Online balance not correct so can't reconcile

gnrich

I'm on Version 6.2.1 (Build 602.38957.100) for Mac. I download transactions and reconcile every day. The online balance Quicken shows me often doesn't agree with the bank. The transactions all download correctly though, so I can't reconcile. It seems that Quicken's "online" balance is a day behind. This started 1-2 weeks ago.

UKR

Online Balance is an amount which is made available once a day after the bank has completed its overnight processing. Intuit's QFX aggregation servers pick up this amount, ready or not, when they access the bank at night. So, yes, there can be a timing issue and you're not getting the very latest numbers.

Personally, I'm downloading daily to get the new transactions, but I only reconcile once a month to paper statement, after I received the "statement available"-email. That's good enough for me to catch errors quickly, if there are any. I recommend you do the same.

UKR

Online Balance is an amount which is made available once a day after the bank has completed its overnight processing. Intuit's QFX aggregation servers pick up this amount, ready or not, when they access the bank at night. So, yes, there can be a timing issue and you're not getting the very latest numbers.

Personally, I'm downloading daily to get the new transactions, but I only reconcile once a month to paper statement, after I received the "statement available"-email. That's good enough for me to catch errors quickly, if there are any. I recommend you do the same.

gnrich

Makes sense! I guess I just got ahead of myself. Thanks!

jacobs

@gnrich I normally reconcile to my monthly bank statement, but I was just trying to help another user with a reconciliation problem, and I did a quick test switching to reconciling to the online balance -- and immediately run into the issue you describe.

The running balance in my checking account in Quicken ($37,116) is different from the balance which downloads from the bank for the reconciliation ($36,116). Why is it $1,000 different? When I log onto my bank's website, I see there's a $1,000 check showing on June 17 (yesterday). But this transaction has not downloaded to Quicken yet. And that's not unusual, because as @UKR explained, Quicken downloads data from the bank once a day, and the check probably hadn't cleared when Quicken's server got its daily download last night. So I'm missing a transaction in Quicken which I would have to mark as reconciled to match the online balance.