Can and How to?

Question

Mac - Quicken Classic Deluxe 7.10.0

"Operating Accounts": All my different Bank Accounts, CD's, Everything - show when I open Quicken - Great

I am out of the country for a year or more - I do not want my out of the country financial information to be reflected in my Quicken "Operating Accounts". Can this be set up in Quicken and if so what do I do? Obviously, I don't want to loose what I already have and will have to go to my current "Operating Accounts" once in a while.

Thanks for your assistance.

ZamazingT · Answer

Thanks everyone so much. I've figured out what to do, that works best for me. Appreciate the guidance.

jacobs · Answer

Just to be clear about this, when you are outside the US, will you be using your "operating accounts" — e.g. your existing credit cards — or separate accounts for the country you will be in? If you're using your existing credit cards, purchases in pesos will be converted by your credit card company to US dollars, and there's really no easy way to separate those transactions in Quicken from your existing ones, other than filtering by date.

You have two possible approaches for what you describe:

(1) You could create new accounts in your existing Quicken file for your financial activity while you are outside the US, using the currency of the country you will be in if the activity is reported in pesos and not US dollars. You can choose to make these accounts "Separate" in Quicken, so they will show up in the bottom of your left sidebar together, but separate from your "operating" accounts, and will not be included in your total net worth.

(2) You could create a new Quicken data file for your year of living outside the US. You'd create new accounts for your banking and credit card activity. This data will be completely separate from your existing data file, and you could actually use both. (For instance if you'll be paying some expenses via your US accounts for home maintenance, insurance, etc., or if you have investment account activity, you can switch back and forth between your regular "operating" Quicken data file and your "international" data file.)

NotACPA · Answer

Also note that any one Q account can  only hold a single  currency.  So, you'll need separate accounts for your Peso txn anyway.  Just choose to exclude them from any reports where you don't want to see those txn.