I currently use Quicken 98 Deluxe to keep track of my income and outlays; it's more powerful than I need, but that's better than the opposite. But soon I will need a way to track matters in Canadian currency as well as US, and Quicken doesn't seem to have a way to do this. (The PC version does, I think, but not the Mac; the Mac version only has a clunky-looking workaround in which you treat foreign currency as shares of a virtual mutual fund.) Can anyone recommend a good program that will let me keep records in two currencies, convert funds from one to the other, and record income and outlay in both?
Shoshanna:
But soon I will need a way to track matters in Canadian currency as well as
US
It might be simplest to keep two separate files, one for US transactions, the other for Canadian transactions. Currency fluctuations will make combining them into the one file very difficult. Alternatively, set up an account for currency transfers and track everything in US currency. But this probably won't help the Taxman of either country.
My "system" (such as it is) provides for a invoice amounts shown
in Canadian dollars and separate columns for U.S. dollar amounts received.
The difference on the date the U.S. cheque is converted to "loonies"
goes to an account for "gains/losses on currency conversions". I
wouldn't bother separating the invoices by country unless I were keeping the
U.S. money in a US$ account --which I don't since I don't get much of it.
I asked if anyone could recommend a way to track income and outlay in two
currencies (not necessarily with Quicken; I'm perfectly willing to switch
accounting software for the right solution). Matthew Stevens and Erika Buky
both suggest just keeping separate Quicken files for C$ and US$ -- but wouldn't
that foul up any kind of calculation that involved them both? I mean, if I'm
trying to find out how much I've spent on restaurant meals in the last month,
and I bought some of them in the US and some in Canada, then just adding the
C$ and US$ as if they were the same currency is going to give me an awfully
inflated (if I assume they're both US numbers) or understated (if I assume
they're both Canadian) total. I'd rather have the answer presented as $XX
(US) + $YY (Can.), with maybe the option of adding them up in either currency
at a specified exchange rate, or (if I've entered that data) at the exchange
rates in place at the times of the various purchases. Is that an unreasonable
expectation?
Hm. I suppose I could set up separate categories for, say, "restaurant meals (US$)" and "restaurant meals (C$)." But that would mean duplicating a whole lot of categories, when conceptually it's not the category of expense that's changing, is it? I'm pretty clueless about accounting, and frankly I'm hoping for something that will do the thinking for me . . . Maybe I should set up different accounts for C$ and US$; would that work? (Is that what you guys mean by "different files"?) But then net worth calculations would be all wrong, because you can't just add US$ and C$ as if they meant the same thing. Ick. I do expect to maintain accounts in both US$ and C$ (and possibly in both the US and Canada).
Judyth, I don't quite understand your system, but it sounds pretty much like what I do now: I pay for everything I can in Canada using my (US) credit card; I provisionally enter the expenditure as if it were in US$, and when the bill comes in I alter the number to whatever it equalled in actual $US. Purchases of Canadian cash just get entered as miscellaneous purchases, and I don't bother keeping track of what I spend the Canadian cash on; since I don't spend much Canadian cash and I have no Canadian income so far, this doesn't throw off my record-keeping much -- yet. But things are going to get exponentially more complicated in a few months (not that that's a *bad* thing!).
I know that the PC version of Quicken has an option to "enable multiple-currency support," 'cause I saw it on my Dad's system (I don't know what version of Quicken he has). I'm hoping that some Mac program has the same capability built in, without the need for user kludges.
Still pathetically accepting suggestions and advice . . .