A feature idea for multiple currency budgets... (5 Legacy Votes)
TravelingRae
Member ✭✭
Idea: It would be great to have a column where you can enter amounts in a different currency from your budget's currency and which can be manipulable for additions and reports without actually affecting the budget.
I budget in CAD, but I earn income in USD and spend mostly MXN. I also travel a lot so I have had years where I've had up to nine or ten currencies to contend with. I convert all my amounts to CAD at the exchange rate the currency was purchased or the currency rate of the day. I then put the actual amount in the local currency as a note. To see what I've spent for, say, food locally in that currency, I then have to do a search for the right transactions and manually tally up the amounts in my notes. If I had that additional column, I could put in, say, Food / 3(CAD) / 47(MXN) and at the end of the month, my budget would reflect that I spent 150CAD on food, but I could also easily pull up that I spent 2,400MXN on my taco habit so that I know that next month, I should try to limit myself to a 2,000MXN food budget, regardless of how the exchange rate goes.
Since I've now moved to Mexico permanently, being able to accurately report on spending in the local currency is important because it helps me track inflation and budget in MXN more accurately -- eg. I spent 3,000MXN on propane last year and 4,000MXN this year. So propane has gone up, even though when I convert to CAD, I might have actually had a decrease in that expenditure. If I don't track local prices, I could be in for a shock should the exchange rate swing in the other direction the next year.
I still have too much going on in Canada to move to a MXN budget and having multiple budgets for each category would be way too complicated.
Could anyone else see a benefit to such a feature?
I budget in CAD, but I earn income in USD and spend mostly MXN. I also travel a lot so I have had years where I've had up to nine or ten currencies to contend with. I convert all my amounts to CAD at the exchange rate the currency was purchased or the currency rate of the day. I then put the actual amount in the local currency as a note. To see what I've spent for, say, food locally in that currency, I then have to do a search for the right transactions and manually tally up the amounts in my notes. If I had that additional column, I could put in, say, Food / 3(CAD) / 47(MXN) and at the end of the month, my budget would reflect that I spent 150CAD on food, but I could also easily pull up that I spent 2,400MXN on my taco habit so that I know that next month, I should try to limit myself to a 2,000MXN food budget, regardless of how the exchange rate goes.
Since I've now moved to Mexico permanently, being able to accurately report on spending in the local currency is important because it helps me track inflation and budget in MXN more accurately -- eg. I spent 3,000MXN on propane last year and 4,000MXN this year. So propane has gone up, even though when I convert to CAD, I might have actually had a decrease in that expenditure. If I don't track local prices, I could be in for a shock should the exchange rate swing in the other direction the next year.
I still have too much going on in Canada to move to a MXN budget and having multiple budgets for each category would be way too complicated.
Could anyone else see a benefit to such a feature?
Tagged:
3
Comments
Multiple currencies!
99% of my currency conversions happen between my PayPal and bank accounts and the delay between the money leaving PayPal and entering my bank account used to cause me such a headache. Being able to have different dates on the two sides of the transaction is a game-changer.
I still wish that there was a column called "original amount" where I could not only enter the non-converted amount but also pick its currency and a column where I could note the exchange rate. I have that info in the notes, but it's not easily manipulable. It would also be nice if Quicken could do the math between those two columns and fill in the amount column.
I think Quicken is going to stick. 15 years on a Mac and I've never lasted more than a year or two on a personal finance app before data entry got too unwieldy. The current version of multiple currency support has cut down on hours of bookkeeping each month and makes the process much more transparent. Again, great job, and thank you so much for listen to your users!
Currency exchanges change from hour to hour, so I get the complexity. Why not allow a fixed exchange rate for each month (or year if necessary?). Having a rough estimate of how I'm doing on a budget is better than not having any estimate at all.
(side note: the mobile app does the opposite and list all transactions without respecting they are from different currencies and does a simple addition)
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your idea, although I apologize that this feature isn't currently offered.
I have moved your post to the ongoing Idea thread to add the ability to include other currencies in the budget.
Be sure to navigate to the top of this post and click the up arrow to add your vote!
Ideas are reviewed by our development team to see what people would like to be available in the future.
Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community!
The post by Alkahily was a separate post and was moved to this current post that you have commented on.
If you haven't already, please be sure to navigate to the top of the thread to add your vote!
I hope this clarifies!
-Quicken Tyka