Reconcile in Quicken Mac 6.2.1 [edited]

Scott Rose

Major bug with reconciling bank statements in Quicken Mac 6.2.1:

I'm trying to reconcile my bank statement (checking account) using the "online balance" as of June 15, 2021. 

After I click next, Quicken only lists my transactions up to June 11, 2021. Quicken doesn't actually show me all of my transactions up to June 15, 2021. 

So I can never finish the reconcile because it's not showing me all of my transactions.

However, if I choose to manually type in my "statement balance" and manually type in my "ending date" of June 15, 2021, then it works just fine. 

If I do it that way, then Quicken correctly shows me all of the transactions up through June 15, 2021, and I am able to finish my reconcile just fine.

jacobs

It sounds like it might be a discrepancy between the transaction date and posted date on some of your transactions. Click on one of the transactions after June 11 and select View > Show Inspector. Are the Date at the top and the Posted Date near the bottom the same or different?

Scott Rose

Thanks, @jacobs!

Yes, they are different dates, but both dates are before June 15th.

Date: June 11, 2021
Date Entered: June 11, 2021
Date Posted: June 14, 2021

This is definitely a reconciliation bug in Quicken, because as soon as I change the reconciliation to "manual" instead of "automatic", it works just fine.

jacobs

Scott, I really don't believe it's a bug in Quicken; I think it's something that just requires some digging to get to the bottom of with your data. (I Can't say definitively that it's not a bug, but I'd note that no one else has been reporting this in the more than a month since version 6.2.x has been out.) There is no "automatic" versus "manual" reconciliation; one simply asks the bank for the current balance, while the other lets you enter the balance as of any date.

Back to your situation, I'm curious why when you reconcile to the online balance, it's giving you a date of June 15 when it's currently June 18. I'd expect the date to be June 18.

Is the balance presented in Quicken the same balance you see if you log onto the bank's website?

Are there any transactions on the bank's website from the last day or two which aren't in your Quicken register?

Are all the transactions in your Quicken register ones which downloaded from the bank, or are any of them ones you entered manually (including scheduled transactions)? 

I'm asking these questions to poke around what might be causing your discrepancy.

I can get a discrepancy when I do the reconciliation, although the reason in my case seems to be different…

I normally reconcile to my monthly bank statement, but when I switch to reconcile to online balance, I get some numbers which take a little work to figure out. 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 Quicken downloads data from the bank once a day, and the check probably hadn't cleared when it got its daily download last night. So there's no way for me to complete the reconciliation to the online balance, because I'm missing a transaction which the bank is counting in the balance it's providing Quicken, but it's not among the transactions it has so far provided to Quicken. I know this is different than the problem you're describing, but it illustrates how there can be date differences between the bank, what it downloads to Quicken, and how it's recorded in Quicken.

Scott Rose

No, you're not understanding.

The problem is that Quicken is not showing me all of the transactions when I choose the option to "Use Online Balance".

But it IS correctly showing me all of the transactions when I choose the option to "Use Statement Balance".

This is 1,000% a bug in Quicken Mac. I can personally guarantee you that this is a bug. Its behavior is completely illogical & incorrect & wrong. And it has never acted like this in the past. So, they broke this. If they don't fix this, then I will be forced to "use statement balance" forever into the future.

There is no "automatic" versus "manual" reconciliation; one simply asks the bank for the current balance, while the other lets you enter the balance as of any date.

Right, I was just using those terms. "Automatic" = "Use Online Balance". "Manual = "Use Statement Balance".

Back to your situation, I'm curious why when you reconcile to the online balance, it's giving you a date of June 15 when it's currently June 18. I'd expect the date to be June 18.

"Use Online Balance" shows June 18. "Use Statement Balance" is where I type in June 15.

In either case, Quicken should absolutely be showing me all transactions up to & including June 15th.

The problem is that Quicken won't show me all of my transactions through June 15 when I choose "Use Online Balance", but it will show me all of my transactions through June 15 when I choose "Use Statement Balance".

It doesn't work with "Use Online Balance". It works perfectly fine with "Use Statement Balance".

Same balance everywhere.

Is the balance presented in Quicken the same balance you see if you log onto the bank's website?

Yes, it is exactly the same balance all the way around: "Use Online Balance", "Use Statement Balance", and on the bank's website. Everything is the same balance.

But you're not understanding — the problem is not the balance. The problem is that Quicken refuses to show me the transactions up to June 15.

- If I choose "Use Online Balance", it should show all transactions up to June 18.
- If I choose "Use Statement Balance" and type in June 15, it should show all transactions up to June 15.

It is only showing transactions up to June 11th if I chose "Use Online Balance".

This is a bug in Quicken.

Is the balance presented in Quicken the same balance you see if you log onto the bank's website?

Are there any transactions on the bank's website from the last day or two which aren't in your Quicken register?

Are all the transactions in your Quicken register ones which downloaded from the bank, or are any of them ones you entered manually (including scheduled transactions)? 

You're focusing on the wrong issue. There is nothing wrong with the balance. The problem is that Quicken refuses to show me my transactions.

jacobs

(a) No, I am not misunderstanding the issue. I understood your description of the problem.

(b) "This is 1,000% a bug in Quicken Mac. I can personally guarantee you that this is a bug." With all due respect, Scott, you have posted many threads on this site with the subject "MAJOR BUG" which have turned out not to be bugs at all. Perhaps this is a bug… but perhaps it's not. I was just trying to work with you to explore. 

Determining that it's a bug sometimes requires ruling out other possible explanations for what you're experiencing, which is what I was trying to do. (Since no one else has reported this as an issue with reconciling in the 5 weeks since version 6.2 was released or the 3 weeks since versions 6.2.1 was released, my initial troubleshooting approach was to dig deeper into your specific transactions to see if we could find an explanation for what you're observing.

(c) You said initially that you were trying to reconcile your account " 'online balance' as of June 15, 2021."  The reason I questioned the June 15 date it was showing is that I would expect it to show June 18 in that spot. The balance is very relevant, as is the date, as is any difference between what transactions are shown on the bank's website and what's shown in the Quicken register (as I illustrated with an example from my own bank account). If Quicken isn't connecting and getting all the data from your bank, it may have something to do with why it's not showing some transactions. (For instance, some banks provide pending transactions in their downloads, while others don't.) 

(d) The reason I asked about whether the transactions are all downloaded or some are manually created is because it could affect what Quicken thinks about the status of those transactions. 

(e) The other reason for focusing on June 15 versos June 18 is wondering if you tried it again today, and if the date changed to June 18, and reflects a difference balance as of June 18? And does it still only show transactions up through June 11, or as of today does it include the additional transactions through June 15? All of this is trying to poke at what's coming from the bank to Quicken, and when, and how it might be causing the discrepancy you've observed. 

I was only trying to help. If you just want to insist it's a bug without answering questions and exploring other alternatives, go ahead, and I'll bow out here because I can't help further.

Also, as you know from past issues, reporting a bug in this forum usually does not reach the developers, who do not peruse the forum. It's never a bad idea to post in the forum to ask "is anyone else seeing this odd behavior I'm seeing…", but if you want to report what you're sure is a bug, you should use the Report a Problem feature in Quicken, including sending a sanitized data file and documenting what's wrong so the person at Quicken can, hopefully, replicate the issue you're reporting. Alternatively, you could contact Quicken Support via phone (after the weekend) and have a representative go through it with you via a screen sharing session; if they can verify that things are not working correctly, they can collect the logs and pass them up to the development team for investigation. 

Meanwhile, since Use Statement Balance is working correctly for you, you can easily use that temporarily. It does require logging onto the bank website to check your balance as of a certain date, but you could do it weekly, or even daily if you wish, even though it's intended more for people who receive and reconcile to an actual bank statement. As such, this problem has a fairly easy work-around for now, and no matter what, you surely won't be "forced to 'use statement balance' forever into the future".

jacobs

@Scott Rose  There is a just-released 6.2.2 update with several tweaks to reconciliation. If you haven't already downloaded this latest update, install it and perhaps it will prove a cure to the problem you were experiencing. 

Scott Rose

Thanks so much for the heads-up on this 6.2.2 update, @jacobs!

I won't be able to test this out until my next statement reconciliation time arrives, but based on the update notes, it seems like this update will fix the problem & that it was a bug in Quicken.

PLS8141

I have the same issue in that my transactions do not show up in the list in the reconcile screen and have confirmed they are all in my Checking account list. I have the lates 6.2.2 update. Im using statement balance and not downloading from bank.

Scott Rose

Damn, that means that this bug wasn't fixed in 6.2.2. I wish I knew how to get in touch with someone at Quicken who could help us or fix this, but I don't know how to do that.

jacobs

PLS8141 said:

I have the same issue... Im using statement balance and not downloading from bank.

Well, so I'm not sure that's the same issue Scott described. If you are entering transactions manually, there is no Posted date in your transactions; the only date is the transaction date. It's hard to understand how it could not be including all such transactions with dates up to and including the statement date you type in.

Are you missing transactions within a day or two of the statement ending date? Or others during the month? For these missing transactions, is the Clr column blank?

Is it possible for you to capture screen shots of your reconcile startup screen, a portion of your register around the dates in question, and the same date range of your reconcile screen? You can clip the details of the transaction so you don't post any confidential/personal information -- just show the dates and beginning of the Payee screen. 

Scott Rose said:

I wish I knew how to get in touch with someone at Quicken who could help us or fix this, but I don't know how to do that.

There are two ways to do that. One is to call Quicken Support, getting a representative to screen share with you, and illustrating to them missing transactions which should be present in the reconcile screen. (Make a copy of your data files, so you can repeat reconciliations if needed for testing.) If you can demonstrate the problem and they can't fix it, you can press them to create a case to escalate to the developers. Make sure to get the case number. The other is to use the Report a Problem feature. If you can, try to type a clear description of how to replicate the problem. Since it may be dependent on some data specific to your data file, you should let it create and send a sanitized data file. As long as the service rep investigating your report can replicate the issue, they should create a bug report and push it to the developers.