My Fidelity/Elan Online Credit Card Balance is incorrect

Angelo Bione

The Ending Balance in correct. But the Online Balance is far off. Searched the forum on this with no luck. Suggestions ?

Frankx

Hi again @Angelo Bione

The "Online Balance" shown at the bottom of the account register is the amount that is reported by the financial institution during the most recent download.  It should agree with the balance that appears on their website as of the date of your last download.

But the Online Balance reported may be different if:
a) there are manual transactions (not downloaded) that you entered in the register which haven't been cleared by the financial institution, such as charges you made for purchases that you have entered into Quicken, but the charges have not been ported by the credit card company, or
b) the credit card company is showing "pending" charges or payments for the account, that have not yet been "cleared" by the credit card provider.

Since you have validated and supervalidated your data file, and also because that online balance amount it picked-up by the downloading process, I do not believe that this is being caused by any type of data corruption. More likely it relates to either incorrect data in the download, or the way the downloaded information is being interpreted by the program. 

If you want to investigate it further - you could examine the most recent QFX file for that account by opening it with WordPad.  The reported balance will look like the following:


Hope this helps.

Frankx

Frankx

Hi @Angelo Bione,

Can you give us more information that will help us to help you?

That situation - where the online amount due is larger than the Quicken account balance can be present when you've recently made a payment that has been recorded in Quicken but the payment has not yet been processed by the credit card provider - could that be all or part of your problem?

How long has this been happening; did you just notice this recently?  What method are you using to connect with the credit card company (Direct Connect, Express Web Connect, or Web Connect)?  Have you had any connection issues lately, where you couldn't connect, and when did you last download transactions? 

Have you incurred any large charges on this account lately, is it possible that you may not have recorded/downloaded one of those large transactions in your Quicken account? Have you recently reconciled this account? If not, are you in a position to try that now?

Please get back to us and we'll go from there.

Frankx

Angelo Bione

Try to answer all of your questions
1. Last payment for around $4500.
2. This has been in error for a few months
3. Account uses Web Connect. No other option here.
4. I download transactions twice a day
5. The account balance is correct against looking online. The issue is what Quicken calls Online Balance.

Actually I just now went through all of my other online accounts. I see others that the Ending Balance is correct but Online differs. A couple are OK. These account balances match their direct online amounts. All accounts are using Web Connect. Running R32.10. Also ran Super Validate.

Frankx

Hi again @Angelo Bione

The "Online Balance" shown at the bottom of the account register is the amount that is reported by the financial institution during the most recent download.  It should agree with the balance that appears on their website as of the date of your last download.

But the Online Balance reported may be different if:
a) there are manual transactions (not downloaded) that you entered in the register which haven't been cleared by the financial institution, such as charges you made for purchases that you have entered into Quicken, but the charges have not been ported by the credit card company, or
b) the credit card company is showing "pending" charges or payments for the account, that have not yet been "cleared" by the credit card provider.

Since you have validated and supervalidated your data file, and also because that online balance amount it picked-up by the downloading process, I do not believe that this is being caused by any type of data corruption. More likely it relates to either incorrect data in the download, or the way the downloaded information is being interpreted by the program. 

If you want to investigate it further - you could examine the most recent QFX file for that account by opening it with WordPad.  The reported balance will look like the following:


Hope this helps.

Frankx