Quicken ending reconcile balance does not match statement

ealvin45

I reconcile every month and was shocked to find a 2K difference. Am I correct in believing that this has to be MY error? If so, should I undo the previous month(s) reconcile(s) by unchecking the monthly debits & credits month-by-month, until I resolve the issue,? Or is there an easier way?

Thanks for your help.

Frankx

ealvin45 said:

BTW, I'm going to start keeping saved PDF files of each month's reconciliation. Can you tell me how to do that?

Hi again @ealvin45
@ealvin45

Well that sounds very encouraging.  Regarding your question (above) here's how to save an account reconciliation:

When you finish a reconciliation, you'll get a pop-up window that asks "Would you like to create a reconciliation report?" - Click on the "Yes" button.  That will take you to this screen:


You should type in the whatever description you want and click on the "All transactions" button; then click "OK".  That will then open up the following screen:


Here you should select the Quicken PDF printer (or any other PDF file printer you might have) and then hit the print button.  It will then ask you where you want to save the PDF file, and then just save the file.  I suggest that you do this after every reconciliation and keep them for a reasonable time frame.

Let me know if you have any followups on this AND keep me advised of your overall progress because I want to know when its time to pop the champagne cork!

Frankx

Quicken Francisco

Hello @ealvin45

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. Generally if this is your first time experiencing a reconciliation difference it'll be in a more recent time frame. It sounds like it happened in the last month so I would start at the beginning of the month and just cross check to make sure that date matches between your date in Quicken. If it doesn't you can keep doing this going month by month. Once it does match you'll know that anything before that is correct with what your bank has. 

Just as another note in case you do have troubles do you download transactions into Quicken? If so I would also double check to make sure there's not a duplicate transaction.  Here's also another article that goes into more detail about reconciling accounts. You'll see troubleshooting down at the bottom of the page.

https://www.quicken.com/support/reconciling-account-quicken-windows

If you have any other questions please let us know!

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

NotACPA

ALSO, If this is your first reconciliation of the account, double-check what you input as the "Starting Balance".  That can be tricky to calculate except on very inactive accounts.

ealvin45

Thanks for your response. I'm a Q user for a long time but never had a discrepancy like this. I don't download from my bank, I add them manually.

If I understand you correctly, you suggest starting with the first transaction of the month and making sure the amount matches for all. Is that correct?

As mentioned in my post, "should I undo the previous month(s) reconcile(s) by unchecking the monthly debits & credits month-by-month, until I resolve the issue,?" It seems that the advantage of doing it that way would be having "clean" zero balance at the end of each month (if done correctly). Would I have the save confidence just checking individual transactions until a find the discrepancy?

BTW, I should know this but let me ask. What does it mean as far as where the error is when my bank statement balance is larger than my Q shows? Could that info lead me in a certain direction?

Your help is really appreciated.

Frankx

Hi @ealvin45,

If you reconciled the prior month and had no differences, then the problem should be in transactions that occurred and/or were recorded after the date of that prior month reconciliation.

And - if your actual bank statement balance is larger than the ending balance in Quicken, that usually means one of three things:

1) You have missed bank deposits, or transfers into the account, totaling approximately $2,000.00;
2) You have entered duplicate checks, duplicate withdrawals, duplicate transfers out of the account and/or other payments/deductions from the account totaling approximately $2,000.00;
3) You have some combination of  1) and 2).

Get back to me with any followup questions.

Frankx

NotACPA

@ealvin45

When I suggested looking at the Opening Balance, I was under the mistaken opinion that this was your first reconciliation of the account.  Please ignore that advice.

Instead (a variation of @Frankx's comment) please:

1) Take a backup of your file (just in case)

2) pull out your old bank statements and work backwards in time until you identify the point where the bank statement and Q agree.

3) UNreconcile everything after that point by selecting the NEXT transaction, hold down the Shift Key and then click on the LAST reconciled transaction

4) Right click on any transaction that you just selection, Click on "Reconcile Status" and then select "cleared"

5) Re-reconcile the account, month by month if more than one month involved.

After the error is discovered, any remaining reconciles should proceed quite quickly ... unless there's more than one error.

ealvin45

Thanks guys...really appreciate your help. Unfortunately I'm struggling.

"Not,"
2.) I though you were saying to open Reconcile An Account and I would find my reconciliation report that would either have a zero difference or not, and I would continue that process until I found the problem.

I attempted to once again Reconcile An Account using June. After entering the Date,Opening and Closing Balance the window showed only a few of my monthly transactions, yet my main ledger showed all of the previously reconciled transactions. The same thing happened when I tried reconciling May.

Clearly, I'm lost. Could you clarify what I need to do to work backwards?

Thanks again for your help and patience with me.

Frankx

Hi again @ealvin45,

Sorry that you are still having issues reconciling.  Maybe we can reset...

What was the ending date of the last reconciliation that balanced?  

Did you actually "undo" some of the previously reconciled transactions, and if so, how far back in time did that "undoing" go?

Frankx

ealvin45

My last successful balance was June. I haven't undone any transactions.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @ealvin45

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your issue, although I apologize that you haven't received a follow-up response.

If you are still unsure of how to proceed or where to start, you may benefit from contacting support directly.

https://www.quicken.com/support#contact-support

Quicken Care has the ability to initiate a screen share to view and guide you through the reconciled process to help locate and correct the discrepancy.

Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

ealvin45

Sorry, hospitalized for a couple of days, now I'm back. Can someone help me through this? Thanks.

NotACPA

ealvin45 said:

Sorry, hospitalized for a couple of days, now I'm back. Can someone help me through this? Thanks.

See my prior post on this thread ... dated 8/18.  It's the step by step method of curing this issue.

ealvin45

I have backups going back several months. Would it be easier to restore from the most recent backup and continue until I find the descrepancy?

NotACPA

NO, there's no reason to restore from a prior backup.

If such backup is recent, it will still have the problem AND if it isn't recent you'll probably have a lot of downloading/data-entry to perform.

Just go back to that June statement, and proceed from there per earlier instructions.

ealvin45

I offered that as a suggestion because I'm not clear exactly how i "go backwards" to solve the problem.

NotACPA

Simply, within that account, scroll back to that date.

ealvin45

Does this sound right? I print out my June online bank statement and then checkmark each corresponding item that appears on the printout?

Frankx

Hi again @ealvin45,

Sorry to hear that you were hospitalized and hope that you're okay now.  I was away for a few days, so just seeing this now.

Let's reset a bit.  Above, you said that June was the last month that DID reconcile - if that's correct, you need not look at June, but should start with July.  You also said that the balance was off by about $2,000.00 - what was the exact number and was the balance in Quicken higher or lower than the balance on the July bank statement?

Let me know and we'll work through it.

Frankx

ealvin45

Thanks Frank, I'm fine now and appreciate your help.

This may be important for you to know. I haven't been printing my reconciliation reports (but I can now see that would be helpful and will do so in the future). Without that info, how can I view the monthly balance difference in Quicken.

Yes, I believe that June and every month previously for years, has reconciled perfectly, with the exception of one month in the last year that was off by a small amount and I had to have Quicken adjust for it.

In July all of my debits and credits matched with the statement. I had a few debits show up from earlier months but because they weren't on the statement they weren't processed. It's confusing that I have this large discrepancy.

My bank statement balance is larger than my Q shows.

Tom Young

"Am I correct in believing that this has to be MY error?"

No it's not correct that this has to be your error, but I'd bet it's the most common source of error. 

When you've been correctly reconciling an Account for a long time and then all of a sudden the Account won't reconcile and you can't find any error in the transactions that have occurred from the time of the last reconcile, the first thing that leaps to mind is that a "prior period" transaction or transactions have, somehow, been changed. 

The first thing I'd advise you to do is to pull out your June statement, look at your Quicken balance in that Account at the statement date and see if you can reconcile between the Quicken balance and the statement balance by hand. 

You mentioned that there were a few "June" transactions that weren't on the June statement so, everything else being equal, adding those "missing" transactions to the June statement balance should result in a number that matches Quicken.  If the numbers match, then we have a "July" problem of some sort, (seems improbable from what you've posted), but if they don't match then we know we have a prior period problem that we've got to go hunting for.

ealvin45

Thanks Tom, you reminded me of something really important that I left out. As I begin each month's reconciliation, the statement and Quicken Ending and Opening balances match. This current month (July) didn't. The balance that Quicken automatically inserts was off by approximately $2K, with the bank showing me with more money that Quicken.

Tom Young

"The balance that Quicken automatically inserts was off by approximately $2K, with the bank showing me with more money that Quicken. "

If what you are referring to here is the "Prior balance" that shows up in the "Reconcile [Bank Name]" window when you attempt to reconcile a checking/savings account, then that's significant evidence that some prior period transaction or transactions have been altered or deleted in Quicken.  Try the exercise I mentioned in my post to see if that reconciliation is also "off."

Frankx

HI again @ealvin45,

Just a couple of additional thoughts.

Even if you didn't print out the last reconciliation report when you completed it, you may now be able to print that out  now - and it may be very helpful to do that, because it can be used to find the error.

To print it take the following steps:
1) Click on "Reports" > "Banking" > "Reconciliation"
2) In the "Report Title" - Type "Last Rec"
3) In the "Show to bank balance as of" field - Enter "06/30/2020"
4) Click "All Transactions" then click "OK"
5) On the next screen press "Print"

Once the report prints, you'll be able to use it to help determine where the problem lies.

Also, since the Bank statement balance is greater than Quicken shows, you likely have duplicate checks/payments that have been recorded in Quicken. This can happen when downloading transactions from your bank.

Let me know how this goes.

Frankx

Frankx

BTW - other Quicken users are reporting that their banks are downloading duplicate transactions after updating to Version R27.24.

Frankx

ealvin45

I've gone through 7 months of statements and manually reconciled every transaction. I believe I've located the problem (other than one check for $145.54 that may be a duplicate).

Going back the last 7 months of my monthly printed statements the previous month's closing balance and the next month's opening balance show exactly the same matching number, as they should -- and as they do each time I reconcile in Quicken -- except for my last reconciliation for July.

This time the prior balance that Quicken provided m didn't match up, as per the monthly statement. I believe the created the $2K variation, and likely caused me to not be able to zero it out.

Does this sound correct?

ealvin45

Thanks Frank, that's great info. BTW, since my last post my wife found a check number for $1400 back in January that I had marked as reconciled, however, the bank doesn't show it as being cashed. It's to my Home Owner's Assn. and I know they received it. I'll call tomorrow and find out what they have to say. I'll let you know what I find out.

Thanks again to everyone who's been so helpful.

ealvin45

From what i can tell we've solved the mystery. I mistakenly marked an entry back in January as reconciled but it shouldn't have been. How do I deal with this?

Tom Young

You simply click in the "Clr" column and change that "R" to a blank.

This was a "prior period" issue, as which seemed obvious given the information you provided.

Frankx

That's great news.  To fix that just un-reconcile it by deleting the entry so that the box is blank.

Frankx

ealvin45

Am I correct in assuming that when I next attempt to reconcile the Prior balance Quicken will generate will match up with the statement balance?

Tom Young

If you've fixed all your prior period errors then the numbers should match, but you mentioned being off by $2K but have only reported a $1.4K prior period error. 

You can do a "pretend" reconciliation right now to see if the numbers match, and then abandon the reconciliation.