FAQ: Why Reconciliation opening balance has changed and no longer agrees

smayer97

Currently, the Prior Balance is a calculated number, the sum of all Reconciled transactions in your account register. Often times the lack of successful reconciliation because of this can be due any one of the following reasons (which can be due to user error or a bug in Quicken). These reasons include:

• changed Reconcile status
• changed amount
• transaction was deleted
  
• using Validate & Repair (QWin only) could delete a damaged transaction
  
• a transaction was copied/duplicated that was already reconciled and so copied the reconciled status too
  
• in the case of transfer transactions, the matching transfer-to transaction was changed or deleted in the other account register, or the transaction was re-categorized as no longer a transfer but as a categorized Income or Expense
• if you Sync to the Quicken Cloud for Quicken Mobile or Quicken Web, the Sync process changed something or you made changes to an existing transaction on the web / phone app

Either way, you need to figure out what changed and fix it as needed. The first one is the easiest to try to tackle. One quick troubleshooting step is to sort the register by the CLR field (if that columns is not visible, change your Column settings in the register) (you want the small triangle to the right of CLR to point down so all of the transactions marked as Reconciled will be grouped at the top) so the running balance of the last Reconciled transaction should be the same as the Prior Balance.  

Now either scroll to the bottom of the register to see all the unreconciled transactions (OR click the CLR column again to to show them at the top). Look for any older transactions that may have lost their flag. If you find any, you can easily reset the flag either way:

• In QMac, Option-Click on CLR field of a single transaction to cycle through the Blank, Cleared and Reconciled flags
• In QWin, click on the Clr Field, and then click on the desired status (Uncleared, Cleared, or Reconciled)
• In both QMac and QWin, select one or more transactions, then right-click and select to change the reconcile status

For any of the other reasons, you will have to figure it out by brute force, that is, compare transactions with previous records, such as, statements or online info.  You might make note of the difference between your expected prior balance and the reported prior balance to see if that difference matches any particular single transaction amount.  

If not successful, read these FAQs to see if it helps: Quicken Mac v3.5+ (QM2016+) Reconcile Troubleshooting or How Reconciling Works in Quicken for Windows.

Meanwhile, there is a feature in QMac 2007 that has not been re-implemented in "modern" QMac that would make this task far easier, reducing it to minutes or even seconds, vs hours or days. You can add your VOTE to Track/store Prior Reconciled Statements/periods.

(With Quicken working towards feature parity between QMac and QWin, if this is implemented in QMac, it would seem logical that they would seek to implement this in QWin too.)

First, click on the underlined link above to go there, then click the little grey triangle under the VOTE count at the top of page 1 in the blue banner, so your vote will count for THIS feature and increase its visibility to the developers by seeking to have the features you need or desire end up in the latest version (it may take a moment for your vote to register).

(If the triangle is solid black, your vote has been registered.)

Your VOTE matters!