Why does account balance calculation not work?

Pablog

I have one credit card account that is mis-calculating the actual balance. It adds the payments made in my checking account (done as transfers) to the outstanding balance as a charge instead of deducting them as a credit. I have several credit card accounts but only one of them does this miscalculation./ How can I fix it?

UKR

• Is the account register correctly sorted by Date?
  Click the column header "Date" to sort the register. Click it again to toggle the sort order from ascending to descending and back.
• Is the Opening Balance in the account register correct?
  Make sure that the "Opening Balance" transaction in your register
  - always is the oldest transaction by Date
  - its amount matches the bank statement balance shown on that day
  - the transaction is marked "R"(reconciled)
  - occurs only once in your register
  - is a negative amount if you owe money to the credit card company
  

jacobs

In your credit card account, are all your charges negative numbers and your payment from checking a positive number? If not, something is being entered wrong.

Pablog

OK, to UKR and jacobs: My opening balance dated 11/29/1994 is -$2458.82, then I paid in full on 12/15/1994 and the balance is $0. As you may discern, I've been at this a looong time, I've updated through many versions of Q and upgraded from an old Mac Performa to the latest desktop running OS Catalina version 10.15.5, and this is the first time I've seen this bug in Quicken. Yes my charges are all negative numbers and payments recorded and transferred from checking are all positive. As I said earlier my other credit card accounts still are working fine and I enter my transactions manually and the same way I have been doing it since 1994. So, stop asking obvious questions and drill down to what's causing the bug. I can't wait to see your next answer.

jacobs

Pablog said:

So, stop asking obvious questions and drill down to what's causing the bug. I can't wait to see your next answer.

I'm a fellow Quicken user, just like you, trying to help you figure out what's going on. If you're going to be nasty about not liking the questions I've asked to try to understand your situation, I'm happy to bow out.

UKR

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words …
Can you please capture one or more images of the parts of your Quicken window showing the issue, sensitive information blacked out as necessary to protect your privacy but annotated to describe the situation, and attach the image(s) here?
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac

Please save it to a file of file type PNG, JPG, or GIF only. They're easier to work with than PDF files.

Pablog

I guess I sounded a little testy or condescending to you guys in my first reply. I was frustrated since I've been trying to solve this, search the communities for similar problems and not finding any solutions.
Following UKRs suggestion here are some screen shots. The first two are consecutive pages of my Visa account. showing charges and payments. Note how the balance seems to be doing reverse calculations, adding charges and deducting payments. If I trach back in the account I find this was not always the case, but at some point it changed. Here are those screens:





Here is a screen shot of my checking account, showing recent transactions where I made payments to the Credit Card company:

volvogirl

OK, I see on 4/23 you made a big payment $1,482.14 which caused you to be running a credit balance. You paid more than the balance showing in the Visa account.  Are you missing charges?

So new charges are reducing the credit balance and new payments will increase the balance.

NotACPA

@Pablog Your balance, in a credit card account, should be a NEGATIVE number ... yet your 2 Visa graphics are showing the balance as Positive numbers.

A negative number, in a credit card account is the amount that you OWE on the card ... while a positive number means either that you've over paid, or that you're missing multiple charges in the account.

volvogirl

And see the balance was in Red?  Then on 4/23 it changed to Black. 

The credit card balance you OWE should be in RED. If the balance is Black then it's showing the credit card company owes you and you have a credit balance. And then when you make a payment it's like the cc owes you more. So you need to go back though your entries and find where the balance switched to black to being in your favor which it did on 4/23.

See this for more info.....

https://www.quicken.com/support/positive-black-balance-credit-card-account

Pablog

To jacobs, UKR, volvogirl, and notACPA: I have studied this again through all transactions going back to 1993, in both my Visa account and several different checking accounts, looking for something askew. I did find the first VISA transaction that made the balance go "black", creating a credit of $450. It was a payment to the CCCompany, I have not yet dug out statements going that far back to verify the transaction is correct, but it seems to be. I did some modifications to make that balance $0, but that did not fix similar balance errors in future dates. I think you did nail the problem - there are charges missing from my register. Something new I did learn this morning: if you delete (hide) a Payee because you no longer use them it deletes any transaction made to them, from any existing register, no matter how old. Being the fastidious person I am, I can see myself doing this. I went thru my list of payees and "unhid" any so marked, but it made no difference. So it must be something else. I soothe my frustration, I when I do my next reconcile I am going to allow an adjustment to the balance so it will be correct. If and when I find the true culprit and fix it, I will delete the adjustment. Thank you all for your time. If you have any other suggestions please send them.

jacobs

@Pablog  You cannot delete a Payee that has transactions. If you're in the Payees window and click on a Payee name, then click the minus sign icon, Quicken will change the Payee to Hidden, bout not delete it. If you click on the minus sign icon and the account is already Hidden, you get a dialog box telling you you cannot delete the Payee because there are transactions using this Payee: 


This is purposeful, to prevent people from accidentally wrecking the account balances going back years or decades. So I'm not sure what made you say you deleted Payees? 

Also note that marking a Payee as Hidden does not remove its transactions from a register, but only removes it from showing up in drop-down menus when you create transactions. 

I'd suggest you take out your latest statement, or maybe two statements ago. Enter an adjustment dated the statement ending day to make the balance equal what's on your statement. Then compare transactions going forward to see if every transaction on the statement is a transaction in Quicken.