Commerce Multiple Currencies?

[Lenny Warren]

Is there any chance this can be sorted? If you set commerce to use 3 currencies, and then only enter price in one currency, the others show 0.00

This might not seem like a big deal, but this core issue carries over to the new Classifieds app. A seller enters a value in UKP, and when a potential buyer views in USD, for example, it shows as 0.00 or just a blank space.

Of course without a tie in to XE.com or the like, the admin would have to manually add currency conversions, but surely this is better than a potential buyer seeing no price or 0.00

Anyone? Surely a manual conversion wouldn't be hard to write????

[Mark]

It should show "Not available" for any currencies the admin hasn't provided.

We did look into automatic conversion but it gets kind of messy when you actually then have to send a real amount to a payment gateway, and that amount isn't going to be what you ultimately receive as the exchange rates change daily. Plus, how would you handle renewals? You can't tell a customer it's $x every month and then the next month bill them something else because the exchange rate has changed.

The idea is that you actually specify an amount in each currency. So you might say something is $9.99 if you're in the US or £7.99 in the UK (even though, right now, $9.99 is £7.60 - tomorrow it won't be). This is how most multinationals handle this sort of thing. Or you can do what we do: just specify the price in your currency, let the buyer's bank figure out what that is and know you're always getting the same amount for the same product.

[Adriano Faria]

2 minutes ago, Mark said:

It should show "Not available" for any currencies the admin hasn't provided.

Are you aware of this?

 

[Mark]

Nope. If you're having issues, please submit a ticket. Mentioning an issue in a reply to a topic sometimes escapes our attention  

[Adriano Faria]

It's related and it is on Tracker for 11 days nows.

[Lenny Warren]

On 20 September 2016 at 10:49 PM, Mark said:

It should show "Not available" for any currencies the admin hasn't provided.

We did look into automatic conversion but it gets kind of messy when you actually then have to send a real amount to a payment gateway, and that amount isn't going to be what you ultimately receive as the exchange rates change daily. Plus, how would you handle renewals? You can't tell a customer it's $x every month and then the next month bill them something else because the exchange rate has changed.

The idea is that you actually specify an amount in each currency. So you might say something is $9.99 if you're in the US or £7.99 in the UK (even though, right now, $9.99 is £7.60 - tomorrow it won't be). This is how most multinationals handle this sort of thing. Or you can do what we do: just specify the price in your currency, let the buyer's bank figure out what that is and know you're always getting the same amount for the same product.

I think its better to show any price rather than no price @Mark. Im not sure what the answer is, but it does cause issues for my members. It would be fine if everyone put their price in multiple currencies, but they don't. For example if you sell me something as $10 USD of course i realise that my cost in GBP will vary depending on the exchange rate, but if i have £7.60 on the sales item, based on an exchange factor appled by the admin, its no different to the seller putting in his guestimated amount. See my point?    My idea was, admin can enter a conversion factor within Commerce, based in XE.com or the like, which could be toggled on or off depending on whether you want to use it. That is the current exchange rate, say between GBP, EUR and USD. A seller sells an item for £10 UKP and Commerce auto fills in €13 and $15 for example. This gets around the seller not bothering to enter mulltiple currencies, whuch they rarely do. The Euro and USD values are as arbitrary as if the seller had put them in, but the main advantage is that if forum members wish to view all prices in Euros, tor USD, they can, rather than see "Not Avalable" which puts off members. the only issue is admins need to keep the exchange rate reasonably up to date, but even without that, its just as accurate as members making up conversion figures.... ?

[Lenny Warren]

Any thoughts @Mark ????

[Mark]

But the exchange rate changes daily - are you planning on updating it daily? Or just eating the difference? If it's the latter, why not fill in a round number for each of your products?

[Adriano Faria]

I think this should be admin's job/decision. I mean, give them the ability to do it and then it's up to them to keep things updated. In this case, it's still better to have an outdated conversion (by cents) than nothing at all.

[Lenny Warren]

On 02/10/2016 at 10:18 PM, Mark said:

But the exchange rate changes daily - are you planning on updating it daily? Or just eating the difference? If it's the latter, why not fill in a round number for each of your products?

It would be up to the admin's @Mark, it's a much better solution than no currency being shown. At the moment it causes issues and no price being shown to prospective buyers, that's worse than the exchange rate being off.

Filling in a round number would work, that way the seller would state what they wanted in any currency, but at the moment there is no way to force a user to fill in all currencies.

[JEFF MACK]

It shouldn't be too hard to add in an advanced feature like you do for the Sparkpost, Google Maps, etc to go out and run a scheduled task daily to grab the latest rates.  There are a few million widgets on Wordpress and other platforms that do this.  The currency convertor is a big deal for e-commerce apps to go to the next level.  The Classifieds app is one example that really needs this.  It is tied into the IPB commerce app, so that should be the controlling factor.  Everyone might not need it, but it can be activated as an advanced feature for those that are trying to monetize their sites.  It should not be the responsibility of the add-on creator to build this if they are using the commerce features.  This is the one big feature that is stopping me from using the Classifieds app.  I know not one member will want to worry about updating their currencies non stop.

[Lenny Warren]

On 19/10/2016 at 3:37 PM, JEFF MACK said:

It shouldn't be too hard to add in an advanced feature like you do for the Sparkpost, Google Maps, etc to go out and run a scheduled task daily to grab the latest rates.  There are a few million widgets on Wordpress and other platforms that do this.  The currency convertor is a big deal for e-commerce apps to go to the next level.  The Classifieds app is one example that really needs this.  It is tied into the IPB commerce app, so that should be the controlling factor.  Everyone might not need it, but it can be activated as an advanced feature for those that are trying to monetize their sites.  It should not be the responsibility of the add-on creator to build this if they are using the commerce features.  This is the one big feature that is stopping me from using the Classifieds app.  I know not one member will want to worry about updating their currencies non stop.

Totally agreed, this feature is WAY overdue IMHO @Mark.

[TyronX]

I just stumbled into the same issue and I'd like to to leave my 2 cents on this. 

I do understand that any kind of auto-convert would get messy, but what could be offered alternatively is a feature for visitors to display the prices in their local currencies. Just a button, and when you click on it it could show a warning that these values may change daily depending on the conversion rates. Internally it could still just handle the standard currency, but a feature like this would communicate to the visitor that they can pay with any currency. 

As it is right now, potential buyers now get the felling they can't buy things with in their local currency, although most payment systems auto-convert that stuff anyway.

Anything that indicates to the visitors that they can pay in their local currency would probably be quite helpful for increasing sales.