VO Business Answers · Invoicing & getting paid
Can I invoice a voiceover client in a different currency?
Yes — invoice in whatever currency you and the client agreed, and name it explicitly on the invoice: put the three-letter code beside every amount rather than a bare dollar sign, which is ambiguous across the US, Canada and Australia. Keep your own books in one home currency, and record what actually landed in your bank after conversion rather than the invoice’s face value.
Say which dollar you mean
A bare $ is genuinely ambiguous: US, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and Singapore dollars all use it. On an invoice crossing a border, write the three-letter code beside every figure — USD, CAD, AUD — and in the total. It costs nothing and removes the single most common cause of a short payment on an international job.
The same applies to the quote. If a rate is agreed in an email with a bare dollar sign and the client reads it as their own dollars while you meant yours, the gap surfaces at payment — the worst moment to discover it.
The rate that matters is the one your bank used
An invoice is a request in the client’s currency; what reaches you is a different number. Between the two sit the interbank rate on the day, your bank or payment processor’s margin on top of it, and sometimes an intermediary bank’s fee. None of that is knowable when you send the invoice.
So record income at what actually landed, not at the invoice’s face value converted at some rate you looked up. Booking the face value means every foreign job carries a small error into your year-end totals, always in the same direction — overstating income you never received, on money you will still be taxed on.
Keep the invoice itself in the currency you billed. The invoice is the agreement; your books are what happened. They are allowed to differ, and trying to make them match is what produces guessed exchange rates in accounting records.
Commission makes it sharper
If an agent takes a cut on a foreign-currency job, establish which figure their percentage applies to — the invoiced amount or what landed after conversion — before the money moves. The difference is real money, and it is far easier to agree in advance than to reconstruct from a bank statement months later.
VOpilot lets you bill in USD, CAD, GBP, EUR or AUD: pick the currency on the invoice and every amount, the PDF and the pay link follow it, and that is what your client is charged. Your own books stay in US dollars — when the money arrives you enter what actually landed, the invoice closes on what the client paid, and your income and reports follow your bank rather than a guessed rate. A balance owed in another currency is listed separately in Money watch rather than added into a dollar total. Billing your own books in a non-USD currency is not supported yet, so an artist who banks in CAD or GBP will find the reporting side assumes dollars.
By Jack Daniel — working voiceover artist; founder, VOpilot. Updated 2026-08-18.
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