14 DAY TRIAL // The Google AdSense Payments Team has announced that publishers located in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain can now switch on an option that will allow them to view their reports in Euros instead of U.S. Dollars. Interested parties are warned that this change cannot be undone.
The AdSense Team claims to have been receiving suggestions from publishers concerning the availability of local currencies for reports for quite a while now. However, this has not been an easy feature to implement, considering the difference in legislation between countries and the constantly-changing exchange rates, especially in these hard times of worldwide economic crisis.
For this reason, new Terms and Conditions documents have been created and need to be accepted before the switch is done. Google advises that its best to read the document in your language, as there are differences in the versions for each of the specified countries. Some of the important changes in the document concern the entity you contract with and the law that governs the contract. Therefore, Google Inc. has been changed to Google Ireland Limited., the European branch of Google, while California law has been changed to English law or local law.
Furthermore, "Publishers are responsible for paying any local taxes in their jurisdiction. Google will only issue VAT refunds to publishers with an address in Ireland," the company notes. After accepting the new contract, the irreversible change to Euros will be made and both the current and past reports will be converted to the new currency. Because of this, the AdSense Team recommends that copies of the past reports in U.S. Dollars be saved for record keeping.
The change does not affect the currency in which payments are received, which can be kept to U.S. Dollars or also updated to Euros independently. The only impact changing the reporting currency will have on payments concerns the earning thresholds, which determine the eligibility of being paid and are different for the two currencies.
The conversion itself will be performed daily using "the prevailing market rate from the previous day," the team explains. This also applies to the past reports, which are converted using the historical prevailing exchange rate for those particular days.
The change in reporting currency is currently optional, but recommended. "We encourage you to update your account to local currency reports soon, as we may require this change in the future," Google's AdSense Product Specialist Team Lead Elodie Bodet points out.