Currency: Selling in Euros?

[Ashley]

Am I missing something? Is BluePark a multi-currency system? When we change to Euros and use a cheque payment method the system asks user to send a cheque in €. But the order is shown in £. Also when we use SagePay direct the amount is sent to SagePay in £. (we have a Euro facility attached to our SagePay account)

Am I doing something wrong or have I got the wrong end of the stick regarding the functionality?

Regards, Ashley.

[john]

Am I missing something? Is BluePark a multi-currency system? When we change to Euros and use a cheque payment method the system asks user to send a cheque in €. But the order is shown in £. Also when we use SagePay direct the amount is sent to SagePay in £. (we have a Euro facility attached to our SagePay account)

Am I doing something wrong or have I got the wrong end of the stick regarding the functionality?

Regards, Ashley.

You trade in the UK, blue park shows you sterling, your customers in non sterling zone see their currency, does this not make sense?

[little-linguist]

As I understand it, the currency feature of BP is just to give a rough guide to overseas customers what the equivalent amount is in their currency. I think all transactions are carried out in one currency only (UK Sterling if you're in the UK). I don't actually use this feature myself so may be barking up the wrong tree!

[Ashley]

You trade in the UK, blue park shows you sterling, your customers in non sterling zone see their currency, does this not make sense?

Well we trade all over Europe and do a lot of business in Ireland (for example), so as well as showing our products priced in Euros we need to charge for them in Euros. I'm just trying to figure out whether Bluepark will let us do that, (as well as charge in GBP). i.e. is it a multi-currency system?

[Ashley]

As I understand it, the currency feature of BP is just to give a rough guide to overseas customers what the equivalent amount is in their currency. I think all transactions are carried out in one currency only (UK Sterling if you're in the UK). I don't actually use this feature myself so may be barking up the wrong tree!

Yes, I can't quite figure it out because the invoice is in Euros but if paying by credit card it seems to pass the payment in GBP. Just seeking a clarification.

[Chrisg]

Am I missing something? Is BluePark a multi-currency system? When we change to Euros and use a cheque payment method the system asks user to send a cheque in €. But the order is shown in £. Also when we use SagePay direct the amount is sent to SagePay in £. (we have a Euro facility attached to our SagePay account)

Am I doing something wrong or have I got the wrong end of the stick regarding the functionality?

Regards, Ashley.

Hi Ashley

The Bluepark system operates in GBP (your home currency) but will show prices in any currency. Any non-home currency is calculated as a "guide price" due to currency fluctuations and bank/card exchange rates. The amount you get into your bank is always the GBP amount.

We get orders from Europe and get an odd customer that argues the exchange rate, but we point out that the price is a guide and we cannot guarantee the exchnge rate that their bank gives them.

[lewey]

Under the currency manager, it does point out that "Currency changes are cosmetic, all payments are processed using the default currency".

Exchange rates always provide a few issues, as the banks like to stack the transaction exchange rates in their own favour. and of course they are constantly changing.

Ashley, not sure if it suits your business / volumes, but if there were some customers who particularly wanted the entire transaction to be in euros, then you could offer them to make payment over the phone, and then manually process via sage pay where you can select the euro currency (when it is set up that way). If it is a higher volume of transactions, then could also set up a country specific site, and set the default currency to euros on that - eg have a .ie site. Not sure if its too much doubling up for your situation or not. We've done this for example with a German site, in conjunction with also local language (so that German language content gets indexed too).

If your volumes in other countries are high enough you'd also have to look after accounting for VAT in the different countries, and take account of the different VAT rates. Even may just be a consideration for future growth.

[john]

If your volumes in other countries are high enough you'd also have to look after accounting for VAT in the different countries, and take account of the different VAT rates. Even may just be a consideration for future growth.

If you supply from the UK, you have to charge the UK rate of VAT, to take into account different EC rates of VAT you would have to supply from and register for VAT in the respective countries.

[Adam]

You trade in the UK, blue park shows you sterling, your customers in non sterling zone see their currency, does this not make sense?

I thought BP forums were a place for helpful and constructive comments, or am I just reading this one wrong?

[john]

I thought BP forums were a place for helpful and constructive comments, or am I just reading this one wrong?

I thought I was just stating the Blxxxy obvious, in future I won't bother.

[Adam]

I thought I was just stating the Blxxxy obvious, in future I won't bother.

right. and the person asking the question is new, so maybe if you were to be polite and just say something along the lines of

as it is a uk business it shows in GBP and the customer is not in the uk so will see theres etc. there is no need for a useless unhelpfull sarcastic post.

[Ashley]

Under the currency manager, it does point out that "Currency changes are cosmetic, all payments are processed using the default currency".

Exchange rates always provide a few issues, as the banks like to stack the transaction exchange rates in their own favour. and of course they are constantly changing.

Ashley, not sure if it suits your business / volumes, but if there were some customers who particularly wanted the entire transaction to be in euros, then you could offer them to make payment over the phone, and then manually process via sage pay where you can select the euro currency (when it is set up that way). If it is a higher volume of transactions, then could also set up a country specific site, and set the default currency to euros on that - eg have a .ie site. Not sure if its too much doubling up for your situation or not. We've done this for example with a German site, in conjunction with also local language (so that German language content gets indexed too).

Yes, we are currently running a duplicate site aimed at Ireland. The user is redirected according to their IP address. I was hoping that Bluepark would help me get away from that.

Ideally we would like to enter a Euro / USD price against each product in the product manager and have the user choose their currency or have it chosen for them by IP address or physical address. We would want the Euro / USD price to remain through the check-out phase and passed to our PSP. In other words a true multi-currency system. I'm not sure how easy this would be to implement or what the demand would be, but it would be a great differentiator for Bluepark (vs competitors) and would be very useful especially when targeting the USA, another huge market for us.

Thanks for all your feedback.

[Adam]

Ashley,

I would sugest talking to rich about this, as i feel it would be a great addition to the already faultless Bluepark system. being able to select a currency on the home page and then it changing accordingly would be really handy

[icegems]

Ashley,

I would sugest talking to rich about this, as i feel it would be a great addition to the already faultless Bluepark system. being able to select a currency on the home page and then it changing accordingly would be really handy

I also think it would be great although for us we would then need to get merchant accounts in different currencies as it is the payment gateways that would then need to handle that bit.

We would love to be able to truly sell globablly - Ireland and the US are big markets for us.

[Ashley]

I also think it would be great although for us we would then need to get merchant accounts in different currencies as it is the payment gateways that would then need to handle that bit.

We would love to be able to truly sell globablly - Ireland and the US are big markets for us.

Hello, Ice Gems, nice site.

To enlighten you on our situation:

We already have Euro and USD merchant accounts, and these can run through SagePay that's no big problem and it does make a big difference, I assure you. We are wiping the floor with our Irish competitors. You need .ie address and Irish phone number (use Skype and get a Dublin number) and of course prices in Euro. As I said we have an specific Irish site at the moment. There's significant business out there and less competition, this means better return on adwords etc.