Register differs from bank balance even though account reconciles (Q Mac)

Richard Patterson

My bank says my available balance is $360 more than the projected balance shown in Quicken, but all the transactions in Quicken seem to be accounted for in the bank balance and if I reconcile the account Quicken finds no discrepancy. How is this possible? I have reconciled using the last statement and double checked all the transactions since the last statement. I also reconciled using the current downloaded balance which is what the bank shows and Quicken finds no discrepancy event though the register balance is showing $360 less available balance than the bank.

Richard Patterson

OK. I finally found the erroneous transactions. I had somehow managed to duplicate some transactions from July and August so that they were also showing up in January. I have no idea how I did this, but I have had some other corruption problems with my Quicken database during the past year which I have conveniently forgotten now. The duplicated transactions were showing as cleared because they were regular monthly payments with the same amount as the actual payments and the actual payments were showing as uncleared. I have now deleted the duplicate transactions and marked the proper ones as cleared and my projected balance and daily balance match the online balance. It seems that Quicken may ignore the check number when it clears a downloaded transaction. I suppose I should have spotted the out of sequence duplicate check numbers in the register. My thanks for all the suggestions which made me persevere in smoking this out.

ready to chuck it

mine gives me 1200. more!

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @Richard Patterson

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community although, I apologize that you haven't received a response.

In Quicken the projected balance usually includes scheduled transactions, the bank balance typically would not have a way to display these upcoming transactions as Quicken does. Do you have any further details to explain which numbers you are comparing?

Can you please capture a screenshot of the projected balance that you are viewing in Quicken? To learn more about posting screenshots to the Community, please take a moment to review the information available here.

The more information you can provide regarding this issue will help the Community to better understand and assist.

  Thank you,

-Quicken Tyka

Richard Patterson

There are no scheduled transactions for my account in Quicken. All the transactions show up on the banks list of transactions. I'm not sure what could be accomplished by showing a screen grab of just the projected balance in Quicken and I'm not inclined to post my entire checking account register. I think the best thing for me to do is to call Quicken tech support tomorrow to discuss this with them. I really cannot imagine how or why this is happening and the fact that someone else has the same problem makes me think it may be a bug lurking somewhere in Quicken.

jacobs

@Richard Patterson Have you switched from Projected Balance to Today's balance to see if your Quicken then agrees with your bank? If so, that isolates the issue to something in the future. Some banks download pending transactions when they shouldn't; Quicken might have something in the future that you're not thinking is there. But you can zero in on that if you can establish where the problem lies: in the past or the future. 

(For what it's worth, I've read hundreds of threads on this site where people's accounts aren't showing the balance they expect, but I'm not aware of any where it turned out to be a bug of Quicken doing math wrong; it's almost always something with transactions a user isn't seeing or understanding, or a setting in Quicken making it show something other than what the user is expecting.)

Richard Patterson

Projected Balance: -$20.17
Today's Balance: -$20.17
Online Balance: $349.96
The bank website shows no pending transactions.
I have looked more than once for some transaction that I was ignoring and I cannot find it. I can't even find a transaction matching the amount of the discrepancy. What setting in Quicken could I be overlooking?

Chris_QPW

Are all the transactions in the register reconciled?
The only way I know that you can reconcile and still have a different balance is that you have some transactions that are marked uncleared (other than Quicken messing).

If you sort by the "clear column" that should make any such transactions group at together so that you can clearly see them.

Richard Patterson

I did find four or five transactions that were not marked as cleared, but they were mostly from over a year ago. I am sure they have cleared the bank. Marking them as cleared in Quicken changed nothing about the projected, daily or online balance that it shows.

Chris_QPW

Richard Patterson said:

I did find four or five transactions that were not marked as cleared, but they were mostly from over a year ago. I am sure they have cleared the bank. Marking them as cleared in Quicken changed nothing about the projected, daily or online balance that it shows.

I thought you said the online balance was correct.  The online balance comes from the financial institution, if it is wrong, if the Connection Method is Direct Connect then only they can fix it.  If it it is Quicken Connect then it may be either the financial institution or the Intuit "scripts" that need to be fixed (Quicken Inc pays Intuit for that service).

As for the projected balance, unless something is really wacky it would follow whatever is your register balance.  And from what you said that is wrong (the register balance).  So that is what I was talking about tracking down.

When you reconcile it very possible not to include all the transactions.  Think of sending a check.  That transaction can be manually entered into the register and Quicken "will know about it (uncleared)" and the balance will be updated, but since it hasn't cleared the financial institution, it won't be in the "cleared" transactions.  Note Quicken Mac should show both the cleared and the uncleared transactions while you are reconciling, but if they are selected as cleared they won't be included in the total.

If you mark them cleared and now try to do the reconcile I would expect it to fail, as in the balance should be what is shown in the register and not what is at your financial institution.

And the very fact that these transactions you are talking about are over a year old suggests one of two things.  Either those transactions were wrong in the first place (they shouldn't be there) and as such shouldn't be marked "cleared", instead they should be "voided" or deleted.  Or the other reason is something that has been mentioned a lot lately, and that is for people using sync to Mobile/Web it has been messing up some people old transactions.

Richard Patterson

I appreciate everyone's help in trying to resolve this issue.
I am more inclined to believe my bank statement than the Quicken register, so yes I think the online balance is correct. The connection with Wells Fargo is a direct connection. I have never used sync to Mobile/Web. Nothing changed when I marked the transactions as cleared, but I have been able to undo that and am going to go back and look at old bank statements to see if there did in fact clear the account. More later...

UKR

I'd also take a look at the register's Opening Balance (OB) transaction.
AFAIK, in Q Mac you can have a "placeholder OB transaction" that recalculates every time you enter a new transaction or you can have a "fixed OB transaction" which is based on data you enter (i.e., the actual bank statement balance on opening day) and does not change.
You should use the latter one.
A Q Mac expert user or moderator can tell you how to determine what type of OB you have on your register and how to fix that (I'm only a lowly Q Windows user and don't have the details on that)

Richard Patterson

Thanks. I'll try to take a look at that as well.

Chris_QPW

Richard Patterson said:

I appreciate everyone's help in trying to resolve this issue.
I am more inclined to believe my bank statement than the Quicken register, so yes I think the online balance is correct. The connection with Wells Fargo is a direct connection. I have never used sync to Mobile/Web. Nothing changed when I marked the transactions as cleared, but I have been able to undo that and am going to go back and look at old bank statements to see if there did in fact clear the account. More later...

Just to clarify what I meant by online balance is there is a downloaded one that you’ll see in Quicken that’s the one that may or may not be right.  Certainly the online balance at the financial institution is the gold standard.

Richard Patterson

OK. I finally found the erroneous transactions. I had somehow managed to duplicate some transactions from July and August so that they were also showing up in January. I have no idea how I did this, but I have had some other corruption problems with my Quicken database during the past year which I have conveniently forgotten now. The duplicated transactions were showing as cleared because they were regular monthly payments with the same amount as the actual payments and the actual payments were showing as uncleared. I have now deleted the duplicate transactions and marked the proper ones as cleared and my projected balance and daily balance match the online balance. It seems that Quicken may ignore the check number when it clears a downloaded transaction. I suppose I should have spotted the out of sequence duplicate check numbers in the register. My thanks for all the suggestions which made me persevere in smoking this out.