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How to setup a Scotiabank USD Savings Account?

kderojas

I have recently begun using Quicken and am in the process of setting up my accounts. I have a USD Savings Account with Scotiabank, which synchronizes well. However, I am unable to find the option to configure this account as a USD account.

I am using the Canadian version of Quicken Home & Business on Windows.

Any hints?

Thanks in advance

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Accepted answers

Chris_QPW

Some terms:

Web Connect: Going to the financial institution and downloading a Web Connect/.QFX file and importing that into Quicken.

Express Web Connect: for Quicken Windows Canadian it is the only method that you can setup that does the downloading and importing of the transactions into the register, without you going to the financial institution's website manually. "Direct Connect" is available for Canadian financial institutions.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7851859/faq-how-quicken-connects-with-your-financial-institution-tips-tricks-and-best-practices

Looking at the entries for Scotiabank both Web Connect and Express Web Connect are available.

Looking at what you have posted you are trying to setup with Express Web Connect. When this is setup, it is the financial institution that is "stating" what currency a given account is using. Clearly by what you have posted even though the account is in USD Scotiabank has sent that the account is in CAD. You aren't going to be able to use Express Web Connect with that account and get USD.

You might try Web Connect and see if it gives you a different result. While setting up the account if there is an Advanced option try selecting that and select Web Connect, instead of Express Web Connect. If that isn't there you need to go the financial institution's website and find where to download the Web Connect/QFX file, once you have that saved to your machine you can open it either in your web browser or Windows File Explorer and that will cause Quicken to open/start the import.

If that also wants to create a CAD account then, you can edit the QFX file with a text editor and change the <CURDEF> from CAD to USD, and then open it to import it.

Also, it would be interesting to hear what you find.

Arctic Hare

Ahhh… now I think I see what is going on. This has been a problem with ScotiaBank in the past. While YOU (the user) can't change the currency of a Quicken account once it has one or more transactions, the currency of the Quicken account will align to whatever the [CURDEF] field is in the downloaded data. There have been cases where ScotiaBank's servers generates an incorrect [CURDEF]. In other words, there is information coded into the downloaded data that is switching the currency of the Quicken account on you. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to fix this - it is a problem that ScotiaBank must fix. Generally speaking, it is very difficult, in not impossible, to get these sort of problems fixed by complaining to the bank. Instead, you'll need to speak with Quicken technical support, provide them a copy of your log files, and they will need to escalate the issue to their Online Banking Team, who will work with Scotia Bank to get the issue resolved. The log files will reveal the incorrect [CURDEF] field. Unfortunately, the bad news is that this process can take a lot of follow ups on your part and a lot of calendar time. I've sometimes spent the better part of year campaigning Quicken to get issues like this resolved. I have a similar issue present with BMO right now and zero progress have been made over the last month.

All comments

Arctic Hare

Yes. The currency can only be set BEFORE any transactions are entered into the account. In your case, where you already have transactions in the account, you can create a new account in Quicken with the correct USD currency and then move all the transactions from the account set to CAD to the account set to USD.

BTW, what is your intended meaning of "synchronizes". In Quicken language "synchronize" applies to synchronizing with online/mobile. If you are referring to downloading transactions you should say "downloading" because using the word "synchronizing" has a different meaning.

Also, what method are you using to download transactions? Web Connect or Express Web Connect?

kderojas

Hello Arctic,

Thank you very much for your helpful response. This is what I have done so far, trying to follow your instructions:

I created an offline USD savings account.
I copied the transactions from the CAD savings account in Quicken to the new USD savings account.
I edited the account I created in step 1 to try downloading subsequent transactions. I navigated to the 'Online Services' tab, set up the connection, and then attempted to link it to my USD savings account. However, I was unable to select it from the dropdown list (refer to the attached screenshot, where only the 'Vacations account' appears, which is a CAD savings account)
Since I was unable to link the account in step 3, I tried to add the account instead. Unfortunately, this resulted in the creation of another CAD savings account, and now I would have to copy the transactions manually once again.

Is there a way to avoid this manual copying of transactions? It is time-consuming and error-prone. Additionally, I can't answer your question about the method to download transactions. I just started using Quicken a few days ago and I am not familiar with how to determine that yet

Thanks in advance

Chris_QPW

Some terms:

Web Connect: Going to the financial institution and downloading a Web Connect/.QFX file and importing that into Quicken.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7851859/faq-how-quicken-connects-with-your-financial-institution-tips-tricks-and-best-practices

Looking at the entries for Scotiabank both Web Connect and Express Web Connect are available.

If that also wants to create a CAD account then, you can edit the QFX file with a text editor and change the <CURDEF> from CAD to USD, and then open it to import it.

Also, it would be interesting to hear what you find.

Ps56k2

if the account is USD - how -
was the account setup in the US at Scotiabank - and therefore everything was USD -
BUT now you are accessing the Canadian Scotiabank and it of course wants CAD -

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421301#Comment_20421301

I think you are missing what is going on here.

All accounts are at Scotiabank in Canada. Scotiabank allows the user to have both CAD and USD accounts. The account that @kderojas wants to setup in Quicken is USD, but when he connects with Express Web Connect, it wants to create an account in CAD.

Ps56k2

got it - was wondering how the account acquired the USD attribute in the first place - if not from a US setup -

kderojas

Hello Chris,

I used Web Connect following your instructions, and it worked fine. It seems, however, that I won't be able to download the transactions automatically :( and will have to visit the Scotiabank website and download the file manually each time I want to update my register in Quicken. It's a shame; the Express Web Connect feature works perfectly for my CAD accounts (except for the investment accounts)

Thanks for your help.

Chris_QPW

@kderojas Did the QFX file have CAD or USD for the currency?

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421215#Comment_20421215

Where you went wrong was that you needed to disconnect the old account before attempting to make a connection to the new account. You skipped a step.

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421301#Comment_20421301

Not true - I hold USD accounts at Canadian financial institutions.

Arctic Hare

xxxxx

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421312#Comment_20421312

Again, that is because you needed to disconnect the Express Web Connect connection to the old account, close Quicken, restart Quicken, and the reconnect the new Quicken account to the bank account via Express Web Connect. You skipped the disconnect, close Quicken, and restart Quicken steps.

kderojas

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421359#Comment_20421359

I want to get this right, so I started to set up my account again. I deleted the accounts I had (related to Scotiabank) and followed these steps. If you find there is a step missing, @Arctic Hare, please let me know exactly where I should add an additional step:

I deleted the accounts I had previously set up.
I restarted Quicken.
I created a USD account as an offline account (see screenshots).
I edited the account, selected the online services tab, and set up the connection (I couldn't link the bank account with the account I had created in the previous step. See screenshots).
I now have two accounts, the one I created manually: "USD Savings" and the one that was created when I set up the connection: "USD Savings XX8122". The latter one has CAD as its currency, and I can't edit it (see screenshots).

Please let me know your thoughts. I would really like to have a USD account that can be updated automatically

7-usd account created as cad account.png

kderojas

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421313#Comment_20421313

Chris, the QFX file had USD for the currency ("<CURDEF>USD")

Arctic Hare

kderojas

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421375#Comment_20421375

Thank you again for your assistance. I'll reach out to Quicken's technical support to report the issue at the very least.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421372#Comment_20421372

Thanks for the information. At least we know that Scotiabank is coding the QFX file correctly.

One of the big problems with Express Web Connect is that there is a lot of "players" involved and it isn't standardized. And this makes it impossible to the user to determine exactly where the problem is.

The "Express" in Express Web Connect originally came from the idea that the Intuit servers would log into the financial institution's website and download the Web Connect/QFX file an import it for the user. The problem is that not all financial institutions create QFX files on their websites. So, this changed into Intuit would make an agreement with the financial institution on how to connect to the website and what format the transactions might be downloaded in, and then Intuit would do any conversions that were needed to send that to Quicken.

The current flow is:

Quicken (the program) ←> Quicken servers ←> Intuit servers (Intuit is Quicken Inc's "aggregator") ←> financial institution's website.

In the Quicken logs we can only see the interaction between Quicken and the Quicken servers.

One would think that because Scotiabank is generating a QFX file, and it is coded correctly, that all that would be needed is the original idea were the QFX file is fetched and send back through this process and imported into Quicken. But clearly that isn't the case of the download of Express Web Connect wouldn't be insisting on the USD account be created/used as CAD. So, they are doing something "different".

I'm pretty sure that the problem is whatever "agreement" Intuit and Scotiabank have for the download, it could be in the Intuit "scripts" grabbing the wrong information or that the information itself that Scotiabank is providing is wrong. My guess would be the later.

We know that this is a long-standing problem, and we know that the problem doesn't happen with other financial institutions. The "Intuit script" could be custom/wrong too but it is less likely in my opinion. There is another thing that narrows it down. This problem has been going on for years, and it wasn't until a couple of years ago that the Quicken servers were put into this flow, and I would expect them to be running pretty generic code and not know much about the format the financial institution is providing the data to Intuit in.

kderojas

Chris,

Thank you very much for your comprehensive explanation. It's somewhat frustrating to see this happening, especially since Intuit is able to extract my account information flawlessly through Intuit Mint (which is now shutting down, something that could benefit Quicken if they resolve the issues in the Canadian version of the software).