nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

What is the difference between a register and an account with regard to Investment

willi1

I've read a few of the posts about a brokerage having two currencies in one account on their end, but that I am unable to do this in Quicken (Canadian).

The consensus seems to be to have two different registers under one account. I don't understand this terminology. In this instance, wouldn't a register and an account be the same thing, thereby resulting in something like the following in the account list? I can't figure out what I'm missing…where does a separate register fit into this discussion?

Retirement Accounts

RJ/RRSP/CDN

RJ/RRSP/USD

RJ/TFSA/CDN

RJ/TFSA/USD

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

Chris_QPW

Not all accounts in Quicken have registers (some have them internally, but hidden). And example of an account that doesn't have a register is if you have an investment account in simple investment mode, which only keeps track of the share balances and cash balance.

The register is where the transactions for an account are stored/viewes/edited.

When talking about online accounts, for the most part they should one to one with the accounts in Quicken, but there are exceptions because of limitations in Quicken.

In any given Quicken account/register there can only be one currency. Your online account might have two or more currencies in it, but Quicken can't. Therefore to deal with this you have to have one account for every currency, and all of the securities in that account have to be using that currency.

Arctic Hare

OK. I think I now understand your situation. This is rather complex to explain without being able to just talk to you.

There is more than one way that brokers and advisors can structure these accounts. It looks like in your case, you have a single advisor account that is denominated in CAD - there is no USD cash only CAD cash and the reporting is in CAD - however, it allows you to hold both CAD and USD denominated securities. This presents a bit of a problem for Quicken because a Quicken investment account - at least in the Canadian version - can only hold securities denominated in the accounts currency. So, you need to choose between two work arounds:

(1) Create two Quicken accounts, one is CAD and one in USD. Put the CAD denominated securities in one account and the USD denominated securities in the other account. Purchases will always be funded from the CAD account and proceeds from the sales in the USD account will be deposited in the CAD account. If you use this method, you can update your security prices correctly.

2) Create only a CAD denominated Quicken account and create "fake" securities that model the US securities but are denominated in CAD. If you use this method you will only be able to update your security prices for the USD denominated securities manually.

If I had to choose between the two I would choose #1 above BUT my real preference is to choose neither and work with a broker that provides an account with both CAD cash and USD cash.

If I were you, I'd be checking carefully to see what F/X rates you are getting. Typically not good. That is the advantage of having both CAD and USD and being able to move cash back and forth using Norbert's Gambit, which provides the most efficient F/X rate.

To futher illustrate that Quicken accounts can only hold securities denominated in the same currency, create two securities, one in CAD and one is USD. Then create two Quicken investment accounts, one in CAD and one in USD. Now see which securities you can buy from which accounts. You'll find you can buy only the CAD security from the CAD account and you can buy only the USD security from the USD account.

You got a F/X rate of 1.323 on Aug 22, 2022; the market rate that day (not retail) was 1.305. You have to do the math and the lookup to see that - your advisor report doesn't show you that.

I hope this helps.

All comments

Chris_QPW

The register is where the transactions for an account are stored/viewes/edited.

When talking about online accounts, for the most part they should one to one with the accounts in Quicken, but there are exceptions because of limitations in Quicken.

willi1

Just to clarify as I try to make sense of all this. I do utilize the 'Complete' transaction tracking. In order to deal with a brokerage which combines two currencies in one account, I believe I have to set up two accounts in Quicken i.e. TFSA CDN and TFSA USD.There is some mention of registers, which to my understanding means you can have two separate registers under one account, but I still can't find anything that specifies how to do this. So, I'm assuming this means I would have the two accounts, and I could use the pop up register function which would allow me to switch back and forth between viewing registers as opposed to closing one account and bringing up another. Am I correct to this point, before I continue? thanks!!

Arctic Hare

No. For the purpose you have described, you need two investment accounts in Quicken and each will have its own register. I have that setup for RBC Direct Investing accounts. There is one RBC DI account, but it has a USD side and a CAD side. I have two accounts in Quicken to track the single RBC DI account. Happy to help if you have further questions as to how this works.

willi1

Thank you so much for this clarification! This has been so confusing for me.

So, if my brokerage has two currencies in one account and I set up two accounts on my side, firstly I'm not sure how I handle the 'cash' aspect. If I just enter the first USD Bought transaction in the USD account, then I have negative cash figures in the USD CDN account which was originally set up. I'm sure I'm missing something really obvious, but right now I'm just still in the dark.

willi1

Also, in this application, I should just discard use of the pop up registers…I find them somewhat confusing and not well- behaved. 🙄

Chris_QPW

I seldom have a reason to compare one register to another so I have never used popup registers. I'm not positive, but I suspect that majority of users don't use them.

willi1

Ok…just checkinng to make sure my comment/question above that…I'm sure you're busy, and don't want to push…thanks!

Chris_QPW

Not busy, and the whole purpose of this site is for people to ask questions. Feel free to ask whatever you like.

willi1

OK…again, thank you…did you see my earlier question at 2:22?

Chris_QPW

Sorry I missed that, and I thought that @Arctic Hare answer, answered that kind of question.

I have never had to do this, but I'm guessing that your "cash" is all in CAD, and that what happens when you buy a USD security there is a withdraw of money from that CAD cash balance, equal to what is needed to purchase the USD security.

As such there should be a transfer for that amount in the CAD account to the USD account for that amount. Note that there is a Cash Transfered out of account action type, you can use, but if you need to split the transaction because there is a fee then the Withdraw transaction is probably the right transaction since you can select split on it for the category [Other Account] for the transfer and then then category for the fee.

willi1

So, I guess I misread other postings suggesting there was a 'proper' way to deal with two currencies in one account. I believe this would introduce utilizing exchange rates. My limited experience with Quicken and exchange rates is less than stellar. For example, I currently have a transaction in the US Account we are discussing with an situation as follows:

11273.97/8560.334 = 1.317 So transaction is recorded as 62 shares x 138.07=8560.34 X 1.317 = 11273.9677

Portfolio Value report shows an exchange rate of 1.36 which, of course, produces another answer (11,668.49) altogether. Sigh…

How on earth is one supposed to deal with this situation….

Chris_QPW

Yes, Quicken can't have two currencies in the same account. It is always set at the account level.

My experience with exchange rate handling in Quicken is basically none existing. @Arctic Hare is going to be better at answer such questions and I can. But I do know that when doing a transfer between two accounts with different currencies, Quicken will prompt for how much it is in the "to currency":

It has to be this way because there "exchange rate" isn't going to be anything you can look up, it unique to that transaction.

Note this only for the cash amounts for a buy/sell. Clearly when you start to look shares and portfolio values this different.

You will have XX shares of SecurityY/USD and ZZ shares of SecurityY/CAD if you have bought the same security with USD and CAD. Quicken will treat them as two different securities even if they are say both INTC.

And when looking at your portfolio value I don't believe that Quicken has any reports that separate out the different currencies, but instead you state what currency you want to see it in, and it uses the exchange rate for that date. Note in Quicken Windows US it doesn't store anything other than the last downloaded exchange rate so that is all it gives, but the Canadian version does store the daily exchange rates and can give the amount based on those daily rates.

willi1

I'm curious…I don't see that Foreign Currency Transfer in my list of transactions available….I'm Quicken Canada…are you US?

Chris_QPW

There isn't a "Foreign Currency Transfer" in the actions. The above prompt comes up whenever you do a transfer between two accounts that have different currencies.

Arctic Hare

@willi1 I believe there are only two Canadian Superusers participating in the forum, including Yours Truly.

We could debate what is meant by "Proper" but I advise you as to what works well - without any issues as far I'm concerned. You'll need two account (each has its own register - and, no, I don't use pop up registers). One account will be denominated in CAD and the other in USD. Each account can hold cash in the respective currency. The only exchange rate transactions are the transfers - that is, unless you are using cash from one account to buy securities in the other account. I know that RBC Direct Investing, for example, will let you do that, but I don't do it because they give you a crappy F/X rate.

I'm assuming you are using Norbert's gambit to move cash between the CAD and USD accounts and then you only buy securities using cash in the same denomination as the securities. This is your best approach from a F/X cost basis and is easily tracked in Quicken with minimal F/X transactions. Then, you simply keep your daily F/X rates up to date using One Step Update.

Let me know if you need more detail on this or if any of the above isn't clear. I've been using this approach with multiple dual currency investment accounts for years and it works fine.

willi1

Hi there. Thank you both so much for trying to help me.

To be clear, I am not acting as a DIY investor at this stage. In preparing for the future, I moved my holdings to a fee-only advisor, however, I do like to keep my own numbers. I think at the root of my confusion is the way the brokerage is reporting this. The documention is very confusing to me.

For example, on Aug 31, 2022 they show a purchase transaction of FRST TR AMEX BIOTECH IDX FD of 62 shares at 138.07 for a total amount of 11,273.97. The problem seems to be the 138.07 is a USD price buried in the list of Cdn holdings.

I do have to use the Norbert's Gambit entries between CDN and USD non-registered accounts, but there are no such entries on this statement (TFSA).

It sounds like you are saying I have to generate entries similar to Norbert's Gambit even though there are no such entries. Am I understanding you correctly?? Or, perhaps, I hadn't explained clearly enough what is going on and this just may not be something I can reliably do in Quicken. For the record, I am not very math savvy, and was endeavouring to make my life simpler. 🙄

Thanks for any guidance you can give.

Arctic Hare

OK. I think I now understand your situation. This is rather complex to explain without being able to just talk to you.

If I had to choose between the two I would choose #1 above BUT my real preference is to choose neither and work with a broker that provides an account with both CAD cash and USD cash.

You got a F/X rate of 1.323 on Aug 22, 2022; the market rate that day (not retail) was 1.305. You have to do the math and the lookup to see that - your advisor report doesn't show you that.

I hope this helps.

willi1

I see that within the fog of my confusion, I've gotten bogged down in the details. The second option you suggested is what I had been doing but I felt like i was 'kidding' myself and perhaps this was all going to bite me sometime in the future, so I was trying to understand how to do correctly. 'Numbers' and I have a difficult relationship. To be clear I do have a US and a CDN non reg account within which Norbert's is utilized by the broker….it's just the TFSA and RRIF that presents this issue.

I want to extend my sincere appreciation to you for your help and guidance. I much appreciate it and feel so much better having been able to bounce of of someone that understands.

Thank you!