Coming back to using Quicken after years-what to do with my account as far as reconciliation

nhillborn

I haven't used Quicken in a couple of years and therfore have not entered transactions from my check register or reconciled my bank statements. My bank was bought out and I don't have access to old bank statements. What do I do to start using Quicken again so that I don't have a big mess? Start brand new or can I just enter the balance from today and being entering transactions from today forward?

Chris_QPW

My tendency would be to just a new file.  If I could reasonably expect to fill in the two year gap somehow I might do it.  But to have it in the middle of my data file would probably bother me no end.

If you want to keep the old data and don't mind the gap you have two choices as I see it.  One is when setting up the accounts again have Quicken create new accounts.  This is probably the easiest because Quicken will automatically set the correct opening balance.  And as far as reports and such go you can just include the old and the new account you will get the same report you would have even if they were combined.

If you choose to link an existing account to an online one Quicken will fetch whatever the financial institution wants to send for that account.  A typical number is 90 days.  You might be able to get more transaction history by download a QFX/Web Connect file from the financial institution.

After that you are going to have to go in and put in a balance adjustment transaction, which would be dated before these new transactions, but after the old one (date wise).

A balance adjustment transaction is just a transaction where the category is the name of the account you are in surrounded by square brackets.  Like this:
[My Account]

It will be a deposit or withdraw depending on if you need increase or decrease the balance at that point.

Chris_QPW

No it doesn't mess up the account.

In my opinion the warning is because people don't really understand reconciling.
As in the process is to bring your Quicken account into agreement with the financial institutions.  If one was working towards that goal instead of "I selected Done. and it didn't reconcile, what wrong with it?", then I don't think you would run into any problems.

What trips people up is the fact that if you have reconciled up to say half the month, and then switch back to reconciling by statement, that first half of the months transactions will have already been reconciled and as such will not appear in the Quicken reconcile window, but of course they will be there in the "paper statement".

Chris_QPW

P.S.  I should have mentioned that if you do start new accounts you will have to use a balance adjustment transaction in the old accounts to bring them to zero. You can also just reconcile the account to a zero ending statement, and let Quicken do the same for you when you finish it with a difference.

Chris_QPW

My tendency would be to just a new file.  If I could reasonably expect to fill in the two year gap somehow I might do it.  But to have it in the middle of my data file would probably bother me no end.

If you want to keep the old data and don't mind the gap you have two choices as I see it.  One is when setting up the accounts again have Quicken create new accounts.  This is probably the easiest because Quicken will automatically set the correct opening balance.  And as far as reports and such go you can just include the old and the new account you will get the same report you would have even if they were combined.

If you choose to link an existing account to an online one Quicken will fetch whatever the financial institution wants to send for that account.  A typical number is 90 days.  You might be able to get more transaction history by download a QFX/Web Connect file from the financial institution.

After that you are going to have to go in and put in a balance adjustment transaction, which would be dated before these new transactions, but after the old one (date wise).

A balance adjustment transaction is just a transaction where the category is the name of the account you are in surrounded by square brackets.  Like this:
[My Account]

It will be a deposit or withdraw depending on if you need increase or decrease the balance at that point.

nhillborn

Thank you for the response! Hadn’t thought of making it a new account. I have a question about reconciling. Why is it not recommended to go back to manual reconciling after using online reconciling? Will it screw up the account?

Chris_QPW

No it doesn't mess up the account.

In my opinion the warning is because people don't really understand reconciling.
As in the process is to bring your Quicken account into agreement with the financial institutions.  If one was working towards that goal instead of "I selected Done. and it didn't reconcile, what wrong with it?", then I don't think you would run into any problems.

What trips people up is the fact that if you have reconciled up to say half the month, and then switch back to reconciling by statement, that first half of the months transactions will have already been reconciled and as such will not appear in the Quicken reconcile window, but of course they will be there in the "paper statement".

Chris_QPW

P.S.  I should have mentioned that if you do start new accounts you will have to use a balance adjustment transaction in the old accounts to bring them to zero. You can also just reconcile the account to a zero ending statement, and let Quicken do the same for you when you finish it with a difference.

nhillborn

Thank you Chris! This has helped a lot!