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Multi-Currency Support

david.vh

Multi-currency support has become essential for modern investing and personal finance, especially for Canadian users holding USD assets inside CAD accounts.

Currently, USD holdings inside CAD accounts are often treated as CAD-denominated assets, which can materially distort portfolio values, gains/losses, performance reporting, and asset allocation.

This affects far more than just foreign bank accounts. Examples include:

• CAD brokerage accounts holding USD stocks or ETFs
• Norbert’s Gambit workflows
• Interactive Brokers multi-currency balances
• Cross-border retirees and snowbirds
• Freelancers paid in foreign currencies
• USD dividends and interest tracking
• Foreign liabilities such as U.S. mortgages
• Travel and FX spending analysis

Ideally, Quicken would support:

• Per-account base currencies
• Automatic FX rate updates
• Historical exchange rates tied to transaction dates
• Dual local/home currency valuation
• FX gain/loss reporting
• True multi-currency cash balances within accounts

For many users, this is no longer a niche feature request — it is foundational for accurate financial tracking.

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Reviewed

Status: Reviewed

Comments

Chris_QPW

I'm a bit confused of what you are asking for since you have stated support for "Per-account base currencies" and "Interactive Brokers multi-currency balances" which sounds like you want more than one currency per account.

It is extremely unlikely that Quicken will ever support more than one currency in a given account because that would mean treating each currency as if it was like a security where the price can vary, instead of just a base cash amount.

Do note that there is already this idea too:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7321435/add-true-multi-currency-conversion-support-in-quicken-for-mac-317-legacy-merged-votes

david.vh

That’s really the core of what I’m asking for.

I want my Canadian brokerage accounts to reflect their true value when they contain USD-denominated securities and cash balances.

Right now, many Canadian investors hold U.S. stocks, ETFs, money market funds, and USD cash within CAD-based brokerage accounts. But Quicken Mac does not always properly reflect the FX impact on:

• Account value
• Portfolio performance
• Cash balances
• Dividend income
• Asset allocation

I’m not necessarily asking for full multi-currency accounting like Interactive Brokers internally uses.

What I am asking for is better FX-aware valuation and reporting, so that Canadian brokerage accounts containing U.S. holdings accurately reflect their real-world value in both USD and CAD terms.

NotACPA

@david.vh Even QWin doesn't support multi-currencies within a single account, of any type … and it's highly unlikely that they'll do so at any foreseeable point in the future.

So there's no reason to believe that your idea will ever be implemented.

But, then, @Chris_QPW has already told you that.

david.vh

Possibly unlikely, yes — but feature requests are usually about identifying gaps in real-world usage, not predicting Quicken’s development roadmap.

A lot of Canadian investors now hold USD securities and cash inside CAD brokerage accounts, so the underlying need is still legitimate even if the implementation is technically difficult.

Chris_QPW

You might be asking for the same thing that the idea I posted is asking for. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it because they terms can be confusing.

One might say you have a CAD brokerage account, but instead of meaning that it holds CAD securities, it holds USD securities, but you want it reported in CAD.

Currently I believe that is one of the big problems with Quicken Mac multiple currency support and why people are asking for "true multiple currency support".

I believe that in Quicken Mac if you have an account that is holding USD securities then Quicken Mac will only report its value in USD, right?

That isn't how multiple currency support works in Quicken Windows. In most reports all of the account values would be reported in the home currency or a currency that the user selected for that report no matter what the actual currency of the account is.

Note though that there is a major flaw in Quicken Windows US. It doesn't store the conversion rates over time. As such it does the conversions using the current conversion rate.

Quicken Windows Canadian has the best multiple support of any version of Quicken. It stores the daily conversion rates and as such gives a much better performance over time report. It has a few other things that make it better too and I don't remember off the top of my head because I don't use it, but they have been mentioned at times in the Quicken Windows Canadian thread. But Quicken Windows Canadian also has the worst support for downloading transactions.

The one thing that will probably never happen is the mixing of different currencies in a given account.

david.vh

I think my use case may actually be narrower than what people typically mean by “true multi-currency support.”

I’m not asking Quicken Mac to maintain separate CAD and USD cash ledgers within the same account.

My CAD brokerage accounts contain a mix of CAD and USD securities, with the account itself set to CAD. The issue is that Quicken Mac appears to treat the USD holdings as though they are already CAD-denominated when calculating the account value.

For example, if a CAD account contains $10,000 USD worth of securities, Quicken reports it as $10,000 CAD rather than converting it to the proper CAD-equivalent amount.

As more USD securities are mixed into the account, the discrepancy grows. In one account, the reported value is currently understated by roughly 14% because the USD holdings are not being currency-converted correctly.

From your description, it sounds like Quicken Windows at least handles reporting-currency conversion more appropriately, even if it still does not support true multi-currency ledgers within a single account.

Chris_QPW

Yes, it looks like we just got a bit mixed up on terms.

As it sits right now, I wouldn't even say Quicken Mac has multiple currency support. I would say it has "ignore currency support, with user selectable currency symbols" (with the minor exception that in its reports will separate out the currencies). There isn't any real support for the concept of an exchange rate.

You can really see this in another part of Quicken, the mobile/web. With Quicken Windows US it will only allow you to sync USD accounts to mobile/web. With Quicken Windows Canadian it will only allow you to sync CAD accounts to mobile/web. Why? Because it knows that account currency type and that currently mobile/web only allows for one currency (which is just implied, it actually just "the amounts"). Quicken Mac on the other hand doesn't really have any concept that a given account has a currency other than you can put a given currency symbol on the numbers. It has no problem with syncing any account to mobile/web where you then have a mix of say CAD and USD numbers where you can tell which is which. It will happily add $10,000 CAD with $10,000 USD and call it $20,000.

The idea I pointed out covers these and is marked as planned, hopefully they will get it done.