Add true multi-currency conversion support in Quicken for Mac (317 Legacy/Merged Votes)

osvaldo

I dont know what's so difficult,Quicken Windows 4 in Spanish had multicurrency support, it was great, hope we get such a multi currency support soon

J-C Bailly

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20434889#Comment_20434889

Many other foreign versions also had multi-currency support thirty years ago. This feature request for the Mac version was started in 2016 and acknowledged by Quicken as "planned"…

Well eight years later, is it still planned or in development?

Nobody knows since there is a total lack of transparency as far as development in progress is concerned, and for many, we still have to maintain a BootCamp partition on our Mac solely for Quicken for Windows!

An update on this topic would be most welcome for what is, otherwise, a splendid software.

Nederdraak

I just discovered that transactions are not included in my budget if they are associated with an account using a different currency than my budget. Now that I've figured it out, it makes sense - the budget needs to aggregate transactions from multiple accounts and would need some way to know how to handle different currencies. However, this is quite frustrating as I am an expat and spend regularly in both the US and EU, and want to include all of those transactions in a single budget. For the time being, I need to incorrectly classify US checking accounts as using the Euro.

I really like Quicken, but have been flirting with using PocketSmith instead as they offer much better multi-currency support and feed integrations with non-US institutions. They do it through an integrator (Plaid, I believe). I prefer Quicken tooling, but the lack of international support is a continual thorn in my side.

Ploooplooo

Quicken has taken a big (hopefully simplifying) shortcut by allowing only single-currency accounts rather than single accounts that contain multiple currencies, which should cut a lot of that complexity because both securities and cash balances of a single currency are already dealt with. For example, I currently have AUD stocks and carry an AUD balance in my Quicken. They are missing (a) the ability to assign a FX rate to specific transactions for transfers between accounts (i.e. when someone trades one ccy for another) and (b) daily and historical market value calculations that flow through to all reports etc. I'll look and see how I can add my vote for this functionality.  This should be dealt with as the history of support is getting really long.

twoaussie

Ploooplooo,

How I handle this situation, I too have AUD shares and cash, as well as GBP, Euro, USD and HKD shares and cash, is to have multiple individual accounts in each currency - for example I had 5 accounts for my actual account. This way Quicken assigns a FX rate to specific transactions for transfers between accounts which I can alter and daily and historical market value calculations flow through to all reports albeit in the stated currency.

Ploooplooo

@twoaussie, Thanks and yes this is also how I am forced to handle it given multi-currency limitations in Quicken. Some of the compromises required by this arrangement are:

1. When you exchanged currencies, you cannot have a linked transfer from one currency account to another at an exchange rate. Instead you need two separate transactions categorized as Transfers.
2. The Portfolio view and most reports are currency-specific without conversion to one's home currency.
3. There is no ability to see the entire value of one's portfolio in home currency on a historical date.
4. Capital gains/losses from FX?

These are a lot of compromises for an issue (multi-currency financial portfolio) that so many financial softwares (mostly institutional) have been dealing with for decades. Quicken with the annual subscription model is not super-cheap, so seems like something it should handle. Furthermore, given the 9 pages of comments here it seems like something Quicken customers want.

jacobs

given the 9 pages of comments here it seems like something Quicken customers want.

@Ploooplooo Yes, absolutely true. And the good news is that the developers have marked this as a "Planned" future feature. There bad news is it's been marked "Planned" for a while, and we have no idea when it will emerge. To me, this seems like it will be one of the most complex updates to Quicken Mac to be implemented, because it touches nearly every facet of the program — from the sidebar to registers to dashboards to reports to budgets to calendars. I imagine the scope of this project is why they have prioritized other, more modest features ahead of it, as it may consume several designers and programmers for many months to implement. But at least we know it is in their plans…

Vinícius Melo

@jacobs , it seems you are really optimistic about this. I already gave up. Thinking about changing of app or using Parallel in order to use the Windows version. And that's what intrigues me, if they have the knowledge and experience on Windows, why it is so complex to replicate on Mac. And also, why they left this important feature out when they started developing for Mac.

jacobs

@Vinícius Melo said: if they have the knowledge and experience on Windows, why it is so complex to replicate on Mac.

Because it is complex. Keep in mind that they've been developing Quicken Windows for 33 years now, so the feature set is huge and the code is very complex. Also keep in mind that for many years, Windows users constituted 90% of the market, and the Quicken Windows development team was (and still is) much bigger than the Mac team. In fact, when they started development of the second-generation Quicken Mac, the development team was just a handful of people. Although the Mac team is a bit larger now, it's still quite small, and they can only tackle a limited number of projects at a time. And a really big project can consume several members of the team for many months at a time. And, as I said above, I think full multi-currency support is a really complex project because it touches nearly every area of the program.

why they left this important feature out when they started developing for Mac.

I don't know what the discussions were, but we can somewhat piece this together. The original project to re-create Quicken Mac back around 2007-2009 aimed to create a very new and different product, with a focus on a user experience filled with colorful charts. Since they couldn't tackle everything at once, and their primary market for the Mac was the US, they likely decided to avoid the complexities of working in multiple currencies for the start. That initial project failed (it never came to market), but some of its code and concepts went on to become Quicken Essentials in 2010 — a very incomplete version of Quicken (no investments, for instance), gussied up with colorful charts to look more like the then-new kid on the personal finance block, Mint. In fact, Intuit bought Mint, and put its CEO in charge of Quicken development. Both he and the product didn't fare well. Around 2012, Intuit hired a couple people to add some basic functionality (particularly investment accounts) so they could turn Essentials into a full-fledged next-generation of Quicken Mac. They didn't have the time or manpower to tackle many features they knew they'd have to add… if the product survived. When Quicken 2015 launched, it was still very under-powered feature-wise, but it had a pretty robust core which has been expanded on considerably over the past decade.

So they left multi-currency functionality out because they didn't have the staff to build it, plain and simple. Think about it: investment accounts was functionality that probably 70-80% of Quicken Mac users needed, while full multi-currency support was functionality that probably 10%-15% of Quicken Mac users needed. And they needed to get a product to market before all the users of the obsolete first-generation Quicken Mac departed for other platforms; if they had taken more time to build a more complete product, Quicken Mac would have likely died before they brought it out. The Quicken Mac product manager at the time created the idea of releasing new features every month or two — a radical change from the existing once-a-year releases. I think they hoped and expected that they'd be able to add a lot more functionality in a lot less time than it has actually required — which comes back to the fact that Quicken is a complex program.

it seems you are really optimistic about this. I already gave up.

I'm optimistic mainly because the developers have publicly stated that this is on their development roadmap, as well as because a lot of users keep clamoring for it. For me personally, it's not functionality I need, but I understand and appreciate why it's important to many users like you.

I think many Quicken Mac users who use multiple currencies regularly have adapted with workarounds, and some have moved away from Quicken Mac. I wish I knew when this functionality would be coming so I could encourage you to hold out a bit longer waiting for it, but I really have no idea. I know from what they've listed as "Planned" that they have a lot of large and small projects on their schedule, and we get only a few crumbs of information about what's coming when. We've seen that they added a Business & Personal level late last year, and we know they've said since early this year that they are working on adding invoicing functionality; I expect to see that come out within the next few months as the first of those big development projects. We also know they've sought user feedback on budgeting tools, and I expect a revamp of the budget portion of the program to be a major project going into the first half of 2025. They've committed to a lot of planing tools, like savings goals, tax planner, and lifetime planner, which will consume a lot of development time, but what's next — and where full multi-currency functionality fits into the mix — is anyone's guess.

Vinícius Melo

Amazing contextualization! Thanks a lot for so many insightful information. It is understandable the complexity and the hardship. The other side of the story is that the world changed in a pace much faster than their pace of improvements. Regular people have easy and immediate access to different international markets, and also digital currencies. This is a big risk they are facing. Hope that Quicken does not have the same end as MS Money. Thanks a lot!

Chris_QPW

And that's what intrigues me, if they have the knowledge and experience on Windows, why it is so complex to replicate on Mac. 

I see several fallacies in this statement. The first is to assume that because one group in a company has some knowledge all groups in a company have that knowledge. What's more there is an assumption that the code in Quicken Windows and Quicken Mac is the same, this is true only in the most general sense. So, any knowledge/code the that would be transferred would only be the "concept". And the last one is statement that "Quicken Windows" has "this feature". Multiple currency support isn't actually "one feature". It is a whole lot of features, spread out all over the program. Case in point. Quicken Windows Canadian has the best multiple currency support, followed by Quicken Windows US. Yes, you heard that right, Quicken Windows US doesn't have all the features that Quicken Windows Canadian has in this area. What's more there hasn't been any movement in decades to change that fact.