Since around April 2019, my checking account has failed to reconcile.

crowleyd102

There's a difference between the opening balance, shown in the first reconcile window, and the opening balance shown on the bank's printed statement. I do NOT synchronize this account online with the bank. All my entries are manual. I discovered that Quicken "un-reconciles" previously reconciled transactions and that these particular transactions had been mislabeled (by me) as "print" when they should have been "debit." I mirror all my checking transactions in Excel, so I know that my figures are accurate. All other accounts with this bank: savings and credit card, do not show this problem. There's a bit more detail, but I'll hold that for replies. My Quicken version is 2020 R26.23 Build 27.1.26.23

Frankx

Hi again @crowleyd102,

First, let me say that I am impressed with your 56 year track record of successful reconciliations, as well as the fact that your keeping up to date a spreadsheet for 34 years.

As far as your problem goes, I have tried to recreate what you are doing and as a result, I have concluded the following:

1) After you complete the reconciliation process in Quicken, which includes accepting Quicken's suggested "adjustment transaction," if you "then delete the adjustment transaction" - the result is that you effectively put the Quicken bank account out of balance by that adjustment amount.

2) Also, if, as you indicate above, the amount of the "adjustment transaction" changes with each succeeding month, that indicates that there are additional discrepancies between the Quicken data and your manual data.

3) I have been unable to replicate the behavior described in your point #3) above in my test file - namely having the prior cleared transactions "now show a blank" in the cleared column.  This, plus the fact that each month the differences between Quicken and your manual records seem to change, could suggest that perhaps your data file is corrupted. 

To move this forward, I would suggest that you consider performing some troubleshooting of your data file - per this link :   https://www.quicken.com/support/advanced-data-file-troubleshooting-correct-problems-quicken-windows.  However, be sure to backup your Quicken file before you go through the steps in the link.

As an alternative, you could also contact Quicken Support via this link https://www.quicken.com/support#windows

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful to you.  Good luck!

Frankx 

Chris_QPW

I have seen reports on here where people talk about reconcile problems and Quicken "un-reconciling" transactions, and it has always "bothered me".

Here is why.  If I take a register that is reconciled and then I go in and change a reconciled transaction to "blank/uncleared", and then start a reconcile here is what I see.

Before the I change anything:

After:

Now bring up reconcile.

Notice that I certainly can easy reconcile this by just selecting the transaction that had its cleared status changed.

So a change in "status" shouldn't have made the reconcile fail (and yes if you have to do an balance adjustment, it failed.)

There is only two possible ways that a reconcile can fail.

One is that one or more amounts in the transactions get changed (that could be the amount change up or down, or goes to zero {transaction deleted or added})

The other Cleared Balance above is calculated by Quicken wrong somehow.

So my bet on this would be that the changing of the cleared state on some transactions is only one of the symptoms of some kind of corruption.  And if one was to go back and check all the transaction they would find altered transactions.

Note I have also seen cases where Quicken's calculating of the balances is wrong.

Here is an example (one that has griped me for years).  But other problems have been reported that "can't be explained".

Start:

Now above I can select the 2,300, but I still can't reconcile.  Did you catch what I changed?

I put in a reconcile transaction for 1234.00 in the future, and past the date I put in for the reconcile.  Quicken will include all reconciled transactions in its cleared balance even if the reconciled transaction date is past the one entered for the reconcile.  It won't include any transaction that is in the cleared or uncleared state.

Frankx

Hi @crowleyd102,

From what you've said above, I understand that all entries in this particular Quicken checking account (at least since the account hasn't reconciled) have been made manually and nothing has been downloaded to this account.  I also understand that there were some transactions incorrectly entered in Quicken to be printed and that they may be part of the problem.

My questions:
1) Has the difference in the account always remained the same from month-to-month, or does it change?
2) Is the balance according to your Excel spreadsheet (which you say is correct) higher or lower than the balance in Quicken?
3) What do you mean by "Quicken "un-reconciles previously reconciled transactions"? Please tell us what happens in Quicken.

Thanks.

Frankx

crowleyd102

1) the difference changes month to month
2) I click "done" at the end of the reconciliation process, and Quicken prompts me to enter an adjustment in the amount by which balance is off. I do this and then delete the adjustment transaction to bring the account into agreement with the spreadsheet and manual entries in my checkbook register. I don't remember the direction of the difference.
3) When I check the account before reconciling I find that the transactions reconciled the previous month now show a blank in the cleared column. In particular, these transactions are mostly for debit transactions for our local supermarket - Schnucks. Note: Before this weird Quicken behavior started I had successfully balanced my checking account each month for the past 56 years, and tracked the account in spreadsheets for the past 34 years.

Frankx

Hi again @crowleyd102,

First, let me say that I am impressed with your 56 year track record of successful reconciliations, as well as the fact that your keeping up to date a spreadsheet for 34 years.

As far as your problem goes, I have tried to recreate what you are doing and as a result, I have concluded the following:

1) After you complete the reconciliation process in Quicken, which includes accepting Quicken's suggested "adjustment transaction," if you "then delete the adjustment transaction" - the result is that you effectively put the Quicken bank account out of balance by that adjustment amount.

2) Also, if, as you indicate above, the amount of the "adjustment transaction" changes with each succeeding month, that indicates that there are additional discrepancies between the Quicken data and your manual data.

3) I have been unable to replicate the behavior described in your point #3) above in my test file - namely having the prior cleared transactions "now show a blank" in the cleared column.  This, plus the fact that each month the differences between Quicken and your manual records seem to change, could suggest that perhaps your data file is corrupted. 

To move this forward, I would suggest that you consider performing some troubleshooting of your data file - per this link :   https://www.quicken.com/support/advanced-data-file-troubleshooting-correct-problems-quicken-windows.  However, be sure to backup your Quicken file before you go through the steps in the link.

As an alternative, you could also contact Quicken Support via this link https://www.quicken.com/support#windows

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful to you.  Good luck!

Frankx 

GeoffG

Of all the "features" available in Quicken, "Accept balance adjustment" is one I detest. Sadly, doing any type of balance adjustment is not reconciling an account, it forcing a balance. An actual reconciliation does not need any type of adjustment. It is strictly debits and credits. Sometime too many of one or too few of another. The key is to find what is missing or doubled, or entered incorrectly.

Your issue goes back as far as when you accepted the first balance adjustment. The only way to resolve this is to either go back to that day (most unlikely) or start as of 01/01/2020 with an opening balance correction that allows you to reconcile January of this year going forward without any further adjustments.

crowleyd102

Thank you both for your great suggestions, which I will follow up with. I will do some more trouble shooting on my own before contacting Quicken support. BTW, others have reported this problem too as a Google search will show. Also, the Quicken reconciliation process worked fine for me for 25 years until April 2919.

Chris_QPW

I have seen reports on here where people talk about reconcile problems and Quicken "un-reconciling" transactions, and it has always "bothered me".

Here is why.  If I take a register that is reconciled and then I go in and change a reconciled transaction to "blank/uncleared", and then start a reconcile here is what I see.

Before the I change anything:

After:

Now bring up reconcile.

Notice that I certainly can easy reconcile this by just selecting the transaction that had its cleared status changed.

So a change in "status" shouldn't have made the reconcile fail (and yes if you have to do an balance adjustment, it failed.)

There is only two possible ways that a reconcile can fail.

One is that one or more amounts in the transactions get changed (that could be the amount change up or down, or goes to zero {transaction deleted or added})

The other Cleared Balance above is calculated by Quicken wrong somehow.

So my bet on this would be that the changing of the cleared state on some transactions is only one of the symptoms of some kind of corruption.  And if one was to go back and check all the transaction they would find altered transactions.

Note I have also seen cases where Quicken's calculating of the balances is wrong.

Here is an example (one that has griped me for years).  But other problems have been reported that "can't be explained".

Start:

Now above I can select the 2,300, but I still can't reconcile.  Did you catch what I changed?

I put in a reconcile transaction for 1234.00 in the future, and past the date I put in for the reconcile.  Quicken will include all reconciled transactions in its cleared balance even if the reconciled transaction date is past the one entered for the reconcile.  It won't include any transaction that is in the cleared or uncleared state.

Chris_QPW

BTW if you are a gluten for punishment the way I would track down what "changed".  Since there is no way of knowing where the problem is (if Quicken is randomly changing transactions) you have to reconcile the whole account in "parts".

First starting with setting all of the transactions to unreconciled.

If I totally didn't know where to start I would split the register in half and reconcile the first part.  If that doesn't reconcile you know at least one problem is in that first part.  You start over, and this time just split that half of the register in half.  And of course if the first half of the register reconciles you split the remaining register in half again and repeat.  Oh and you should backup between these steps so that you can reverse what "half" you are working on given it fails.

If you suspect that the problem is on a date your April 1.  You can try reconciling the whole register up to that point for the first go at it.  But of course if that fails you are going to have a big search on your hands an dividing in halves makes it go much faster.

Of course one of the requirements for doing all of this is statement records (or in your case the spreadsheet) to know what you are going to be reconciling against in the past.