[mv] How to internationalize pricing properly?

[Toni Mueller <support-minivend@oeko.net>]

******    message to minivend-users from Toni Mueller <support-minivend@oeko.net>     ******



Hello,

I think about displaying a price-per-user for items in a highly
dynamic manner. Example: You are looking at Item "T" and see
a price of 100 USD. Now you want that in DEM and display eg.
100*2.14435 as the DEM value. Tomorrow exchange rates have
changed, and it should rather be 100*2.11937. If you actually
buy, the item should cost you 5% more if you buy here, and
some 55% more if you are at the other side of the globe (or
similar).

How does you tackle this problem? How do you model the
different tax laws, customs, currency problems, and
transport costs around pricing?

How do you integrate products of mixed currencies in a
reasonable manner in one shopping basket? Is everyone
forced to pay in USD, or do you offer paying in a local
currency?

Am I too far off for what Minivend or Interchange is about?


I could try to maintain a large table for locales and maybe
invent some to solve these problems partly, but that seems
to be a major maintenance headache with nasty legal
implications. I also read how to display DEM and EUR
concurrently, but that doesn't seem to fit my bill.

My other ideas are to (try to) re-design the [item-price]
and assorted tags to do this or to demand a unit item
price in the products data base and plug in an external
program that does this sort of recalculations. I must
say that I would like to avoid that kind of effort.


Thank you!


Best Regards,
--Toni++

-
To unsubscribe from the list, DO NOT REPLY to this message.  Instead, send
email with 'UNSUBSCRIBE minivend-users' in the body to Majordomo@minivend.com.
Archive of past messages: http://www.minivend.com/minivend/minivend-list