Nithya designs for clients in three countries and has never met any of them.

Her first overseas invoice took a full evening.

The second took four minutes.

The difference was not a clever tax trick. She stopped treating every international customer as a new setup.

The Usual Way To Do This

Covered in our published General FAQ and Customer FAQ.

When you work with overseas customers, it helps to check the customer details, invoice language and tax treatment before creating the invoice.

But Your Case May Be Different  

You may be facing one of these:

• I picked the wrong country during setup

• My customer needs the invoice in their language

• No tax is being applied and I do not know whether that is correct.

• I have signed up recently I cannot find option to change currency.

Working through it  

I picked the wrong country   during setup

Country is an organization-level setting, so fix it before doing a lot of tax configuration.

1. Go to Settings → Organization Profile.

2. Check the country.

3. If your organization is still being configured, correct it.

4. Save.

5. Go back to your tax settings.

6. Re-check the available tax configuration before creating real invoices.

Note: In most cases, the country is initially determined using signals such as your IP address and the data center/region you are connecting from.

If the Country field appears greyed out or cannot be changed, this generally means that the organization already has transactions in place, or that you are using an edition-specific country configuration. In those cases, the country may be locked and cannot simply be changed from the organization profile.

If the field is locked, contact support before attempting to work around it, especially if transactions or tax configuration already exist.

Base currency is more consequential because your organization's transactions are denominated in it. The base currency is automatically selected based on the country you choose when setting up the organization.

If your organization is in an edition-specific country, you cannot change the base currency from the organization settings. The currency is tied to that edition.

If your organization is in the Global Edition, you can change the base currency from the organization's settings.

Important: Do not create real invoices or import transaction history until you have confirmed that the organization is using the correct country and base currency.

My customer needs the invoice in their language

The language setting on the customer record is useful for the Customer Portal, but it does not automatically change the language of the invoice PDF.

If you want the invoice PDF to appear in your customer's preferred language, create a template in that language and associate it with the customer.

For the Customer Portal  

1. Go to Customers.

2. Select the customer.

3. Open the customer's preferences.

4. Select the required language.

5. Save the changes.

This language preference is used for the customer's Customer Portal experience.

For the invoice PDF  

1. Go to Settings → PDF Templates → Invoices.

2. Create a new invoice template.

3. Choose the required language for the template.

4. Customize the template as needed and save it.

5. Go to Customers and open the relevant customer.

6. Edit the customer's details/preferences.

7. In the Invoice Template or template-assignment option, select the language-specific template.

8. Save the customer record.

9. Create or open an invoice for that customer.

10. Preview the PDF before sending it.

No tax is being applied and I do not know whether that is correct

Do not add tax simply because the invoice looks empty.

First, check the customer:

1. Go to Customers.

2. Open the customer.

3. Check their country and tax treatment.

4. Check the place-of-supply information where applicable.

5. Save any correction.

6. Create a fresh invoice.

7. Check the tax calculation.

8. Check the wording required on the final PDF.

Whether an overseas supply is taxable, zero-rated or outside the scope of domestic tax depends on the relevant rules for your business and jurisdiction.

If the treatment matters for your filing, confirm it with your accountant.

I recently signed up and cannot find the option to change the currency

If you recently signed up for Zoho Invoice and cannot find an option to change your organization's currency or invoice a customer in another currency, this is expected for organizations created under the newer Forever Free version.

If you need to invoice customers in multiple currencies, Zoho Billing is the recommended option. It is a superset of Zoho Invoice and supports multi-currency transactions along with subscription management and advanced billing features.

You can migrate your existing Zoho Invoice organization to Zoho Billing without starting over:

1. Follow the Zoho Invoice to Zoho Billing migration guide.

2. Complete the migration.

3. In Zoho Billing, go to Customers and open the customer.

4. Select the customer's preferred currency.

5. Create a test invoice to confirm the currency.

Zoho Billing also offers a 14-day trial. You can explore the features and pricing before choosing a plan.

On your phone: Customer currency and language can be handled from the customer record, and invoice-level exchange-rate information can be checked while creating the invoice. Currency setup and PDF-template configuration are web work.

If it still is not right  

1. Check the customer record first.

2. Check the invoice currency.

3. Check the exchange rate actually saved.

4. Preview the PDF, especially if information is missing rather than calculated incorrectly.

5. Check tax treatment separately from currency.

Still stuck: Send support@zohoinvoice.com the invoice number, customer's country, invoice currency, exchange rate used, and the tax treatment you expected.

Over to you  

For overseas invoices, which exchange rate do you normally use — your bank's or a published reference rate?