The Reserve Bank Repriced Your Team On Wednesday. Nobody Sent You A Notice.

If your business sits in Australia, Outstaffer bills you in Australian dollars. That is the entire answer to what currency am I billed in for offshore staff, and the pricing page publishes the other six alongside it: AUD, USD, INR, PHP, SGD, VND and MYR, set by where your business is located.

Most providers publish a price and say nothing about the currency it arrives in.

That reads as administrative trivia until you look at what the rate did this week. The Reserve Bank's daily exchange rates put the Australian dollar at 70.32 US cents on 24 September, down from 71.23 two trading days earlier. The trade weighted index fell from 65.8 to 65.3 over the same three days. Against the Philippine peso the dollar went from 44.46 to 44.13.

Nobody changed a price. Everyone holding a US dollar invoice got a price change anyway.

A US dollar price list is a floating cost

Deel publishes $599 per EOR employee per month in US dollars. Its pricing page says nothing about which currency an Australian buyer settles in.

Run the numbers the Reserve Bank published. USD $599 converted at 0.7123 is AUD $840.94. The same USD $599 at 0.7032 is AUD $851.82. That is AUD $10.88 per employee per month, produced in three trading days by nothing anyone at either company did. Five people on that list price is AUD $54.40 a month and AUD $652.80 a year. It lands in a budget line you set once and have not reopened since, which is the same reason what an offshore hire costs once you add statutory on-costs is never the number on the quote.

For contrast, Outstaffer publishes Employer of Record from $250 per employee per month on the same page as those seven billing currencies.

What currency am I billed in for offshore staff?

Whichever one your provider decided, usually without telling you. A billing currency is simply the currency the invoice is denominated in, and it is the currency whose movements you absorb. If the invoice is in US dollars and your revenue is in Australian dollars, you are running a small, unhedged foreign exchange position on your own payroll every month.

Ask the question before you sign, not in March when the rate has moved and the invoice looks wrong.

The honest counter-argument on billing currency

Being billed in your own currency does not make the exposure vanish. It moves it.

A provider quoting an Australian business in Australian dollars while paying salaries in pesos carries that rate risk itself, and no company carries a risk for free. It is priced in somewhere, probably in a margin you cannot see. A buyer who watches the rate might do better on a US dollar list price in a year the Australian dollar rises.

That is a real argument. It is also a decision, and almost nobody running a 30-person business has actually made it.

Who carries the rate risk if the price is in your currency?

The provider does, and you pay for that in the headline number rather than in the variance. Which is the trade most owners want, because a fixed line item is worth more than a slightly cheaper one that moves.

The failure is not picking the wrong side. The failure is not knowing which side you are on.

Three questions about currency that belong in the contract

Which currency is the invoice denominated in. Whether the provider can change it, and on what notice. What happens to your monthly figure if the rate moves ten per cent, in either direction.

Any provider who cannot answer all three in writing is asking you to accept a variable cost and calling it a fixed one. The same instinct applies to the rest of the terms, which is why the criteria worth applying before you sign belong in the same conversation.

Related reading

• The labour market just hedged, and a ten hour audition is not how you copy it
• What offshore staffing actually costs in Australia

You can check ours in a minute. The billing currencies are published, the monthly fee is published, and you can open an account and read the terms before you commit. Or keep paying an invoice the Reserve Bank writes half of. That is also a decision, and it is the one most people make by default.