe VAT on).
• Book the difference at settlement as an FX gain/loss line.

Pair that with a structured reference on euro invoices and Eurobillr's bank-statement import, and matching incoming payments — even in mixed currencies — stops being detective work.

Getting paid across borders

Foreign clients pay more reliably when you remove friction: offer a SEPA transfer with an EPC QR for euro payers, and a pay-now link (Stripe/Mollie/PayPal) for everyone else. Eurobillr puts both on the invoice automatically, so the client picks the rail that's cheapest for them.

The short version

1. Invoice in the client's currency; report in your base currency.
2. Use the invoice-date rate from a published source, consistently,

and store it.

1. Treat the payment-day difference as an FX gain/loss, not a

discount.

1. Let your tool keep the base-currency equivalent so quarter-end is a

read, not a rebuild.

In the app: invoice in multiple currencies and get paid faster with QR and online payments.