My Quicken account balances are not matching my bank and credit card balances.

Drillsgt
Drillsgt Member ✭✭
My Quicken account balances do not match my bank and credit card accounts.

Best Answer

  • Tom Young
    Tom Young SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    There's no law that your Quicken balances must match the bank statement or credit card statements.  Quite often they don't match due to timing differences, mistakes in your Quicken entries or entries that the account holders have made that you haven't accounted for yet.  That's why reconciliations are necessary to keeping your accounting correct. 
    When you can properly reconcile the balance per the statements to the balance in your Quicken Accounts that's when you know your Quicken Accounts are OK, even it the balances in Quicken don't exactly match the statement balances.

Answers

  • splasher
    splasher SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Have you checked to make sure that Quicken has all of the transactions that the financial institution show on the statements?

    -splasher using Q continuously since 1996
    - Subscription Quicken - Win11 and QW2013 - Win11
    -Questions? Check out the Quicken Windows FAQ list

  • Drillsgt
    Drillsgt Member ✭✭
    Thanks for the info.
  • Tom Young
    Tom Young SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    Answer ✓
    There's no law that your Quicken balances must match the bank statement or credit card statements.  Quite often they don't match due to timing differences, mistakes in your Quicken entries or entries that the account holders have made that you haven't accounted for yet.  That's why reconciliations are necessary to keeping your accounting correct. 
    When you can properly reconcile the balance per the statements to the balance in your Quicken Accounts that's when you know your Quicken Accounts are OK, even it the balances in Quicken don't exactly match the statement balances.
  • I reconcile manually comparing my bank statement to my Q acct. not using online downloads. All of a sudden after getting the new Quicken, the prior balance does does match my statement. I have restored from a backup and it is the same. It is off an even number too.
  • NotACPA
    NotACPA SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2021
    The Prior Balance, in a Q reconciliation, is a calculated figure ... not a stored figure.
    It's the sum of all transactions in the account that have an "R" in the CLR column.
    THUS, the Prior Balance can change if ANY or the following happen.
    • You delete a transaction that had an "R"
    • You manually change a transaction to "R"
    • You manually change the "R" to something else.
    • You manually input a new transaction and make it "R"
    • You delete the other side of a transfer transaction that has "R" in the other side.
    • There's a transaction that's later than the statement as-of date that has an "R"
    The remedy for this is to pull our your older statements and work back in time until the ending balance on the statement matches the balance amount and date of a transaction in the Q register.
    Then UNreconcile (clear all of the "R" values) for every transaction after that point and RE-reconcile, month by month, from that point up to your latest statement.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

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