How to account for USD to foreign currencies across registers?

Question

Hi all, can someone help me with how to account for foreign currencies when i first do a "withdraw" in USD? For example:

I currently have my Checking account register where i track deposits, withdrawals, and transfers of USD cash. I also have a USD cash account register where i track cash expenses (or credits if someone give me cash). If I need spending cash I'll go to the ATM and withdraw some cash from my checking account and I reflect this in Quicken by entering a credit in my cash acct register and select the [Checking Account] register in the Category drop down. End result is a debit in my checking account register, and a credit in my cash account register and it balances out nicely.

Let's say I travel to London and I will need some British currency (GPB) for everyday expenses. I'll create a GBP cash account register so I can track the daily expenses. To actually get spending cash I'll go to an ATM, withdraw cash from my US checking account and the ATM will give me GBP while letting me know that an equivalent USD amount was deducted from my checking account.

How do I account for this transaction in Quicken? I can credit my GBP cash account the amount I received, and I can debit my USD checking account the equivalent USD that was withdrawn, but I don't know if there is a way to cleanly show  that X USD debited to my checking account resulted in Y GBP.

Appreciate any help provided!

UKR · Answer

From Quicken Help, with my annotations in italics:

Enter foreign currency amounts using a shortcut letter

* [To set up this process do this once]
* From the Currency List, click Edit [on the Euro Currency entry]. 
* Enter a shortcut letter to represent the currency [e.g., for Euro set the shortcut letter to E]

* [To enter a Euro transaction in a US-$ account register]
* In the payment field, enter the foreign currency amount followed by the

shortcut letter associated with it.

For example, the shortcut letter for a transaction in Euros is E; if a payment is 50 Euros, enter 50E. 
[In the Memo field €50.00 will automatically appear. The amount in the Payment field will change to, for example, 59.10 Dollars, based on current exchange rate as recorded in the Currency List. "Est." will appear in the Check# or Reference column.]

Q97 · Answer

You should be able to just do a transfer from your USD checking account to your GBP cash account, allowing Quicken to do the currency conversion

https://help.quicken.com/plugins/servlet/mobile?contentId=3216392#content/view/3216392