Choose the currency and carry the exchange risk
A freelance rate quoted across currencies can protect the writer’s home-currency income or protect the client’s budget, while leaving the other party exposed to exchange-rate changes.
Home-currency pricing
Charging in the currency used for overheads can simplify bookkeeping by passing conversion to the client. A Switzerland-based freelance who began charging in Swiss francs in 2006 obtained Eurozone clients’ agreement to that currency in her service agreements, and found the arrangement worked well with European bank transfers.
A strengthening home currency can nevertheless make an unchanged rate more expensive to foreign clients. In a 2012 account, that writer described a rate initially based on average EMWA survey values becoming expensive to Eurozone and US clients as the franc strengthened. Her rounded illustration used a CHF 10,000 document costing a Eurozone client approximately €6,300 in 2006 and about €10,000 on 11 August 2011, an increase she put at about 57%. She reported the euro-to-franc rate as averaging about 1.57 in 2006 and falling to 1.0376 on 11 August 2011, and the dollar-to-franc rate as moving from 1.25 to 0.72, which made her unchanged franc rate about 73% more expensive to US clients. She lost her competitive edge and found that even longstanding satisfied clients put their own costs first in difficult times.
Client-currency pricing
Charging in the client’s currency avoids a change in its project price between acceptance and the final invoice. A freelance who moved from the Netherlands to Norway retained euro pricing for established clients because changing currency risked disrupting relationships, some clients faced strict budget controls and others needed accurate costs for their own proposals. She also expected resistance to Norwegian-krone pricing because the krone was not a major international currency.
Her proposals used each client’s currency, whether euros or US dollars, with the base hourly rate adjusted to the exchange rate to target the same earnings in kroner. Conversion and exchange variations then became her responsibility, and a strong home currency could reduce earnings below expectations, so further base-rate adjustments may be needed.
The agreed currency
Before work begins, initial correspondence should state whether payment is in the writer’s or the client’s currency and specify expected costs. Two US freelances advise requiring payment in US dollars regardless of method; in one case, the receiving institution required dollar deposits. Another writer specifies a dollar estimate and requires any payment issued in another currency to equal the invoiced dollar amount at the time payment is made, preventing exchange movement from reducing the agreed amount.
A writer quoting a rate in their home currency should be prepared to explain its equivalent in the prospective client’s currency.
Management of currency exposure
A freelance who experienced the 2011 franc crisis recommends four responses:
- Spread risk across clients and currencies. In her illustration, charging half of projects in clients’ currencies could preserve that half of the work if others rejected franc prices; a few dollar-priced clients continued sending projects despite a foreign-exchange loss exceeding 40% for the writer.
- Build relationships with clients sharing the operating currency, reducing exposure to cross-currency problems.
- Discuss a temporary, mutually fair currency-adjustment discount rather than a drastic permanent rate reduction, with cancellation when conditions improve; retaining the project and relationship may require sharing the loss and prioritizing loss reduction over revenue maximization.
- Find a more stable source of income. She obtained a part-time Swiss regulatory-writing position paid in her home currency, giving up regulatory freelance projects while retaining editing and web-based work.
Diversifying activities can supplement freelance income while allowing medical writing to continue; neighbouring fields such as editing or journalism can also broaden experience. A Norway-based writer combined medical writing with teaching, municipal wages work and a meteorite-crater development project as examples of earning and learning outside the usual practice.
Existing client relationships can make prices easier to discuss because clients know the writer’s work and avoid the effort and uncertainty of finding another competent provider. A freelance should decide in advance whether to renegotiate rates, seek work outside familiar areas and accept particular compromises, rather than wait until circumstances force a decision.