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Can not get correct currency in account

TJTex

I have Quicken Deluxe R62.18 running on Windows 11

I have five accounts with BMO Bank of Montreal, a Canadian bank, one of them is a US dollar account. I also have several US bank accounts.

The problem is that in Quicken the BMO Bank of Montreal US dollar account is set to Canadian dollar currency and therefore when I transfer money from my BMO US dollar account to my Canadian dollar account in BMO Bank of Montreal it does not apply FX.

When I look at the BMO US dollar account "Account Details", it shows as Canadian Dollar in the Account Currency field but it is greyed out and I can not change it to US Dollars.

Looking at other posts, they state that I need to enable "Multi currency support" in: "Edit > Preferences > Calendar and currency" however, there is not such option.

I obviously have multi currency support because I have both Canadian dollar accounts and US dollar accounts and when I enter a transaction to move money from any of my US accounts in a US bank (with US dollars as the currency) to any of my BMO Bank of Montreal Canada accounts, it wants to apply the FX.

I thought that currency was settable by account, not by financial institution.

So why is my BMO Bank of Montreal US dollar account stuck with Canadian dollar currency and how do I fix this?

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Comments

[Deleted User]

@TJTex some users have reported that updates or downloaded transaction files (QFX files) unexpectedly alter the currency of their accounts.

If this happens, you might try:

Checking the QFX file – Some users have fixed the issue by manually editing the file to ensure the correct currency code (e.g., changing "CDN" to "CAN").
Recreating the account – Since Quicken doesn’t allow changing an account’s currency, creating a new account with the correct currency might be necessary. The account's transactions will need to be moved and the old account deleted.
Contacting Quicken Support – If the issue persists, reaching out to Quicken’s support team could help resolve it.

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7962435/can-not-get-correct-currency-in-account

Firstly, the references to enabling multi-currency support are most likely from people using the US version of Quicken. Multi-currency support is enabled by default in the Canadian version.

Second, the reason the currency selection is greyed out for your account is because Quicken locks down the currency setting for an account once there is one or more transactions in the account's register.

Before I recommend a fix for the issue, please advise whether you download transactions from BMO and, if you do download transactions from BMO, do you download the transactions using Web Connect (i.e. log into the BMO online banking portal and initiate the download from there) or Express Web Connect/One Step Update (where you initiate the download from within Quicken).

TJTex

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20490547#Comment_20490547

@Arctic Hare I download the transactions from BMO using the Express Web Connect/One Step Update.

And now I noticed something funny after I did a OSU. When the transactions from my US dollar account to my Canadian account are downloaded from BMO they are recorded against the respective accounts. That is, the downloaded transaction for the funds coming out of the US dollar account is listed as a payment but it has a category of [BMO US Dollar account] indicating that it is a payment to itself. Conversely, the deposit into the BMO Canadian dollar account is listed as a deposit but with a category of [BMO Canadian Dollar account] indicating that the transferred cash is coming from the Canadian account. This make no sense at all. The only good thing about the downloaded transactions is that the amounts are correct in both the US and Canadian accounts.

Arctic Hare

@TJTex this is a complicated situation that could have one of a couple causes. A bit more information is required to zone in on which of two things is happening here.

Firstly, it is important to understand that, although you can't change an account's currency setting once there is at least one transaction recorded in the account's register, there is a data field included in the data set obtained by Express Web Connect (i.e. OSU) that specifies the currency and it does override the account's currency setting regardless of whether there are transactions in the register. To illustrate, if you set up a new account in Quicken, set the currency to USD, loaded a couple transactions manually, and then connected that newly set up account to your bank using EWC/OSU and the information from the bank contained "[CURDEF] CAD" then that would switch the currency setting for the account in Quicken from USD to CAD. Thus, one possibility is that BMO is sending the incorrect [CURDEF] for that USD account. This would not be first time I've seen that issue. Unfortunately, if this is the issue, then only BMO can correct it.

The second possibility is a longer shot… A number of years ago, there was a bug in Quicken that caused the following behaviour…. If you set up EWC/OSU for an account that had very infrequent transaction activity and more than 90 days passed without a single transaction in a given account, this could cause Quicken to change the account's currency setting when you ran EWC/OSU. If your account with the incorrect currency setting does go long'ish periods of time without a new transaction, then this could be a factor. However, if I recall correctly, Quicken would correct the currency setting as soon as there was a transaction downloaded for that account. Again, I think this is a long shot. That bug was supposed to have been corrected a few years ago and I think it would have fixed the currency setting when you succussfully downloaded a transaction.

What I would do as a next step is to create a brand new Quicken file as a test and set up EWC/OSU with BMO and do a download. In the new file, do you get the correct or incorrect currency for the USD account when you run this test.

Note: you won't be able to address the incorrect categories for the inter-account transfer until you get the currency issue sorted.

As a next step, I'd run the new file test described above and report the results back here.

TJTex

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20490638#Comment_20490638

@Arctic Hare Ok I located an older file I set up back in 2023 where the US Dollar account was in US Dollars. When I manually enter a transaction to move funds from the US dollar account to the Canadian Dollar account it applies the current FX rate. When I do the OSU, the transaction that is a transfer out from my US Dollar account has a "Fees & Charges:Bank Fee" as a category and the corresponding deposit into the Canadian Dollar account has a "Other Income" category. The US Dollar account is still labeled as US$ (the indication next to the value), and I looked at the Account Currency on the Account Details screen and it says US Dollar, so the BMO OSU did not change that. Since this file was from 2023, the issue of "If you set up EWC/OSU for an account that had very infrequent transaction activity and more than 90 days passed without a single transaction in a given account" is also not a problem.

So I know that I can set up a US Dollar account in BMO that will use the FX rate when I manually enter a transaction.

The question now is what the heck is up with the categories?

But more over, how can I go back and change the Account Currency in the BMO US Dollar account in my real file?

Looking at the BMO US Dollar account in my Test File, I see that the Account Currency is US Dollars and is greyed out so I can't change it.

I then generated an offline US Dollar account called Test Checking. I moved all transactions from my BMO US Dollar account into the Test Checking account and I can now modify the Account Currency in the BMO US Dollar account.

Could I use the same strategy on my real file? Build a new offline US Dollar account, move all transactions from my BMO US$ Account over to the offline account, edit the BMO US$ account to make it off line, edit the new US$ Account to link it to my BMO US account?

Arctic Hare

Yes, that should work. The matter that has still not been determined is how the currency setting got changed. I'm not sure that I follow some of the details in your explanation above; for example, it is not clear whether you ran a OSU recently on the old file from 2023. You'd have to run OSU on that file to see whether OSU is switching the currency setting. BTW, it is possible to find the [CURDEF] field in the log files and determine this with certainty, but I haven't done that in quite some time and I'd have to do research to figure out where to look (e.g. which of the log files it is contained in).

The issue with the categories is that Quicken is not automatically recognizing the transactions as a transfer. Did you try changing the category of the From side of the transfer to the account for the To side of the transfer and does Quicken ask you if the existing downloaded transaction is match for the transfer?

Do you have the "automatically detect transfers" setting switched ON? Even if you do, it probably won't recognize a transfer where there is F/X involved - it expects to see the same $$ value on both sides of the transfer for auto-detect. It would likely help to manually enter these transfers BEFORE doing the OSU that downloads the transaction data.

BTW, there is no category data included in the data downloaded by OSU. Quicken has some ability to guess categories, but it is not surprising that it gets the transfer with F/X wrong.

TJTex

"The matter that has still not been determined is how the currency setting got changed." I set these accounts up back in 2022 and frankly don't remember if I even set up the US one correctly, so it may have been my fault that the Currency was set to Canadian$

"it is not clear whether you ran a OSU recently on the old file from 2023." Yes I ran an OSU on the old file. That is why I stated: "The US Dollar account is still labeled as US$ (the indication next to the value), and I looked at the Account Currency on the Account Details screen and it says US Dollar, so the BMO OSU did not change that. Since this file was from 2023, the issue of "If you set up EWC/OSU for an account that had very infrequent transaction activity and more than 90 days passed without a single transaction in a given account" is also not a problem."

I cannot find "CURDEF" in the log files both OFX and ConnLog. Actually there is no data in those files. All I get is:

"==== OSU Start (20250515/15:53:00) ====

==== OSU Start (20250515/15:54:17) ====

==== OSU End (20250515/15:54:22) ====

==== OSU End (20250515/15:54:26) ===="

"It would likely help to manually enter these transfers BEFORE doing the OSU that downloads the transaction data." That is exactly what I did. When I do the OSU, I get a set of transactions that are duplicates of the manual ones except with wrong categories.

So. What next?

TJTex

@Arctic Hare Well, after all this testing with the old file, my real file is screwed up completely. I switched back to my real file and did an OSU and all my accounts are screwed up. Wrong balances, wrong transactions. Now what do I do?

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20491251#Comment_20491251

How did you try to access the log files? Quicken encrypts the log files so the only way you can acctually see the log file content is to access them from Help —> Contact Support —> Log Files.

[CURDEF] can be found in the OFX Log *** IF *** accessed by the method noted above. Export the OFX Log as a text file, open in a text editor, use Find to locate the CURDEF, but make sure you are looking at the one for the correct account.

Arctic Hare

I highly recommend you contact Quicken's phone support. This problem is too complex to guide you through without being able to see the problem(s). I'll send you a private message with an additional suggestion.

Arctic Hare

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20491251#Comment_20491251

If you don't have automatically enter transactions into the register, you can always manually match the downloaded transactions to the already entered transactions. It sounds like you have a few settings that might need to be adjusted to make Quicken work well for your situation. For the record, I don't use the automatically enter transactions into the register feature and, if Quicken didn't recognize the match to the manually entered transfer in the downloaded transaction window, then I would manually make that match - I wouldn't end up with two sets of transactions.

TJTex

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20491262#Comment_20491262

@Arctic Hare Well, of course, it's the weekend and no support. However, I figured it out on my own. Lucky enough I always make a complete backup of my Quicken file before tinkering.

I loaded the backup I made before starting the tinkering. I Deactivated the Online Services on every linked account. I then went back and Setup Online Services on all those accounts. I am now back up and running with the data from the real live file I started with.

Now I can test out changing the BMO US Dollar account to US Funds.

You stated: "If you don't have automatically enter transactions into the register, you can always manually match the downloaded transactions to the already entered transactions." How do I turn that off? Is this the the feature I need to turn off?

If so, what option do I need?

Arctic Hare

I was referring to this global setting in preferences:

But, if you want to leave automatic entry ON for some accounts and switch it OFF only where it causes problems, then I would choose the last radio button, "No - Never automatically…" for the accounts where you want to have manual control. I've never liked the automatic entry for a couple reasons - but that is a matter of personal preference. My suggestion is to turn automatic add to banking registers globally in preferences, but if it works OK for you in most cases then you could manage it at an account level.