Foreign Currency Accounts - setting exchange rates

[Bobh]

I am new to Bank Genie and just starting to find my way around. I have down loaded my Quicken files which include one foreign currency account. If I run a report by categories which contains transaction from both £ accounts and from the foreign account the value of the foreign account transaction is not converted to pounds therefore the total spend on the category is incorrect. What do I need to do to correct this?. I have look for somewhere to set the exchange rate for the foreign currency account but can't find it anywhere.

[ideasguy]

Hi Bob

The Net Worth program has a currency conversation tool.
It allows you to calculate your Net Worth in any of the currencies that you have in your list of accounts.

The Transaction Analyser does not do currency calculations. In that program you must select accounts which are the same currency (by clicking the Selection screen tab and selecting accounts of the same currency.
Is that OK for you?

[Bobh]

OK, so I need to run two reports, do a manual conversion on the foreign currency total and add the two together. As I will not be having to do this to often I can live with this but this is definately not as good as Quickens

Regards the Net Worth program I have refreshed the currency rate but it keeps coming back with a rate of zero. The currency in question is CZK (Czech Republic).

[ideasguy]

Yes, we made that horror of horrors discovery when Barry and I did some testing behind the scenes, using the Net Worth currency conversation feature.
Google Finance (the source used for the Conversion by Bank Genie)  have changed that service without telling me
I will update that tomorrow.

It is impossible for the Transaction Analyser (or any competitors report) to produce an accurate report when accounts of multi currencies are selected for analysis.
The currency conversion figure is different for every day of the date range of the report.
To be accurate it would require a conversation rate for every transaction (e.g. in your CZK account.)
That's why I didn't provide it.
Net worth is different in that you are doing a calculation for a date in time, so its correct for the date you run the report.

I will look at an update to the Transaction Analyser if you feel it is necessary.

[barryl]

Quicken (at least in my version) does a translation per report into a specified currency based on STATIC values of the exchange rate (and in my version these rates are entered manually by the user). This gives an approximate conversion of course.  As George points out doing it "properly" is wellnigh impossible.

Doing it the Quicken way could go on the list for a future improvement but I don't think it is an urgently required change.

[ideasguy]

Thanks for that information Barry.
Yes, I will add it at some stage. My first priority is to get Investments finished - a number of customers are patiently waiting for this.

Ive now amended the Net Worth program to fix the Currency Conversion problem discussed above.
You can read why it failed and find out how to download the updated program in this new topic:-
http://www.flowergenie.co.uk/ideas/forum/index.php/topic,1916.0.html

[barryl]

and I am among the customers waiting for investment accounts