Multi-currency

To avoid confusing your accountant next time, with a resulting waste of his and your time and extra fees, you should REALLY discuss this with your accountant.

Exactly how you do it will depend on whether or not you are using a multi-currency edition of QB (and have enabled that feature), and whether or not you use a USD$ bank account. Presumably your accountant already knows these facts, but no-one here knows yet - one more reason to ask your accountant.

We have the multi-currency edition of QB2006 Pro and have enabled it. We have a USD bank account. Our accountant has entered incorrect info elsewhere in our balance sheet, so I'd like to get some answers from other people before proceeding. At least when I next ask him a question, I'll know what to ask.

Next question for you: Is there a reason to keep separate track of the amounts owed to/from your shareholder in the 2 currencies? Or, is it acceptable to apply the payment in one currency against the amount owed in the other currency? Separate accounts may be necessary if interest is applicable on the balances at different rates, for example, or possibly for other reasons known only to you and your accountant and your shareholder.

No, there's no reason to keep track of the Due to Shareholder in separate currencies. What happened is that we gave our financial advisor a check to deposit in our corporate investment account. Instead, it went into our personal. The accountant should have picked this up at tax time - but didn't. We only discovered it when we went to start entering our new fiscal year into QB. (The balance sheet looked odd.) Now, we have these extra line items in the Long Term Liabilities.

I know that we have to report in our home currency for tax reporting and that is the likely reason he had to do a conversion and have the extra line item. Once year end is done, though, I imagine that the numbers can be consolidated, since they're in one currency.

Am I thinking in the right direction?

1. The only reason to have separate "Due To Shareholder" accounts for different currencies is - a need to track different currency balances. You apparently don't think this is necessary; I have no basis on which to agree or disagree.

1. An exchange valuation account (Due To Shareholder Exch) is a common method of tracking a balance in a foreign currency (Due To Shareholder USD) while simultaneously (or periodically) recording the home-currency equivalent balance. QB, with multi-currency enabled, does not require this extra account for bank, A/R or A/P accounts, though it is still required with other account types. Again, you apparently don't think you need to track the balance in USD; again, I have no basis on which to agree or disagree.

2. Given the above, there appears to be no need for the Due To Shareholder USD and Due To Shareholder Exch accounts. Accordingly you could transfer the balances from these accounts to your Due To Shareholder CAD account by Journal Entry, make those 2 accounts inactive, and rename the active account simply "Due To Shareholder" (or merge the 2 accounts into the third).

1. Given the above, the correct way to record the USD0 deposit into your USD$ bank would have been a simple Deposit transaction of USD0 debiting the Due To Shareholder account at an exchange rate of 1.10.

You should discuss this with your accountant. It appears that he is not familiar with the QB multi-currency feature.

If you continue to have so many problems with your accountant (incorrect entries, unnecessary accounts, inability to obtain meaningful answers to your questions, lack of trust, lack of confidence) you should consider making a change. There are many accountants in Toronto, some of them quite competent. Of course you may have good reasons to continue the relationship despite the problems. Is he your cousin or brother-in-law?

My wife and I have decided that the accountant's performance is unsatisfactory (understatement). We'll be looking to make a move before the fiscal year end. One good thing about going to QB (his recommendation, BTW) was that it highlighted all the errors this guy made, together with his lack of knowledge of QB. Needless to say, when we interview for our next accountant, we'll be asking about his/her familiarity with QB, as well as multi-currency issues.

I do not agree that your choice in accountants should be based on their knowledge of QB. As a CPA and an accounting software consultant I have many clients that use my services just for the software issues and not their accounting. I also have accounting clients that use other software consultants for their software issues.There are too many different software programs on the market today for an accountant to be an expert in all of them.

It isn't just the QB issue. They're consistently late and make too-frequent errors. Then they have the nerve to up their rates. We've had bad luck trying to find competent accountants. We'll just add this one to our list of poor performers.

Nevertheless, Allan is correct that familiarity with QB need not be a significant criterion for selecting a new accountant - so long as you have access to another source of QB support. Like Allan, I provide QB support but not accounting services to some clients, and accounting/tax or other business services but not software support to other clients. In fact it's a great marketing strategy - to offer to support an existing satisfactory relationship by assisting in one area without threatening the relationship in other areas. It may be convenient to have a competent accountant who's also familiar with QB, but it's not necessary.

Thanx, I'll take that into consideration. Would you know of any QB gurus in the Toronto area?

Why should I recommend a competitor? You can browse all the "authorized QB Pro Advisors" in your area at

Kewl! Thanx.