Features

Hi Diego. This currency thing could create lots of complications. Say, you’re based in Ireland with base currency EUR and sell to a Czech-based buyer. If your shop has multicurrency support (say, using your own plugin ;)) and the Czech buyer chooses to buy the digital product/service not in CZK but in USD (because he has a PayPal account in USD). What happens then? You must report a USD sale with USD>EUR exchange rate (I guess PayPal’s). What if you have several currencies in your PayPal account and there’s no conversion. Which amount and at what rate you’ll report the sale to Irish MOSS?

What about the invoicing? I guess the buyer should get a VAT invoice which complies with the Czech invoicing standards.

I guess the invoicing plugins for WooCommerce and other platforms are not ready to handle such situations. Different country-based templates for each customer ??

Hi quanto,

I use Diego’s multi-currency plugin, and wrote a small extra plugin for myself that hooks into the right places and:
a) Looks up the HMRC (UK tax authority)’s official exchange rate between the purchase currency and GBP (i.e. the UK’s currency) at purchase time, and records it with the order.
b) States the VAT in GBP on the invoice (am using this for invoices: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/woocommerce-pdf-invoices-packing-slips/), as required by the HMRC.

Hence, we are obliged to use the official exchange rate. If PayPal or whoever use a different one, then that gets handled as a gain or loss elsewhere in the accounts, when you reconcile them (by downloading your data from PayPal – you then treat it as a cost, positive or negative, of using PayPal).

The premium version of “WooCommerce EU Vat Compliance” will include compatibility with Diego’s multi-currency plugin, and its reports, when ready, will provide figures in both your base and order currencies.

So – what you’re looking for is not only possible, but already being done, or at least being worked on (for the reporting side)!

David

@quanto What @david wrote is correct, however I have to make a correction for Ireland. I spoke with the Revenue officers, and they said that, for VAT reporting, you don’t have to use their official exchange rates. Any official source of exchange rates (e.g. XE, Open Exchange Rates, etc) would be acceptable. The reason why I asked them is that the Irish Revenue does not provide a way to fetch the exchange rates automatically, and updating them manually could be a pain.

I guess that the situation about the “official” exchange rates would be different ??

Because all this is a EU thing, I guess the authorities would accept the European Central Bank exchange rates: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/index.en.html

They can be automatically fetched from their site

@quanto For what I’m concerned, merchants should report to their own Revenue offices. It’s not even remotely thinkable that a merchant would have to find a solution that pleases 30 EU Revenue offices. In my opinion, the the local Revenue says that “site X” is an acceptable source, that should be good enough. ??

Hi quanto,

Those rates are not allowed for use for shops the UK. In the UK, there’s official guidance, which it is mandatory to follow: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-currency-transactions-vat-and-tour-operators. You’ve either got to get the monthly rates from the HRMC site, or the daily market *selling* rates. The exchange rate on that link isn’t the same as the selling rate (because, of course, the buying and selling rates are either side of it by a few % – and the HMRC has explicitly specified the selling rate).

Best wishes,
David

@david that’s wonderful, some more complications! It seems that this EU is everything but a “Union”, everybody wants to do things their way. -_-

What about the users of the plugin which are not UK citizens? You must think of some option for them too. Maybe to specify their own source?

Hi quanto,

I think we’ve gone off-topic here… we’ve gone onto the question of how to supply acceptable exchange rates into Diego’s multi-currency switcher plugin, if your jurisdiction has particular rules for it. It’s a relevant issue for users of that plugin (of which I am one), but can we keep discussion on this forum on topics related to this plugin? I think that for issues involving Diego’s plugin, then those users should contact him first, in his support channels. It’s all interesting and relevant, but I’m mindful of the need to keep discussion here on-topic for all WooCommerce users, rather than just those using one particular (very good) commercial add-on.

Edit: just to be clear, when earlier in the thread I mentioned the solution for the UK that I’ve coded, I wasn’t proposing to add that code to any version of this current plugin – since it’s country-specific (and also specific to my situation having a WooCommerce base currency that isn’t my local currency).

David

I agree with David. @quanto if you would like to discuss options to retrieve exchange rates, please feel free to drop me a line.

Meanwhile… I’ve just released version 1.2.0; items:

* Tested on WP 4.1
* A little re-factoring of the code
* Updates to the readme.txt to be more helpful
* New banner logo on www.ads-software.com! Yes! Yes!
* Small fix to failure to set up the initial “Phrase matches used to identify VAT taxes” setting, used to identify VAT taxes – bug introduced in a recent version. Check this setting in your Woo -> Settings -> Taxes page if you’re updating.

And the Premium version is live too… you can read about its extra features on the productpage:
https://www.simbahosting.co.uk/s3/product/woocommerce-eu-vat-compliance/

Best wishes,
David

Well done! May the best player triumph! ??

Agree: off-topic.

Updated to the new version

Hi,

I’m going to mark this thread as ‘resolved’ now – but do feel free to open a new thread for remaining/new issues. This one has got a bit long and tangled, and the plugin has seen several new releases since it opened.

David