Multiple Currencies

[Floob]

Hi,

Could someone clarify (or point me to a link) how multiple currencies work with Actinic please.

At the moment my shopping cart (non-actinic) works like this:
Shopping Cart
Displays Sterling and Euro
User chooses which they want to use.

Store Admin
Base prices are in Sterling
Euro is calculated based on a fixed multiple (that admin can change), i.e 1.5

Payment
Protx is used with Lloyds Cardnet
Customer pays in sterling, received in our sterling merchant account
Customer pays in Euro, received in our Euro merchant account
Euro funds are converted into Sterling before arriving in bank account

If a customer chooses sterling, that exact sterling amount is debited from their bank account.
If customer chooses Euro, that exact Euro amount is debited from their bank account.

Question
So, essentially, I would like to know if I can set the products base price in sterling and Euro exchange rate in Actinic, and a user can choose which currency they want displayed.

[leehack]

1. Yes
2. With the addition of an add-on, yes.

[Floob]

Thanks for the response.

Are multiple languages also built in, i.e a drop down for a different language?

[leehack]

No they are not. Never heard of one either to be honest. I've done an actinic store in Japanese but i cheated and it was static, not dynamic.

[Jan]

I believe that Actinic will always send the amount to charge in the catalogs main currency, which can result in a slighty different charge to the customer if the exchange rate is different for protx and the conversion rate used by your website, so you might need to put something in the terms to assert that this is ok.

The plugin is from Norman Rouxel at drillpine.biz.

There were some posts on the forum (again from Norman I think) about how to offer a language choice, but I think that basically you had to define varaibles for the fields that you wanted to have a different language for, enter the text required (no squiggly characters allowed unless you enter them as HTML), then you somehow generate pages for each language (that's the bit I don't know how to do - but it's in the aug for best seller lists) and have a link for the user to click on to show the appropriate page. So you can have different language versions, but it's labour intensive to create them and horribly complicated to implement them.

Regards,

[Duncan Rounding]

Norman's NorPrice plug-in will use the latest exchange rates as opposed to your estimated multiplier in Actinic so the indicated amount is more likely to be closer to Actual amount billed.
What you can't account for with this method of course is the paying banks foreign exchange fees which are often charged on top of 'their' exchange rate.

[Floob]

Hang on - so Actinic will not send the Euro amount to the Protx screen?

I dont want a dynamic rate used as all my european customers will see a slightly different price every day! Whilst I see this accurate way of doing things as useful, as the Euro doesnt fluctuate much it is much better to present stable pricing to my customers.

I think Actinic is lacking if it cant send the Euro price to Protx (or other PSP), otherwise I'd be limited to my UK market. I also need to charge 19.6% to France and 17.5% VAT to UK - is this available in the options somewhere?

And it is the case Actinic is still not multi-lingual?
I went ** with in 2002 because Actinic was not multi-lingual - I had hoped it had caught up by now

Had to replace o s c o m m e r c e with ** !!!
How scared are Actinic of competition??