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How do I set up a USD Investment Account in H&B 2016 R 2(25.1.2.8) CANADIAN EDITION? Help screen and

Cragg

Sorry if this is long. I have had an issue for the longest time (in previous H&B versions) in that my US stocks were getting quotes from (eg.) NYSE, and using the USD quote and placing it as a CAD$ in the account. The place to change the stock's currency was greyed out everywhere. My statement form the broker was always in CAD$, so when the $ was at par, there was no issue, but now, these stocks are under-reported by the exchange.

The Help screen, and Quicken Support suggestions do not work (File/Preferences/Calendar has no mention of Multi-currency, and I still can't change the currency of a stock. Also when setting up the account (I chose Retirement Account according to their instructions), there is no drop-down to choose the currency of the account.) I have always been told by Quicken that since 2014 H&B supports multi-currency. No one has solved the issue, even after upgrading me to 2016.

So recently my broker began to split out the US stocks into a US account (not just for me :-) ) - GREAT I thought. Now I can create a USD Account that will get quotes in USD, and use the current exchange rate to calculate things like net worth.

I was unable to create such an account using the help and support methods, but somehow I managed to do it (I wish I could remember how - I think it was a fluke). This created a new problem in that I canot place a stock into that account where the SYMBOL has been previously used in another account. It tells me I need to use the same currency.

So..... I cannot transfer the shares from one account to the other and have Quicken calculate the exchange. I cannot sell the stock in the CAD Account and buy it back in the USD Account. I cannot change the currency of the stock since that drop down is greyed out.

The only workaround is to create a new stock with a different name. This will change the book value and everything associated to it. This can't be right.

ANY SUGGESTIONS OUT THERE?

See help screens Q1 & Q3 and results Q2 & Q4

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Comments

unknown

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Cragg

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Thank you for the suggestion of setting it up as a brokerage account. Since I don't use this for tax filing, that will hopefully work (I can only try this setup on the weekend) since I did see that currency is a choice.

As to populating it with the US stocks, what I may do is try to name the stock with an underscore USD. I think the inability to create the stock may be based on the name rather than the symbol. I already know from the past that when going to say NYSE for the price, that it will be reported in USD. What remains to be seen is if Quicken will take the total of the account, and use its downloaded exchange rate to convert it to CAD for things like net worth reports. According to the documentation, it is supposed to do that.

What is truly disappointing is that the instructions from HELP, and from a live human at Quicken Support do not work, as is evidenced by the screenshots for account setup, and transfers between to accounts of different currencies.
I cannot believe it is such a difficult thing to have stocks from a US exchange reported in USD, and those from a Canadian exchange reported in CAD, and to apply an exchange to convert everything to the "home currency".

Thanks again - I will post the results of my experiments next week some time

unknown

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

In reality to do currencies 100% correct is extremely difficult and has a lot of overhead that can slow things down.  What Quicken is doing is a sort of a kludge and it shows up in things like this.

When you deal in one currency you only need to record one number.  When you deal in multiple currencies to do it right you have start treating it like a security everywhere.  As in it changes in value all the time, and it can't be directly compared to other securities.  You will never see anyone talk about 2.33 shares of IBM are "equal" 1 shares of MSFT.  Every transaction amount would have to have the concept of what currency it is, plus the value it was at the time, plus what its exchange rate was at that moment in time to any other currency that you might want to change your "Home/base" currency to.

You will notice on here that we warn people about using Quicken for things like day trading because of the number of securities and transactions that creates in the investment accounts.  And the reason is this is a performance hit is because of all the information that Quicken has retain for securities, and all the calculations it has to make.

Cragg

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Thank you for the comments. Since I am not day trading and working with only 20 US stocks and around 35 Canadian stocks, the performance is not a concern to me. As to handling the exchange, Quicken seems to handle it well for some things, and not for others. For instance, after setting up the USD Retirement account, I transferred a cash amount from my Canadian Account into the US account. NO PROBLEM, Quicken applied the exchange of the day, and the correct amount was placed in the account, after manually adjusting for the exchange that was in my broker's statement. SO FAR SO GOOD.

Since I had in my 2015 version sent up a separate stock to be in USD, I thought I would start with moving that one. Lets call it Company1 with symbol "C", and Company 1 USD, also with symbol "C". I removed the 5 shares of Company 1 from my Canadian Account, and added 5 shares of Company 1 USD into my USD account, and adjusted the dollar value to agree with the book cost in my statement. Again, SO FAR SO GOOD. (for the time being it is not important that in my example I use a "fake" symbol)

Now I have run into a snag. I removed 8 shares of Company 2 with symbol "X", and then in the USD account, I do an Added Shares, tab to the security field, and use the drop down to ADD SECURITY. I go through the process, calling it "Company 2 USD", also with symbol X. Since I am in my USD account, it defaults to US stock in USD. I click DONE, and all of a sudden, the old name of "Company 2" appears in the field (without the USD addition). If I attempt to complete the transaction, I get and error telling me to use the same currency. The only way to back out is to go to a different account and come back a few times, or create a full transaction for later deletion, as it will not let me close anything without a security name in there. So I then go to my SECURITY LIST to find the stock I just created, and it is NOT IN THE LIST. Even if I try to create the stock directly in the security list, Quicken allows me to do it to the end without an error message of any kind, yet the stock is NOT in the list.

Obviously things have changed since I created Company 1 in Quicken 2015 and now in 2016, I can't create a stock like that I previously had in a Canadian account, even by giving it a different name as I had done. I would gladly delete the stock from the Canadian account, however I fear loosing the historical dividend amounts from that stock, and that would really mess things up.

It was always a problem not being able to create a USD stock in Canadian account, in that the dollar value was never correct, as the quotes were not being converted to CAD. Now that my broker has changed his reporting method with a CAD account and a USD account, I cannot use stocks that previously were in my Canadian account.

It makes no sense. There must be a solution out there. I can't be the only one that wants US stocks getting their quotes from a US Exchange in USD to be in a USD account, and Canadian stock getting it's quote from a Canadian Exchange to be in a CAD account. My problem is that I previously had the stock in my CAD account being reported to me in USD, and now that I can finally fix that, I can't.

What about people dealing in more than 2 currencies in their investments. It's not uncommon!

Sorry for the length, but perhaps with detail, this shortfall can be corrected in the future.

unknown

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

"I can't be the only one that wants US stocks getting their quotes from a US Exchange in USD to be in a USD account, and Canadian stock getting it's quote from a Canadian Exchange to be in a CAD account."

Absolutely not, but wanting and reality don't always line up.  Lots of foreign users want Quicken to work with their banks and securities, but of course that isn't happening any time soon.

But you definitely seem to have found some bugs (maybe some of this can be fixed in the framework that Quicken now has) and I suggest that maybe you should report it here (just select one feature and put some text/URL pointing back to here in the text box):
https://www.research.net/s/QuickenFeedback

Frankly I don't think the Canadian product gets the support it deserves.  If they are going to have it, they should support it.  It doesn't even get mentioned in important announcements.
I think actually the best thing one can do to push things like this is to be in the betas.
The real problem I see with that is I haven't ever seen any way to sign up for a Canadian only beta.
I have seen them mentioned in the US beta from time to time, but with no information on how to get into one.  And in the US beta they don't allow testing the Canadian version.
There are Canadian user in the US beta, and maybe they will do more of a mixed testing in the future, so that might a good thing to sign up for, if for no other reason than being able to send email to the beta team.
You can sign up for that here:
https://quickenbeta.centercode.com/login.html

Cragg

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Thank you for your suggestions. I will certainly look into those sites when I find the time. After all, troubleshooting software is not my day job, however I have spent the last 30 years in tech, so I have a good idea as to what the expected behaviour should be.

I thought I would lay out here some of the steps I have taken for others to ponder, and where it sits right now with what I hope is a "temporary" workaround.

I created a brokerage account (rather than a retirement account), and proceeded to add the symbols for the stocks in question as a USD security in USD in the USD account. So far so good. After some exploring, I discovered that Quicken had created a "placeholder" for that security. Since I could not transfer a holding in the Canadian account to the US account, I then did a "REMOVE SHARES" from the Canadian account, and then, unable to enter a transaction in the USD account, DISCOVERED that if I switched to the "HOLDINGS" view, and then clicked on the PLACEHOLDER transaction after expanding the Security, then I could follow the prompts, and use an "ADD SHARES" as the transaction type, along with the number of shares and the BOOK VALUE. Unfortunately, when the total was brought to the left summary pane, there was no exchange applied. After some back and forth fumbling, I realized that although I had created the stocks in USD, I was really dealing with the securities that had been set up in CAD. (Quicken was oblivious to this and reported no error).Thinking that that was the reason for the lack of exchange, I thought to delete the security, and restart setting up a new security and adding a USD to the name to help me keep track. I then discovered that since I had transactions, I could not delete the security, AND to frustrate me even more, that if I deleted the transactions, the placeholder would re-appear, still not letting me delete the security.

Well the only escape was to delete the entire USD account and start over. I though of running the experiment with a single security (that was relatively new and had few transactions) to check the results. I FIRST SAVED THE TRANSACTION HISTORY REPORT as a PDF in case I would need to add them back in in case of another failure. I then deleted all transactions and the security (since the USD account was gone, so was the Placeholder), and proceeded to recreate the brokerage account. I chose manual setup, entered the symbol, named the stock (eg.) "STOCK 1 USD", and chose USD currency and a chose US stock. This created a Placeholder, where I once again WENT INTO THE HOLDINGS VIEW (this is critical) where I filled in the "missing transaction details" as Shares Added, a date, and a BOOK VALUE IN USD which I had from my statement.

Success ! I had a USD stock in US currency, getting updated from NYSE in USD,

Well my smiles were short lived. In the left panel, the dollar value for this account was not converted with the daily exchange rate, or any rate for that matter. [ At some point, a pop-up appeared asking if I wanted to convert this account to an RRSP account (Retirement) so I thought I would give it a try. This may be the culprit, so I will delete the account, re-do, and choose not to convert, but I don't expect a different result ]

My plan is now to verify with Quicken support if there is anything else to try. I'm sure I won't get anywhere with that, so I may resign myself to continue with the other 20 securities in this way FOR THE REASON that at the very least, I can manually apply the exchange rate, and just add that to get a true net worth. The advantage is that the exchange can be applied to a TOTAL (all the stocks are in one place) as opposed to when the securities were intermixed in a Canadian account, I would have had to do them one by one.

I would be thrilled if somehow Quicken could find a way to apply an exchange that is downloaded in the Update to the total of this (and all) USD accounts, and for those with investments in other countrys' exchanges, ANY CURRENCY.

I AM IN DISBELIEF THAT THE DATA BASE OF FIELDS WAS NOT SET UP WITH SOME KIND OF A FIELD TYPE, AND WHAT KIND OF ACTION NEEDS TO BE DONE ON THAT FIELD IF THE CURRENCY IS NOT THE HOME CURRENCY. I AM IN FURTHER DISBELIEF THAT THIS HAS NEVER BEEN MODIFIED IN ALL THE YEARS THAT QUICKEN HAS BEEN AROUND, MOST VERSIONS OF WHICH I HAVE OWNED.

The saddest thing is that one of the securities I need to set up in the USD account is INTU - yes - it's Intuit.

I really hope this can help others caught in this nightmare, in offering what I hope is a "temporary" workaround to a permanent solution, which can only come when some attention is paid to the Canadian Edition of H&B.

Again - sorry for the length :-)

unknown

Note I don't have access to the Canadian version, so a lot of this is speculation, some based on what I have read from Canadian posters.

I believe the reason you don't see multiple currency option for the Canadian version is because it just set to on.  Which makes sense what you really have is a branch of the US version, so to even get the Canadian dollar probably requires it to be on.

Looking at Q2.JPG it looks like you are setting up what in the US would be the equivalent of an US 401(k)/403(b) account.  When I go through that setup it doesn't give the choice of currency.
I would suspect the reason is because it was assumed that something like that tied so closely to the country, would have to be in the country's currency.

If setup for a brokerage or IRA account it does let me select the currency.

As for setting up the security currency, what I see is that if I ask Quicken to set it up by just putting in the symbol or security name, it doesn't let me put in the currency.  I assume that they figure that has to be a certain currency, because their quotes from that exchange is that given currency.

The only way I was able to setup a currency for a security is to set it up manually, and not match it to an online one.

As for changing over to a new security so that you can now match up USD/security with USD account, I think basically realize that Quicken basically thinks what you are doing is impossible and as such wouldn't provide any automatic way to do it.  In the real world there is no way for a security to change currencies.

The only two ways I can think of that you might fix up the history of the securities you currently own is manual entry, or QIF export/Import.  You say that the amounts are right in the current account for USD, right?  Well QIF doesn't have any notion of currency, so if the numbers are correct, this might work.
For how to do such an import:
http://getsatisfaction.com/quickencommunity/topics/faq-is-there-a-way-that-will-allow-you-to-import-transactions-from-qif-csv-excel-ofx-files-into-quicken

Thank you for all the work! I was just getting started myself transferring US stocks from my CAD account to a n USD account (as my broker is now separating them too). So this is a true requirement. I wish Quicken could support transferring shares from one account to another using a DIFFERENT currency. I believe that would solve the issue (I think!).

DC A

So I quickly skimmed through this and since I use the Canadian version I thought I would through in my two cents worth:
First that bug on trying to enter transactions where it will not let you enter the US symbol in the US account and instead gives you the CAD stock list: This has been around some time. The trick is to click the Enter Transactions button in the upper left of the register window. This will open up the pop up dialogue and allow you to enter the correct currency.
As for the stocks: First edit the stock symbol used in the Canadian account - something like adding a -old to the symbol and clearing the update security price box. Then you can create the stock using the correct symbol in the US dollar account. You will be left manually adding and removing the stocks and setting the book value.

I have always used this duplicate account for currency differences even if the brokerage does not officially separate them.

unknown

How do you update the book value? The only way I have found is by entering the book value when I add the stock to the USD account. but that leaves me with a balance. Is there another way around this?

jr7107

Just a note on how custodial banking works. Accounts are separated by currencies, and the magic of the broker statement allows those holdings to be presented in one area. Physically however in the real world the buckets are separate.

The best practice for Q is to handle each security by the matching currency. If you have a TD Waterhouse/BMO Investorline/Nesbitt etc. account, you should have a Nesbitt CAD and a Nesbitt USD account for your holdings. You will be required to "transfer" CAD to USD if you transact for a USD stock. You then use the Investing tab to roll up the accounts and view them however you want, and not battling with the software to include all of the stocks within the same account.

This is how the program is designed, matching the actual physical separation in banking.