Beginning balance off by over $3,600

rosede

I reconcile my accounts by hand. Always have, and most likely, always will. Today I went to reconcile my account and noticed that the beginning balance was off by over $3,600. I verified the ending date of the last statement, and beginning date of the new statement, and everything looks correct. I've never had a discrepancy like this before. What could have caused it, and how do I correct it?

Thanks

Daryl

oldngrmpy1

I also reconcile by hand, and I too have had instances where my opening balance was off. Not sure what the cause could be. If you know that your beginning balance is off by say $3600, and your ending Quicken balance is off by $3600, just change the beginning balance back to what it is supposed to be. Your Quicken balance should return to match your online balance and you should be good to go. This happens to me occasionally, I don't know why, probably never will. in the end just be sure your beginning is what it's supposed to be, and your online balance and ending balance are the same. if all that is correct you should be good to go...

NotACPA

The Beginning Balance in a reconciliation is a calculated figure.  It's the sum of ALL transactions in the account that have an "R" in the CLR column.

SO,

• The amount of a previously reconciled transaction was changed, OR
• A previously reconciled transaction was deleted, OR
• A transaction was manually changed to "R" (or from "R" to something else).

You need to compare your prior statements for this account and work backwards until the Q balance and the statement balance agree.  THEN, select ALL transactions that occur after that point and change them to " " (blank) and re-reconcile the account, month-by-month, until you locate the error.

Sherlock

If the reconciled opening balance has changed, a reconciled transaction has been added, modified, or deleted.  To determine the source of the change, I suggest you compare the running balance of the account register in the current Quicken file with the running balance of the account register from a Quicken file backup saved when the account was last reconciled.  One way to accomplish this is to print the registers to text files.

rosede

Okay. I think the best option for me is to restore from a backup and try to find out where things went wrong.

Thanks for the info.

Daryl

rosede

I restored from a known good backup, prior to last months reconciliation and then I reconciled the account and I know that the ending balance is good. I then went to my bank and downloaded a .qfx file of all of the transactions between the last statement balance and today. I then imported that file into my registry (trying to save myself a headache of having to manually add all of these transactions). I then tried to reconcile again, however, there are missing transactions from the reconciliation list.

Transactions that where prior to last months reconciliation, but where not reconciled, should be included, but for some reason aren't. I verified the ending date against the statement and tried again. I took a backup after the reconcile I just did, restored it and re-imported the .qfx file. I tried the reconcile again and the same problem.

What can be going on now?

Thanks

Daryl

Mark1104

i am having a hard time tracking which transactions are missing as a 'reconciliation' means something is a) missing from the Bank (not cleared but in Quicken) or missing from Quicken (cleared at the Bank but not posted in Quicken).   Can you clearly articulate what condition is giving you issues? 

if you have reconciled the prior month, you know what the mismatches were between the Bank and Quicken, right? 

1) for the items that were posted by the Bank at the point of the last reconciliation but not in Quicken, did you add them to Quicken? if not, why not? 

2) for the items that were in Quicken at the point of the last reconciliation but not posted by the Bank, have those cleared the bank by now? were they in the Bank file you downloaded? if not why not? should they be deleted from Quicken or are you confident that entry (normally an outstanding check) has not cleared the bank? 

rosede

Sorry for the confusion. I know that what makes sense to me, doesn't necessarily make sense to someone else, especially when trying to type a message in a forum. So I'll try to clarify my comments.

This whole thing started yesterday when I went to reconcile my previous months statement. The opening balance was off by over $3,600 and I couldn't figure out why. Based on the comments in this thread, I decided the best course of action for me was to restore from a known good back up made prior to the previous month's reconciliation (May). I then reconciled that month and confirmed that the ending balance to the beginning of June's statements beginning balance. So far, all good. I then went to my bank and downloaded a .qfx file containing transactions starting just after the close of May's statement and imported those transactions into my register and I proceeded to reconcile the account.

Right off the bat I noticed a deposit on June's statement that I know was made and registered in May prior to the last reconciliation, but it itself had not been reconciled with the May reconciliation. Since it wasn't on May's statement and didn't get reconciled, it still show's up in the registry as unreconciled and should get reconciled with this run. I then found several other transactions that were made prior to the last reconciliation, that are in the registry as unreconciled, and are on June's statement, but did not show up to be reconciled.

I'm confused as to why these transactions are not showing up to be reconciled. Is it because I imported in the .qfx file?

I hope this make sense.

Daryl

rosede

Okay, I got this figured out. I started all over and this time I manually added the transactions since last reconcile and now everything works out as it's supposed to.

Thank you for all of your help.

Daryl