A landlord in Lisbon bills in euros; the same landlord's flat in New York has to be billed in dollars. Owning property in more than one country is increasingly common (about 47% of foreign buyers of US homes purchase to rent or holiday-let, rising to roughly 60% among non-residents), and it exposes a problem most rent apps quietly refuse to solve: they were built for one country and one currency, usually the US dollar.
This is a practical guide to invoicing a tenant in a foreign currency without your records drifting: which currency to use, what the invoice has to say, and how to stop an old bill from silently changing when rates move.
Why do most rent tools assume US dollars?
The popular small-landlord apps grew up around US payment rails. Rent tracking is bolted onto ACH bank transfers, which are dollars by definition, so "the amount" and "the currency" collapse into one field, and that field is USD. Multi-currency tends to show up only in the enterprise and commercial platforms, the kind priced for portfolios rather than for someone with four units. Own a flat abroad and you end up exporting to a spreadsheet and doing the currency by hand.
Which currency should the invoice be in?
Bill in the currency of the property, not the tenant. A lease is priced in one currency, the one the rent is set in, and every invoice for that unit should carry it, rent and utilities alike. Mixing currencies inside a single tenancy is where reconciliation breaks: a euro rent with a dollar water charge cannot be totalled honestly. Keep one currency per property and the arithmetic stays clean.
That is also the safer stance for tax. Where an authority needs a converted figure the rule is consistent across jurisdictions: the invoice must show the currency used and, if a conversion is required, the exchange rate applied, fixed at the point of supply rather than recomputed months later.
How do you keep an old invoice from silently changing?
Freeze the currency onto the invoice at the moment you issue it. This is the part a spreadsheet gets wrong: a sheet recomputes, so the day you change a property's currency or paste a fresh rate, last year's bills re-denominate and your history stops matching what the tenant actually received. An issued invoice should be immutable. Its currency and amount are a record of a real document you sent, not a formula that keeps recalculating.
FixRent is built this way on purpose. Currency is set per property (EUR, USD, or RUB, defaulting to EUR) and frozen onto each invoice when it is generated. Edit the property later and past invoices do not move. Amounts are held to the minor unit, cents rather than rounded conversions, so nothing drifts by a penny across a year of bills. FixRent does no FX and never touches the money; it bills in the currency you chose and leaves the payment between you and your tenant. The plans are on pricing.
Worked example: billing rent and utilities in euros
Say you own a flat in Lisbon priced in euros. Rent is €900 and water is €40, so July's invoice totals €1,000, issued in EUR, dated, with the currency on the line. The next year you buy a second unit and price it in dollars; its bills read $1,200 in USD. The two properties never share a currency, and neither invoice is ever restated in the other.
Now suppose the euro and the dollar move apart over the summer. Your already-issued invoices do not move with them: €1,000 stays €1,000 and $1,200 stays $1,200. The only place a rate matters is a tax return that needs a converted figure, and there you use the rate at the invoice date, recorded once, not a number that shifts every time you reopen the file.
What if the tenant pays in a different currency than the invoice?
They still owe the invoiced amount in the invoiced currency; any conversion is their bank's job when they send the money, outside your records. Record the payment against the euro or dollar invoice at face value and let their bank handle the exchange. Your ledger stays in one currency per property, which is the whole point. For deposits, tax residency, and cross-border reminders, see the rest of the international landlording guides.