Why are my Canadian accounts in US currency, and more importantly, why can't I change the currency??

Question

I just got quicken. I just downloaded all my scotiabank accounts.  my credit cards and savings accounts have no issue.  My chequing accounts are in US currency and I CANNOT change it.  Why?  How do I fix this?

Chris_QPW · Answer

For Quicken Windows US works the same as Quicken Windows Canadian as far as changing the currency on an account that has transactions in it, it can't be done.

But there are few things that are different.* With Quicken Windows US you have to option to turn on multiple currency (defaulted to off).  With Quicken Windows Canadian you can't it is locked on.  The reason being that in fact they branched the US version to do this and to have CAD as the home currency they had to have it on.  This also means that they default for which currency is the "Home currency" changes from USD to CAD.  The Home Currency is the currency in places where there isn't any setting for this, like some of the "views".
* With Quicken Windows US you can change the "Home currency", on Quicken Windows Canadian you can't.  There is an idea on this forum for changing that, but clearly at least at the start they did this for "marketing".
* Quicken Windows US will not import a QFX file in anything other than USD.  Quicken Windows Canadian can, and I think this is part of the problem faced with Scotiabank even though it most pertains to Express Web Connect not importing a QFX file.  What is one to do if the account currency is one currency, and the import says that the transactions are from another?  I personally think that it should reject the import, but it is pretty clear that isn't what Quicken Windows Canadian is doing.  It is switching the currency of the account.   And that brings us back to the thing that is the same between Quicken Windows US and Quicken Windows Canadian, that there is no setting in them for changing the currency of an account.  The currency for the account is generally selected as the account is created, but it actually can be change up until you have one transaction in the account, and then it is fixed, unless you remove all transactions from the account.  But note nothing stops Quicken itself from changing the currency.  Also note that on #1 I said that the home currency is used in places where you there isn't any way to set the currency, well there is a sort of exception. Let's imagine that you just create all of your accounts in the home currency, and then change the home currency.  Then all of the account will have the new home currency.

In general I believe there are two workarounds to get the currency back in the case of Quicken Windows Canadian/Scotiabank/Express Web Connect changing it.
smayer97 which will hopefully correct this if I got it wrong.

You get a QFX file and make sure the CURDEF field is CAD and import that, and it should force the account currency back to what it should be.

The other way would be to just create a new account in the right currency and move the transaction into it.
FAQ: How Do I Move Transactions Between Quicken Accounts? — Quicken

Hopefully Quicken will allow this.

jvkfamily · Answer

In the past I remember my accounts showing up as USD and together with a phone support person we figured out to download the US version of the software, switch the currency to CAD, save, uninstall, reinstall Canadian Quicken and open file again.  Then my accounts were back to CAD currency.

grimmt1957 · Answer

Scotiabank currency setting using "Express Web Connect" has been broken for 6-12 months.   Using this feature will force Scotiabank accounts to switch from CAD to USD.

The only workaround currently is to use manual downloads ("Web Connect") of the account via QFX files from Scotiabank.  The manual files have the correct CAD currency setting.  The QFX file needs to be used to both create the account and to update the account transactions.  Stay away from "Express Web Connect": on Scotiabank accounts until it is reported as fixed.

Quicken has an Alert open and they have been working on this for a while.

Note1: The USD currency on the account blows up most of the reporting functions and inter-account transfers as currency conversions will be applied causing accounts to show 25-30% too high on transactions.

Note2: The Canadian version of Quicken does not permit the changing of the account currency once a transaction has been registered.