How to fix Quicken Balance in Reconcile Window?

Mauricia

I open the window to reconcile the account from the opening and because the account existed before I started tracking, it has an opening balance, but quicken has it set to an arbitrary value. i've had the acct in quicken for a while. I just do not understand how and where it got the adjustment because it does not show in the register or any acct setting so I do not know how to change it. Please help, my issues with Quicken's adjustments have me considering to switch to an alternative, far from my first issue.

jacobs

@Mauricia  I'd like to try to help, but there are some things that are incomplete or unclear in your description of the problem. You mention an opening balance; you're describing the opening balance value in the reconcile screen? You also mention "the adjustment" and I'm not sure what adjustment you're referring to here. How far back does this account go -- a few years, many years? How much of that time is reconciled in Quicken? (e.g. green check boxes in the Clr column)

Is the actual running balance in your account (not the reconcile window, but in the register) up-to-date and accurate? when you scroll back to the beginning of the account register, is there an opening balance transaction? If yes, is it a gray Live Opening Balance transaction, or a solid black regular transaction? Are there any transactions dated earlier than the opening balance? 

Generally speaking, there are a couple ways to resolve reconciliation issues. The harder but most accurate way is to go back to a point where the reconciliations are accurate, and then re-reconcile moving forward until the present. the faster way is to enter an adjustment and move on. Sometimes that's a one-time fix that's good enough, but sometimes -- because you don't know why there was a discrepancy to start with -- problems can follow you into the future.

So talking about working the problem to get things right, the best approach depends on how far back your account goes, how far back your account statements go, and how much patience you have to work through the past to get an accurate present. Options include unreconciling some or all the account history and re-reconciling month by month, or re-reconciling in one large batch to catch-up -- but I'm not going to go into any detail on that until we understand more about your situation.

One thing to keep in mind about Quicken's reconciliations is that they aren't rocket science: Quicken is simply adding up your transactions from the beginning of time until the current and presenting you with the balance. When things don't pan out, it's typically because an older transaction was unreconciled or the amount was changed or a transaction was deleted or added. The challenge is in hunting down/figuring out what's missing or changed. (The feature added in the last update to allow you to revisit prior reconciliations and see any transactions which have been added/deleted/changed is excellent and will help prevent these problems in the future -- but because the program wasn't saving this data until recently, it doesn't help with old reconciliations.) 

jacobs

@Mauricia  I'd like to try to help, but there are some things that are incomplete or unclear in your description of the problem. You mention an opening balance; you're describing the opening balance value in the reconcile screen? You also mention "the adjustment" and I'm not sure what adjustment you're referring to here. How far back does this account go -- a few years, many years? How much of that time is reconciled in Quicken? (e.g. green check boxes in the Clr column)

Is the actual running balance in your account (not the reconcile window, but in the register) up-to-date and accurate? when you scroll back to the beginning of the account register, is there an opening balance transaction? If yes, is it a gray Live Opening Balance transaction, or a solid black regular transaction? Are there any transactions dated earlier than the opening balance? 

Generally speaking, there are a couple ways to resolve reconciliation issues. The harder but most accurate way is to go back to a point where the reconciliations are accurate, and then re-reconcile moving forward until the present. the faster way is to enter an adjustment and move on. Sometimes that's a one-time fix that's good enough, but sometimes -- because you don't know why there was a discrepancy to start with -- problems can follow you into the future.

So talking about working the problem to get things right, the best approach depends on how far back your account goes, how far back your account statements go, and how much patience you have to work through the past to get an accurate present. Options include unreconciling some or all the account history and re-reconciling month by month, or re-reconciling in one large batch to catch-up -- but I'm not going to go into any detail on that until we understand more about your situation.

One thing to keep in mind about Quicken's reconciliations is that they aren't rocket science: Quicken is simply adding up your transactions from the beginning of time until the current and presenting you with the balance. When things don't pan out, it's typically because an older transaction was unreconciled or the amount was changed or a transaction was deleted or added. The challenge is in hunting down/figuring out what's missing or changed. (The feature added in the last update to allow you to revisit prior reconciliations and see any transactions which have been added/deleted/changed is excellent and will help prevent these problems in the future -- but because the program wasn't saving this data until recently, it doesn't help with old reconciliations.)