How do I transfer USD to Thai Baht in Quicken? (Q Mac)

Rich Cook

I have an account in USD and another in THB.  I used to be able to create a new transfer from the USD account to the THB account and it would automatically convert the currency for me.  This does not work now.  The account in THB is not allowed as a transfer destination from the USD account.  Was it removed?   If not, am I doing something wrong?  
Thanks for any help.  

jacobs

@Rich Cook What I can see in your picture is that you have a Category of "Transfer". That's incorrect. You need "Transfer" plus a colon plus the name of the account in brackets:  "Transfer:[Bangkok Bank THB]" or Transfer:[Capital One Visa]".

When you have just plain "Transfer", that's a special Quicken category will allows money to enter or exit without coming from anywhere else in Quicken, if you don't have accounts for all your holdings in Quicken. You don't want that here.

As I wrote above, if you go to the Category columns and start typing "Transfer", the first choice in the pop-up list is plain "Transfer" but under that you will see transfers to each of you're Quicken accounts available to select.

I don't work in multiple currencies, so the screenshot I posted above was from me creating a THB dummy account and doing exactly what I'm describing here -- so it definitely works!

YingDave

In your currency table, for THB there should be a shortcut key, mine is "B". So when you enter a transaction in the USD account you type 4000, "B" it should immediate convert it to USD and then enter "4000 THB" in the memo field, then enter ["account in the category. So if you open you currency list with Ctrl+Q do you still see an entry for Thailand Baht towards the bottom? I can't see a way to delete currencies, but you may have edited the shortcut key to something else & may appear as though it does not work?

Rich Cook

I do not use a shortcut and don't know what a currency list is.  However, what I'm trying to do sounds different than what you are describing.   Let me be clearer.  I want to create a new transaction in the USD account, let's say $4000, which is a transfer which will end up in a Thai bank account in Thai Baht.  If I create the transaction, and then call it a Transfer, the Thai baht valued account which I use to track the Thai bank account does not show up in the options for the transfer.    The picture should help.  
This used to automatically convert the transfer to thai baht.  Now I cannot even do it.  

YingDave

Sorry I missed you were using the Mac version as I picked up your message from the unanswered list. Maybe someone else who uses Mac version can chime in as transfers are different in that version.

Rich Cook

I appreciate your effort

jacobs

@Rich Cook  Quicken Mac does not yet have full multi-currency support like Quicken Windows. The good news is that the developers have stated that this is on their planned roadmap; the bad news is that we don't know when it will be complete.

That said, there are some pieces of multi-currency support currently in Quicken Mac. As you've seen, you can set up accounts in a currency of your choice. You can transfer funds from one account to the other, but Quicken Mac does this as a one time conversion at the current exchange rate. When enter the transfer, you get a dialog box like this:



It will download the current exchange rate (I don't know the source), or you can create a manual override in the Window > Currencies window.

As it indicates, it will make the increase or decrease from the source account, and will make the corresponding increase or decrease in the destination account by doing the currency conversion at that moment. Unlike regular transfers in Quicken Mac, these are two independent transactions, not linked so you can switch to the other side. And the register will show the Category is "Transfer", not a transfer to/from the other account.

On small benefit to being unlinked is that you can go back and edit the amount in one account without it affecting the other side. For instance, in the example above I was entering a transfer of 50 Thai Bhat to a US account. Quicken supplied the exchange rate of .03348, for a deposit of 1.67. If you enter the transfer, and later review your US account and find you received $1.70 instead of $1.67, you can simply edit the amount int he US account without it affecting the THB account.

Here's the other quirk I noticed in testing this, and perhaps is the hangup you ran into and were asking about in your original post: you can't use the Transfer column to make your transfer! I assume this is by design, because there will never be anything to show in that column (as the transfer is not linked to another account). So how do you actually create the transfer? In the Category column! Type "Transfer:" in the Category column, and you will see a pop-up list of all your accounts -- including the ones in other currencies. Select the one you want, and when you save the transaction, that's when you will see the dialog box above about making the transfer. 

Rich Cook

Thanks for your reply. Please look at the picture in my post.  The problem I'm having is precisely that the Category and Transfer columns are not working as you describe and I cannot transfer between USD and Thai Baht, but I've already said this. 

jacobs

@Rich Cook What I can see in your picture is that you have a Category of "Transfer". That's incorrect. You need "Transfer" plus a colon plus the name of the account in brackets:  "Transfer:[Bangkok Bank THB]" or Transfer:[Capital One Visa]".

When you have just plain "Transfer", that's a special Quicken category will allows money to enter or exit without coming from anywhere else in Quicken, if you don't have accounts for all your holdings in Quicken. You don't want that here.

As I wrote above, if you go to the Category columns and start typing "Transfer", the first choice in the pop-up list is plain "Transfer" but under that you will see transfers to each of you're Quicken accounts available to select.

I don't work in multiple currencies, so the screenshot I posted above was from me creating a THB dummy account and doing exactly what I'm describing here -- so it definitely works!

Rich Cook

OK, that one worked!  I now have a way.  You might not like the old way, but that's how I used to do it last week...  LOL. Thanks for solving it for me.  I would argue that Quicken should make this easier, but I acknowledge I'm unusual... 

jacobs

Rich Cook said:

OK, that one worked!  I now have a way.  You might not like the old way, but that's how I used to do it last week...  LOL. Thanks for solving it for me.  I would argue that Quicken should make this easier, but I acknowledge I'm unusual... 

Glad you got it to work!

I didn't say anything about not liking an old way; as I noted, I don't have accounts in multiple currencies at all, so I was just trying to help you find a solution to the problem.

In the latest release, they fixed a bug which involved QuickFill transactions not properly populating the Transfer column. It's possible that in fixing that bug, they somehow disabled the Transfer column from seeing accounts in other currencies.