Fixed Deposits in Foreign Currency with No Connection (Q Mac)

Ledadane

I'm having trouble setting up accounts for fixed deposits in another country. I believe these accounts function much like CDs in the US, but I can't find a Securities account option. I've tried Cash, Savings, and Other accounts. Other seems to be the best, but it doesn't show interest rates and maturity dates. Does anyone have a successful workaround, or have I simply missed something?

TIA!

UKR

IMHO, the easiest would be to add these accounts as Offline accounts, not connected to any bank for transaction downloading. Choose Savings accounts as the account type and be sure to select the correct currency.
There are no fields available to add interest rate or maturity dates. I suggest you put that info into the account name and, if available, into a Comment field in the account information area.

Ledadane

As I said, I think the "Other" category under "Investment and Retirement" is best because it tracks the account like an investment portfolio. What threw me was that the instructions I found said to list the account as a "Security," but in Quicken for Mac, there's no "Securities" option for offline accounts.

ChatGPT (Quicken's bot service) had this to say:

"To set up the records for an offline, foreign currency fixed deposit in Quicken for Mac, you can follow these steps:

1. Open Quicken for Mac and go to the "Banking" tab on the top menu.
2. Click on the "+" button at the bottom-left corner and select "Offline Account."
3. Give a name to the account, such as "Foreign Currency Fixed Deposit," and select the appropriate account type.
4. Click "OK" to create the account.
5. Now, go to the "Accounts" tab and select the newly created account from the sidebar.
6. Click the "Gear" icon at the bottom of the sidebar and choose "Settings."
7. Under the "Currency" section, select the foreign currency for your fixed deposit.
8. Click "OK" to save the settings.

Once you have set up the account, you can enter your fixed deposit transactions by following these steps:

1. Go to the "Transactions" tab and click on the "+" button.
2. Enter the deposit amount for your fixed deposit as a transfer from your regular bank account to the foreign currency fixed deposit account.
3. Make sure to enter the correct transaction date, payee, and category for your reference.
4. Click "Save" to record the transaction.

You can also add reminders for future interest payments or maturity dates using the "Calendar" view in Quicken for Mac. This will help you stay organized and keep track of your fixed deposit.

Remember to consult your financial institution for the specific terms and conditions of your fixed deposit, as well as any tax implications related to foreign currency transactions."

This is also an unhelpful work-around. Clearly, Quicken for Mac lacks the Securities option that Quicken for Windows has. I'm contacting Support to request one.

Thanks for trying to help!

Garry@

I live in Australia where the banks offer what they call "Term Deposits". With term deposits, money is deposited for a fixed term at a fixed interest rate paid regularly (compounding or non-compounding). They are treated by banks as cash bank accounts. It is usual to have more than one term deposit with a single bank. I think they are basically the same as "Fixed Deposits" you are trying to record. Also, they are analogous to the CD security type in Quicken with "Asset class" of cash.

To record term deposits with a particular bank I create an "Offline Account" > "Brokerage" account with a useful name e.g. "NIB Bank Term Deposits". Then for each deposit, I create a security:

Security name: [account number of deposit]
Type: CD
Symbol: [bank]-TD.# [where # is how many deposits I have opened at that bank at that time]
Asset class: Cash
Maturity date: [the date the deposit matures]

Next I enter a "Buy" transaction in the account for the new deposit:

Security/payee: [Security name i.e. account number of deposit]
Total cost: [amount of the deposit]
Number of shares: [amount of the deposit]
Price per share: $1
Commission: [blank]
Memo: [descriptive text e.g. "Invested till 19/6/25 @ 5.0% 12/12 to savings account"]

Quicken reports all work except that the price is always $1. So, price charts are not useful.

The only downside is that even though Maturity Date is recorded for each deposit (and for bonds), there are NO reports which use that data ! I and other users have asked for reports or dashboard panes on maturity dates for years but there has been no response from the Quicken developers. In the meantime, I use a separate cash account to record maturity dates as transactions. That enables a report which suffices but it really is bad practice to double the work of opening and closing accounts with no reconciliation possible between them.

Cheers.

jacobs

Clearly, Quicken for Mac lacks the Securities option that Quicken for Windows has. I'm contacting Support to request one. 

Can you explain what this "securities option" or "securities account" does which you're looking for? Perhaps there's a way to do something different but similar in Quicken Mac, but I'm not clear on what you're looking for. You could create a brokerage account, and create securities for each of your fixed deposits, but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for. Where would you want to see the interest rate and maturity date? You could possibly name each security that way, e.g. "Fixed Deposit 6.23% Maturity 11/13/28".

Chris_QPW

Just so people understand how this is handled in Quicken Windows. Here is the security setup dialog:

Then adding the security to the investment account:

And recording interest:

And there is a special report for the maturity dates:

Chris_QPW

BTW the report on the maturity dates is pretty new in Quicken Windows, and frankly after just trying it out to see what it does, I don't like it. Maybe it is better for bonds where you have call dates and such. But for CDs it is no better that someone just keeping a text file that records each CD maturity date. And there is something I just tested that I wouldn't like at all. The day after the CD matures it will be removed from this list. And there isn't any option to change that.

And it occurs to me that one might want a report on the "return". Well, it is entered as a security, and as such any regular security report that shows the return will work for this.

I have never had a lot of CDs so this hasn't mattered to me, and I will point out something else. When you need to track a lot of CDs recording them as securities is the way to go since the investment account can be reused. But in my case, I carried the CDs in banking financial institutions, and they downloaded them into Quicken each as a separate saving account. So, that is how I have always managed them. And if I renewed them, they stayed in the same savings account.

jacobs

So it looks pretty much the same in Quicken Mac; you can record the maturity date of a CD security…

…but there's no maturity report for bonds & CDs (yet). as in the Windows version, there's no field to record interest rate either, but you can just include it in the security name if you wish, as I did above, so it's visible in a Portfolio: