The multi-currency setup in WooCommerce Multilingual had gone through an interesting evolution and it’s still changing. This time, before coding, I’d like to tell you what’s coming and get your feedback. If we know what you need, I’m sure that we can built it better for you.
Currency limit per language
Older versions of WooCommerce Multilingual allowed to save different pricing for translations. We felt that this was an architectural mistake and that pricing should actually apply to currencies, not to languages. So, we removed the fields for translating pricing from product translation. In so doing, we added a new API for different prices in different currencies (not languages).
Now, we want to complete it by allowing to restrict certain currencies for different languages.
Supposing that you have a shop in English, Spanish and Japanese. For currencies, you use USD, Euro and Japanese Yen (JPY). Today already, WooCommerce Multilingual lets you manage the pricing for your products in these three currencies.
Now, let’s say that you want to display only pricing in Yen to Japanese visitors. And, you want to show USD and Euro in English and Spanish. The new languages-currencies table, in WooCommerce Multilingual 3.2 will let you do that.
| Currency | English | Spanish | Japanese |
|---|---|---|---|
| USD | YES | YES | NO |
| Euro | YES | YES | NO |
| Yen | NO | NO | YES |
This new functionality doesn’t connect between languages and prices directly. It will allow certain currencies to appear for each language. This way, you can control pricing for different currencies, but have only the currencies that you want, appearing for each language.
Currency management in WooCommerce
As we work on multiple currencies for WooCommerce, we’ve noticed that WooCommerce itself is lacking central management for currencies. Today, it’s hard-coded, leading to all sort of issues. For instance, if the hard-coded currency code for a payment processor is incorrect (like in Chinese Yuans), your site will display the price in one currency, but PayPal will charge in another. Obviously, this is a big no-no.
We’ll be working with WooCommerce team to build a new currency management tab, which will allow you to enter currency names, symbols, decimal conversion and codes for different payment processors. This way, if you work with a payment processor, which expects currency information in a certain format, you can specify it yourself.
Does this look like it’s going to help you? To plan better, we need to know what you’re trying to build and how it should work. Tell us about your multi-currency, multilingual e-commerce sites in the comments.
Currency management in woocommerce is a complex beast, as it can potentially break a lot of core and plugin functionality.
I’m currently using the excellent currency switcher plugin ( http://dev.pathtoenlightenment.net/shop/currency-switcher-woocommerce/ ) and the developers there have managed to integrate a lot of functionality and fixes in order to ensure that the different currencies work seamlessly with other functionality.
Here are a few areas that would need to be looked at if you want to go ahead with a more robust currency manager:
-Compatibility with core woocommerce functionality (ensuring that reports are accurate, postage is calculated correctly, tax is calculated correctly, google analytics order tracking is correct with different currencies)
-Compatibility with 3rd party plugins (ensuring that the payment gateways get the correct data, 3rd party tracking like kissmetrics get the right data, segment.io etc )
-Ability to Geo-Target currency, with based on the location of the user
-The ability to either set different different prices per product or different currency rates + any additional fees to add
Another feature which would be great to have is if we could Geo-Locate the user at the shopping cart & Checkout level and pre-select the country fields based on the location.
Hi,
I’m looking for a solution to make it possible to fill in price for different currencies manually. I mean for each product I’ll have to put all prices manually for each product. Is this possible or is that the feature you removed?
Yes, this feature is coming back and a lot better than we had before. In WCML 3.2, you’ll be able to auto-calculate pricing in different currencies AND be able to override it for products and specify pricing for currency. The GUI for this is going back into the product editor in WooCommerce (not the translation table).
Wow, quick reply!
Perfect! When can I expect this update to be released?
Best Regards,
Emil
About 6 weeks from now. Some of these require additional features in WooCommerce. We are working with WooCommerce team in Github on these. It’s holiday season, everyone is going to be away and most of the real progress will happen after the first week of January.
I posted this early, so that we have time to understand what people need and we can develop according to it when everyone is back from holiday.
I understand. I really looking forward for this update.
Another question. I’m a developer for themes. Is there any guide to make a nice currency switcher to put in top? Like the language switcher.
Have a look here:
http://wpml.org/documentation/related-projects/woocommerce-multilingual/multi-currency-support-woocommerce/
That page lists a shortcode that you can use: currency_switcher
I’m checking with our developers to see what’s the corresponding PHP function to call from your theme code.
Hi Amir. How’s it going with the plugin? Do you have any expected date for release?
Unfurtunately I cannot use multiple currency option because this conflicts with Woocommerce add-on plugin.
I hope you are able to solve this issue with 3.2 WCML release.
We have a list of WooCommerce extensions to work with for WCML 3.2. I hope that it will cover the compatibility problems that you’re having now. Let’s see how this goes.
WPML: I suggest you take everything to do with style out of the WPML plugin and consider the approach of Ubermenu.
The reason is I have used WPML with a number of themes and the default style does not align well. Changing icons and their size is not easy, nor is changing the font.
WCML: The proposed changes sounds promising. All of the above should be considered. @Chris … I don’t know about geo-caching. I think the user should make his/her choice manually.
Hi Amir,
I own http://www.bohemme.ca website for which I no longer have developer to support. I am looking to display two currencies on the product page (i.e currently it has Canadian, but I want it to show US as well). Just display, as I do need not to receive payments in USD. What do I need to make it happen. Also, do I need any help from a techinal person/developer to get this implemented ?
Please let me know.
Two questions:
1. When you guys are finalizing the development approach? Since we won’t want to setup the multi-language stuffs and need to migrate the data again in the future.
2. Will it be compatible with both WC 2.0 AND WC 2.1 that will be released in Jan 2014?
1. We plan on having WooCommerce Multilingual 3.2 in about 5 weeks. This takes into account the upcoming holidays. We always make sure that any new versions are fully backward compatible. Lots of sites use WPML and WooCommerce Multilingual, we release new versions about once a month and upgrades run fine. If you start now, you will not suffer from upgrades. You will only get new features and improvements, but never have to redo your work.
2. We are already working on WooCommerce 2.1. Right now, most of it is working fine and we’ll have a fully compatible version before WooCommerce 2.1 is released.
Hi Amir
I like this idea and think it will be very useful for a lot of us.
However, would it not be more sensible to set different prices for COUNTRIES or states?
Example: I want to sell my products to Japan but only accept USD – with your currency approach it seems to be impossible to set another price for Japan than for the US (where I would naturally set a USD price) if I understand this correctly. Or would it?
Yes, we are looking to have both – currencies per languages and per billing address. Actually, a currency matrix per billing address will not go into WooCommerce Multilingual, because it doesn’t belong there. We will work on it as a separate WooCommerce extension. We are looking to add the mapping between languages to currencies, because only WooCommerce Multilingual plugin has this information. Mapping between regions and currencies doesn’t depend on the language.
Hi Amir
Any idea when the price per address (country) extension will be available?
Where could I get it from?
We haven’t started working on that new extension, so it’s not available at all. Our plan is to start on it, as soon as we are done with WooCommerce Multilingual 3.2, with the features that we have discussed in this post.
Is is possible to add following function:
I want all customers from the UK to see prices in POUND and only be able to checkout with this currency
All other countries (France, Spain) shall have their different language and see prices in EUR and shall only be albe to checkout with EUR.
Any suggestions ?
Almost there. We are adding currency filter by language. You will be able to specify different pricing per currency, per product, and determine what currencies are available in each language. This is ALMOST what you need. The missing part is restricting that currency and pricing, based on the checkout address. We are planning to do that next.
Please keep in mind that nothing stops a visitor from Spain from choosing a different language. We need to apply the per-country restrictions at the checkout time, not when browsing the site. The checkout is the only time when visitors enter their physical address.
Hello,
We are building up (in Mexico) an e-shop (www.lamonarca.com.mx) and need the integration of pay-options (by paypal) in 3 different currencies (MXN, USD, EUR) I still cannot see a workable option. Another user here(Chris) said a month ago, that there is a buyable plugin on: http://dev.pathtoenlightenment.net/shop/currency-switcher-woocommerce/ . As I cannot open that website (I don´t know why), Chris, could you tell me how to contact these developers?
Is there any upcoming development from the woo commerce team that could serve my needs?
Yes. The upcoming version of WooCommerce Multilingual will include a currency selector and the ability to specify pricing per currency. We are about 2-3 weeks from completing this version.
Thanks for this great answer. When we now install version 3.1, will there be a normal update to the next version, or should we better wait until with installation and introducing data?