More and more Shopify store owners are selling beyond their home market. Whether you’re shipping to Germany, Belgium, the UK, or the United States, Shopify makes it easy to display prices in multiple currencies. But once those orders start coming in, the real challenge begins: how do you correctly process euros, pounds, and dollars in your Moneybird accounting?
Why Multi-Currency Creates Bookkeeping Challenges
When you only sell domestically in euros, your accounting is straightforward. Every order comes in, you create an invoice in Moneybird, and you’re done. But the moment you activate Shopify Markets and start receiving orders in British pounds or US dollars, things get more complicated.
Your Moneybird administration always runs in euros. This means every foreign payment needs to be converted to euros at the correct exchange rate on the date of the transaction. The Dutch tax authority (Belastingdienst) expects you to do this correctly, because exchange rate differences can affect your reported revenue and VAT returns.
There’s also the gap between what Shopify shows and what actually arrives in your bank account. Shopify Payments applies its own exchange rate, which is typically slightly less favorable than the market rate. This difference needs to be accounted for in your books as well.
How Shopify Markets Handles Currencies
Shopify Markets is the feature that lets you customize your store for different countries and regions. You configure which currency customers see, what language the store uses, and whether you want local domains for each market. For your customers, the experience is seamless: they see prices in their own currency and pay the way they’re used to.
Behind the scenes, Shopify converts everything back to your payout currency, typically euros. For every order, Shopify stores both the original amount in the local currency and the converted euro amount. This information is essential for your bookkeeping, because your Moneybird invoice needs to contain the correct euro amount.
Manually tracking exchange rates and conversions for every order is not just time-consuming, it’s error-prone. A single wrong exchange rate can cascade through your entire VAT return. Automation here isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.
Invoicing in Moneybird with Multiple Currencies
Moneybird supports invoices in foreign currencies, but there are rules to follow. Every invoice is also converted to euros for your administration. You can set the currency and exchange rate per invoice, so your customer receives an invoice in their own currency while your books stay neatly in euros.
When creating invoices manually, you need to select the correct currency for each international order, enter the exchange rate, and verify that the euro amount matches what Shopify reports. With ten international orders per day, you can easily spend an hour on this alone. And that’s before factoring in returns and credit notes in foreign currencies, which add another layer of complexity.
With automatic invoicing through Schakel, this entire process is handled for you. Every Shopify order is automatically converted into a Moneybird invoice, complete with the correct currency and exchange rate.
VAT for International Sales
Selling internationally through Shopify also introduces VAT complexity. When you sell to consumers in other EU countries, you’ll encounter the One Stop Shop (OSS) regulation once you exceed the €10,000 threshold. This means you need to charge and remit VAT in the buyer’s country, at the local rate.
In Moneybird, you can configure different VAT rates for different countries. But correctly assigning the right rate to each order requires attention. A German customer pays 19% VAT, a French customer 20%, and a Belgian customer 21%. Doing this manually for every invoice creates significant room for error.
The combination of different currencies and different VAT rates makes manual processing nearly impossible without mistakes. Read more about how to set up VAT correctly for Shopify and Moneybird to make your administration watertight.
Handling Exchange Rate Differences
One aspect many store owners overlook is the exchange rate difference between the moment of the order and the moment of payout. Say a customer buys a product for $50.00 when the rate is 1.10 (so €45.45). But when Shopify pays you out two weeks later, the rate is 1.08, meaning you receive €46.30.
This €0.85 difference needs to be recorded as an exchange rate result in your bookkeeping. With just a few orders per month, this is negligible. But with hundreds of international orders, it can add up to hundreds of euros per quarter. The tax authority expects you to properly book these exchange rate differences.
Schakel uses the exchange rate that Shopify applies at the time of the order, so your invoice always matches the transaction. Any exchange rate differences at payout can be periodically processed through your payment reconciliation in Moneybird.
Practical Tips for Multi-Currency Bookkeeping
If you’re just getting started with international selling on Shopify, there are a few things you should set up correctly from the start. Begin by activating the right currencies in Shopify Markets and configure prices per market. Use automatic price rounding or fixed prices, depending on your strategy.
Make sure your Moneybird administration is prepared for foreign invoices. This means creating the correct VAT rates for the countries where you sell, and setting up ledger accounts for exchange rate differences. Your accountant can help if you’re unsure which accounts you need.
The most important thing is to automate the process from the beginning. Manually tracking exchange rates, currencies, and VAT rates doesn’t scale with your growth. The more international orders you process, the more time and errors you save with automation.
Ready for International Growth
Selling internationally through Shopify is a natural next step for growing online stores. The technical side, from Shopify Markets to Moneybird invoicing, doesn’t have to be an obstacle. With the right tools and automation, you can keep your bookkeeping in order, regardless of how many countries or currencies you sell in.
Want this handled automatically? Pick your connector.
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