Moving from the US to Canada; Quicken Windows not working correctly

Scott Shelley

Hi all,

I have been on the phone with US Quicken tech support at least a dozen times to solve this problem, and they cannot seem to get to the bottom of it.

We have lived in the USA for 30 years and have an extensive US Quicken file. We are soon moving to Canada, and as such, have opened some RBC Canadian accounts.

US Quicken is able to locate these accounts without any issue, and it can display the balances of my chequing and savings accounts correctly. The mortgage account, however, shows as paid off (I WISH!!) Furthermore, neither past nor current transactions are downloaded.

If I begin a new US Quicken file and DO NOT enable multi-currency mode, Quicken works as expected (but it incorrectly thinks these accounts are in USD).

Is there any way to make this work? Surely if Quicken is designed with multi-currency support built in, it should (checks notes) work when multi-currency support is enabled.

Thoughts? Will this be ameliorated if I switch to the Canadian version of Quicken??

Arctic Hare

What puzzles me is why Quicken support is trying to solve something that is working as intended. Use the USA version of Quicken with US banks and the Canadian version with Canadian banks. The Canadian version of Quicken should open your datafile from the USA version, so it should be possible to buy the Canadian version and proceed accordingly. However, there are several things that you need to keep in mind. Firstly, even if a bank has operations in both countries, that doesn't mean one version of Quicken works with both. Again, use the US version of Quicken with the US banks, including the US subsidiaries of the Canadian parent banks (e.g. RBC).

Also keep in mind that Canadian Quicken does not have EWC+ or Direct Connect. I recommend you use stone age Web Connect with the Canadian version of Quicken because EWC (non+) is not secure.

Additionally, I highly recommend not connecting a Quicken mortgage to an online mortgage account - at least not with Quicken Canada. Just manage the mortgage manually other than downloading (using Web Connect) the related bank account transactions (non-mortgage - only where the payments come FROM).

In summary, switch to the Canadian version of Quicken, but don't expect to be able to download from any accounts you have with US banks. Sorry, there is no Quicken solution for people with a foot in both countries. You are not alone in wishing there is.

Chris_QPW

The reason the US version is able to show RBC as a financial institution is because they have a presence in the US, so only in USD.

Note the idea to download for both countries has been around and even marked as planned for years, but has never happened for Quicken Windows:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7764306/merge-support-for-importing-data-from-us-and-ca-fis-banks-for-us-and-ca-versions-of-qwin-17-votes

I might add that Quicken Mac has had this since about 2010.

Frankly, I think Quicken Inc treats the Canadian version as second class citizens, and people that are in both would be third class.

Just so you know, if you do decide to switch to the Canadian version, make sure that you have the home currency set to the one you want going forward because the Canadian version doesn't allow changing it, only the US version can change it.