Bank/Quicken balances don't agree

ShreveB

I've used Quicken since inception, and have never had this problem. I download and reconcile almost every day, but in Nov 2020, I had an $800 "balance adjustment" in my checking account/ I downloaded spreadsheets of all of my statements for the previous 6 months; there were no missing transactions in Quicken. In January 2021, I had a $250 "balance adjustment" in a credit card account at a different instritution. I again downloaded the spreadsheets for the previous 6 months and verified that all transactions were in Quicken. At that point I changed all my online passwords. Any ideas what might be going on?

Chris_QPW

Are you syncing to Mobile/Web?

It has been known to change past transactions (deletes, change splits, change reconcile status).

When you can't reconcile like this you can't assume that the problem is within the last 6 months.  It could be anywhere in the account.

ShreveB

Hi. No, I always use the file on my desktop.

Chris_QPW

Well the same still applies, one can't assume the problem is only in the last 6 months.
Quicken totals all the reconciled transactions to get the "opening balance" for the reconcile.  If anything changes them, then you are going to be off.

As for "what did it", well the first step would be finding "what changed".  And in this case that might mean re-reconciling the whole account.  The best way to do that would be a "binary search".  As in you un-reconcile every transaction (change the R to say c) and then reconcile the first half.  If that doesn't reconcile you know the problem is in the first half and you un-reconcile again and half that section.  If it reconciles fine then you move forward with the reconcile doing a half each time.

Even after you find "what changed" it might not be obvious of what caused it, but at least someone might be able to take a stab at what it might be.

Note reconciling using the "binary search" goes pretty quickly, but also requires statement balances back to that point.  It might also be faster to go to a backup and see if it had the problem.

ShreveB

OK. I'll try it. Thanks.

ShreveB

I'm stymied: one account goes back 7 years; the other 11. I checked back 1 year, and didn't find any discrepancies. It's very frustrating.
Thanks anyway

Quicken Francisco

@ShreveB

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, though I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing this.

In this case I recommend contacting Quicken Support  via chat or phone and sharing your screen with one of our support reps, if you feel comfortable doing so, to have the matter looked at and hopefully fixed promptly. I'll leave our hours down below so you can find a time that works best for you.

Thanks,
Quicken Francisco

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NotACPA

ShreveB said:

I'm stymied: one account goes back 7 years; the other 11. I checked back 1 year, and didn't find any discrepancies. It's very frustrating.
Thanks anyway

Are you saying that the figures from 1 year ago agree?

If so, UNreconcile everything after that point and re-reconcile month-by-month until the discrepancy is found.

If NOT, keep looking further backwards until the bank statement and the Q numbers agree.  Then re-reconcile coming forward.