quicken does not balance with my checking account.

emeraldgran

How do I make my checking account balance with my online quicken? I am new to quicken and when I connected to my bank it went back 3 years to when my account was opened... 

Bob_L

Try hitting CTL R which will launch a reconciliation.  Then select Mark all and it will show how  much your are off.  Hit done and let it create an adjustment.  Then you can either stay with that adjustment there or seeing what it is, write it down.  Then delete it, and scroll up to the opening balance transaction and change the opening balance higher or lower by the amount of the adjustment.

Bob_L

EDIT Since you just started, I assumed that mark all would be appropriate.  If you have entered any manual transactions that the bank of course would not have downloaded, you would not mark those as cleared.

lopat08865

Hopefully someone more experienced will chime in to help, but I'll give you what I've got.

You say you're new to Quicken. So I assume you have a new checking account set up in quicken. And that you've successfully set it up to download transactions for that account from the bank. Seems like "so far so good."

It seems to me that you're really just trying to migrate a paper based checkbook system to a quicken based one? So your quicken register for that account follows the same rules as a paper based one. So if you want it to "balance" you have decide what you want to do with those 3 years of transactions.

Are they important to you? You want to keep them in your quicken register? Fine. Keep them. But just like with a paper based register, the only REAL important thing is matching YOUR balance with the BANK'S balance. Sounds like you just need to enter an adjustment transaction that gets the balances to agree, right?

So just like with a paper based register, figure out what that adjustment is, and enter it in quicken. Get that right & you'll not get overdrawn.

Hope this helps. Good luck, & know that there are many longtime, highly experienced quicken users here that are very helpful. I'm not one of them (I'm longtime user but not at all as knowledgeable as most; it just seems like you're new to the program, just set it up, and simply just want it to track your checking account).

Bob_L

Try hitting CTL R which will launch a reconciliation.  Then select Mark all and it will show how  much your are off.  Hit done and let it create an adjustment.  Then you can either stay with that adjustment there or seeing what it is, write it down.  Then delete it, and scroll up to the opening balance transaction and change the opening balance higher or lower by the amount of the adjustment.

Bob_L

EDIT Since you just started, I assumed that mark all would be appropriate.  If you have entered any manual transactions that the bank of course would not have downloaded, you would not mark those as cleared.