International Multi-Currency Event Registration

Hosting an international conference that welcomes both local and international attendees is an exciting milestone, but managing the registration fee table can be challenging.

You must manage Early Bird, Regular, and Onsite pricing, multiple currencies (such as local currency with VAT for domestic attendees, and USD or EUR for international visitors), and special local ticket categories (like single-day commuter passes, local society memberships, or student/senior discounts) that do not apply to international attendees.

How can you configure this in Eventact to provide attendees with a seamless, localized checkout experience while keeping your back-office reporting organized and unified?

This guide outlines the key architectural choices and considerations that every international event organizer encounters in Eventact, along with the steps required to set up a multi-currency registration process.

1. At a Glance: The 3 Key Decisions
2. Decision 1: One Dynamic Form vs. Separate Forms
3. Decision 2: Default vs. Additional Currency
4. Decision 3: Shared Multi-Currency Tickets vs. Separate Tickets
5. Automating Early Bird, Regular, and Late Rates
6. The 5-Step Launch Checklist

Before creating your first ticket in Eventact, ensure your team is aligned on these three foundational questions:

1. One unified form or two separate forms (website entry point)? Eventact lets each event have multiple forms, each supporting different languages, currencies, and conditions. You can choose a single form for all attendees or two separate forms. Consider the following factors when deciding:
   • Would you prefer a single “Register Now” button, where Page 1 collects the registrant’s country, and Eventact dynamically adjusts the currency and available tickets on Page 2?
   • Alternatively, does your website use two buttons, “Local Registration” and “International Registration”, with each form displaying its fixed currency from the first screen?
   • If the forms require significantly different information (such as visa letters, accommodation, or local transfers), separate forms may be more efficient than implementing complex logic via form expressions. Separate forms also make it easier to create distinct confirmation emails.
2. Which currency should be your “Default” and which “Additional”? When using Automatically set currency for user based on country on a single form, Eventact checks whether the registrant’s country currency is enabled in your event. If it is not, the registrant gets the default currency. Choose your default currency carefully: if you enable GBP, EUR, and USD and select USD as the default, an attendee from Asia will see prices in USD.
3. Shared multi-currency tickets or separate tickets (the VAT / tax factor)? For overlapping categories, like Full Participant – Academic, decide whether to offer a single ticket with prices in both currencies or create two distinct tickets. If your tax or invoicing rules treat both currencies the same, or apply tax by registrant country at checkout, use shared tickets for streamlined reporting and shared capacity. If local prices include VAT and international USD/EUR prices are VAT-exempt, verify whether your accounting setup requires separate Price List Groups (one with VAT included, one VAT-exempt).

The following sections explain each decision and how to implement it in Eventact.

When local registrants pay in one currency and international registrants in another, Eventact supports both a single dynamic form and separate dedicated forms.

Option A: Unified Form with Automatic Currency Selection by Country

Eventact provides a built-in setting under Event › Pricelist › Payment Settings: Automatically set currency for user based on country.

Eventact applies the following logic when a registrant completes the form:

1. Eventact starts with the form’s default currency (or, if none is set, the event’s default currency).
2. When the registrant selects their country, Eventact looks up that country’s official currency.
3. If that country’s currency is enabled in your event’s Additional Currencies, Eventact switches the registrant to that currency.
4. If that country’s currency is not enabled, Eventact falls back to the default currency.

Option B: Two Separate Forms (Local and International)

In Eventact, multiple registration forms within the same project share the same Price List, Price Plans, and capacity allotments, while each form can lock in its own default currency.

Choose two separate forms in the following scenarios:

• Your website already has two separate registration buttons (“Local Participants” vs. “International Participants”).
• You prefer to display ticket selection on Page 1 before collecting personal details and country information.
• Your local form is in a different language or requires domestic invoicing fields, while your international form collects passport or visa details and hotel bookings.

With a single form, the default currency is what every registrant gets unless their country’s currency is enabled. Set it to your international option, not your local one.

Example: your conference is hosted in Greece, where domestic participants pay in euros, and all international participants outside Europe pay in USD ($).

• Recommended setup: set USD as the default currency and enable EUR as an additional currency. When an attendee selects Greece, Eventact matches EUR and switches their form to euros. Attendees from the UK, Japan, or the US either match USD or, if their currency is not enabled, default to USD.
• What goes wrong the other way round: if you set EUR as the default and USD as the additional currency, a British attendee (whose country currency is GBP, not USD) does not match USD and defaults to euros.
• Adding more currencies: keep USD as the default and enable both GBP and EUR as additional currencies. British attendees see GBP, EU residents see EUR, and everyone else defaults to USD.

In Eventact’s Price List, a single ticket item (e.g., “Full Participant – Industry” or “Tutorial Day”) can hold prices in multiple currencies at the same time.

Benefits of Shared Multi-Currency Tickets

When both local and international attendees can purchase the same ticket category, a single shared item with both local and international prices provides the following advantages:

• Unified reporting and badges: all Academic Full Participants or Students appear under a single item in reports and badge layouts.
• Shared allotments and seat limits: for workshops or tutorial days with limited seats, everyone draws from the same real-time pool, no matter where they are from.

Managing Asymmetric Tickets (Local-Only Categories)

In reality, conferences usually offer special ticket types just for locals, like Single-Day Commuter Passes, Lab Technician or Staff Rates, Local Pensioner Rates, or High-School Teacher Passes, that international guests won’t see.

To set this up, create local-only tickets priced in your local currency and add an availability condition (Country = [Local Country]) to each one. This way, international attendees only see tickets meant for them.

VAT and Tax: When to Split Items into Two Price List Groups

In many countries, domestic registration fees include local VAT (for example, “All prices in local currency include VAT”), while foreign residents paying in USD or EUR are VAT-exempt (0% VAT).

Before merging local and international tickets into one item, check how your organization handles tax invoices in Eventact:

• VAT is determined dynamically by registrant country or currency at billing: keep the overlapping categories as shared multi-currency items in a single Price List Group.
• VAT inclusion is fixed at the Price List Group level: create two Price List Groups, one with VAT included for local tickets and one VAT-exempt for international tickets.

Avoid manually editing ticket prices at Early Bird deadlines or duplicating tickets into separate categories such as “Academic – Early Bird”, “Academic – Regular”, and “Academic – Late”. Duplicating tickets complicates your form and divides participant reports across multiple items.

Instead, use Eventact’s Price Plans, available under Price List › Pricing Plans:

1. Define your date windows once: create a Price Plan for Early Registration, Regular Registration, and Late or Onsite Registration.
2. Select “Force this price plan if conditions and dates are met”: Eventact evaluates Price Plans in order and automatically applies the appropriate rate based on the registration timestamp.
3. Enter the price matrix for each ticket: within each ticket item, Eventact provides a grid to enter Early, Regular, and Late prices for each enabled currency (USD, EUR, GBP, etc.).
4. Handle flat-rate items: for items such as a Tutorial Day or High-School Daily Pass that stay the same price across all periods, enter the same amount in each column or leave it as a base price independent of the tiered plans.

To build your form, follow this sequence for an efficient setup:

1. Configure your event currencies (Event › Pricelist › Payment Settings)
   • Set your default currency to your international fallback currency, such as USD.
   • Enable your additional currencies, such as your local currency and EUR if needed.
   • If you use a single unified form, tick Automatically set currency for user based on country.
2. Create your time-based Price Plans (Price List › Pricing Plans)
   • Add your Early Bird, Regular, and Late or Onsite date ranges, and enable “Force this price plan if the plan condition and dates are met.”
3. Build your Price List and currency matrix (Price List › Items)
   • Create your core registration tickets and enter the price for each Price Plan and currency combination.
   • For local-only tickets, enter prices in the local currency only and set an availability condition based on the registrant’s country.
4. Put “Country” on Step 1 of your form (Forms › Form Builder)
   • If using a single form, place Personal Details (including the mandatory Country dropdown) on Page 1 and the Price List or ticket selection on Page 2. This ensures Eventact detects the attendee’s currency and filters conditional tickets before they reach the pricing page.
5. Add conditional verification fields (Forms › Form Builder)
   • If students must upload a PDF or JPEG proof of student status, or pensioners must check a grant declaration box, attach visibility conditions to these fields so they appear only when a Student or Pensioner ticket is selected.

Exchange rates, per-currency documents, and the account-level currency settings are covered in Price and Collect in Multiple Currencies.

By combining Price Plans, multi-currency Price Lists, and automatic currency selection by country, Eventact simplifies complex fee structures into a streamlined registration process. Attendees see only relevant tickets and currencies, deadlines update automatically, and your team receives clean, consolidated data from the start.

For configuration guidance, see Eventact Pro or contact Eventact Support.