Pros and Cons of auto reconcile

Rod Christmas

I have been an on and off user of quicken for five years and am committed to truly learning the software for the first time.  I am having an issue with reconciling my checking account.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of auto reconcile.  I just did my first update for several months and there is a big (4k) gap between my cleared quicken balance and my online bank balance.  I am using Quicken 2018 for windows.

splasher

With auto-reconcile and auto-accept, you are relying on Quicken to be perfect, it isn't.  I believe it is an important part of using Quicken to individually accept every transaction and to reconcile against the monthly statement.

mshiggins

With auto-reconcile and auto-accept, you are relying on Quicken to be perfect, it isn't.  I believe it is an important part of using Quicken to individually accept every transaction and to reconcile against the monthly statement.

You are also relying on your bank to be perfect. Banks aren't perfect either.

Jerry_

Rod,  lately I find Quicken will sometimes show the reconciling window after I do an OSU on one of my checking accounts for seemingly no apparent reason at all to me in showing differences. In that case, if I help the process via the following steps, the next time I enter Quicken, and do an OSU, the account off-times will automatically reconcile flagging no differences. If you have employed this procedure, ignore this Post. (grin)

I know that this is not a "Pro"  or "Con"  of reconciling, but I wanted to add a step that I utilize in helping the Auto Reconciling Procedure maybe staying a "Pro" choice. I agree with

splasher and

mshiggins that Quicken nor your Bank are perfect, But here is what I do:

1. Go to your affected checking account, and temporarily add a Column by the name of Downloaded Posting Date.  - (Select the Gear Icon to the far right in the checking account header, select the Register Column menu entry, and checkmark the Downloaded Posting Date Entry).

2.If any of your transactions do show a Downloaded Posting Date. scroll over to your Ctr Column, and enter a "R" for reconciled. Update the transaction.

3. Utilize the steps in #1 to remove the Downloaded Posting Date column; if so desired.

If you have found downloaded posting dates, and have corrected the affected transactions by the above mentioned steps, future auto reconciliation should be no problem for the affected Account.

Rod Christmas

Thanks guys!   I am finding there are duplicate entries that wont match even though they are the same transaction.  I am not sure how this happened as I only enter transactions through downloads.  It seems alot of them maybe related to quicken bill pay.  Should I just delete one of them and see if the balances match?

Jerry_

Thanks guys!   I am finding there are duplicate entries that wont match even though they are the same transaction.  I am not sure how this happened as I only enter transactions through downloads.  It seems alot of them maybe related to quicken bill pay.  Should I just delete one of them and see if the balances match?

You might delete one of them to see if that does help solve the problem. BUT  I would advise making a Backup or Copy of your current Data File before doing any deletion.