Reconcile issues

Penney

I have been using the Quicken subscription for Mac for over a year now, I used other versions of Quicken for Mac before. Today I finally learned how to download my checking account transactions for the first time. The transactions seem to be fine. I went to reconcile the account and I am having an issue. It says I am out of balance and the total amount of the difference is the same amount as some checks that I wrote in June but were not cashed until July 8th. I tried changing the date on those two checks but it still says there is a difference in the same amount. I double checked and these 2 checks are not duplicated. Any idea why it is trying to force me to mark them as cleared even though they didn't clear in the month of June (which is the month I am trying to reconcile.)

Thanks for any insight!

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Penney

Thank you for reaching out to the Community regarding your issue, although I am sorry to hear that you are experiencing issues with your reconcile. I'm wondering here what might be causing the issue inside your reconcile since it relates to those two specific transactions. In This case I believe it would help in figuring out what could be causing the issue if we were able to get a screenshot of the reconcile screen. I'll leave an article down below on how to do so.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac#latest

Note you may need to drag the photo into your response box in order to add it.

Once you get the chance to update us let us know and we'll see what we can do in order to resolve the issue you're having.

Thanks,

Quicken Francisco

jacobs

@Penney  Can you clarify a few things… Are you trying to reconcile through the end of June? Are you doing reconcile to a statement or reconcile to an online balance? Are these two checks transactions you manually entered, or did they download from your bank?

Penney

Hi Francisco,

Thank you for replying. What part of the reconcile page do you want a screen shot of?

Thanks,

Penney

Penney

Hi Jacobs,

Thank you for replying. I should have given you that information too, I'm sorry. I am trying to reconcile to the end of June, that is how I always do reconcile, month by month. I think I manually entered them but I'm not 100% on that. I'm doing the statement reconcile, not the bank balance.

Thanks!

Penney

jacobs

So, to make sure I'm on the same page, these two checks were written in June but didn't clear the bank until July 8, and they therefore do not appear on the June 30 bank statement. But in Quicken, you're saying these checks show up, and if they are blank in the Clr column (no green or blue check mark), your reconciliation is off by the amount of these checks? Is that correct. And nothing changes when you change the transaction date from June to July?

Please click on one of the check transactions and do View > Show Inspector. In the bottom "From your financial institution" section, what does it show for Date Posted?

Mark1104

if you are reconciling to the end of June, and 2 transactions are in Quicken but not on the bank statement (because they did not clear until July), be sure those two July transactions are 'uncleared' in Quicken... then everything should be fine.  The Bank balance as of June 30 LESS the two checks that did not clear until July should then be equal to the Quicken balance as of June 30

jacobs

@Mark1104  I agree that that's the way it should be, but @Penney said initially that the reconciliation total only works if these transactions are marked as reconciled. That's why I was zeroing in on the posted date; it seems Quicken thinks these were posted in June, not July.

Penney

Hi Jacobs and Mark1104,

Thank you both for trying to help!

Jacobs, you are right about all that you said. I did as you asked and in the "Show Inspector" window there is no information at all for the "from your financial institution" section. Which makes me think that I entered them manually. It really doesn't make sense that this is not balancing properly.

I tried deleting both of those checks and then quit Quicken and reopened it. I still have the same issue.

Thanks for any insight you can offer.

jacobs

The fact that you are off by the amount of these checks, even when they are completely deleted from Quicken proves it's not those transactions causing your discrepancy. 

If you have ever downloaded in this account, could you look back at the beginning of transactions in the account to see if Quicken inserted a placeholder transaction to get the balance correct?

Next, pen Reconciliation History. The history function only goes back to late last year, but I'm curious if it shows your prior reconciliations, and if they are all black and showing no discrepancies. 

Penney

Hmmm, I think you are on to something! I did a search for that amount and found nothing, and no place holders at the beginning. However, when I looked at the history it looks like there are some discrepancy issues with previous reconciliations. I haven't done any sleuthing yet but I suspect that they have suddenly shown up do to my downloading and updating from the internet. I will research those and get back to you. Thanks for the tip!

Penney

Okay, I took a look back and restored a couple of transactions which were also two checks with the same amounts (these are recurring expenses every month). Once I did that the current month now balances! Yay!

However, (isn't there always an "however"), there are still three months that have a discrepancy for reconciliation history. Should I try to go back and fix those or ignore them since the current month is fine?

Thanks!

jacobs

I'm glad you found the source of the error.

I would at least look at the other prior reconciliations to see what they show is off. Hopefully, it will be things which cancel each other out, such as a transaction date moving from one month to another. While it might be opening a can of worms, if it were me, I would want to work through the old errors and know everything is rock-solid moving forward. That way, if sometime in the future you have a reconciliation history discrepancy, you'll know it's happened subsequent to this, and isn't some unknown lingering problem from long ago.

If you decide to try to clean up the old reconciliations, I recommend you make a copy or backup of your data file before you start. That way, if things get worse and are hopelessly messed up, you can just toss the current file and go back to your copy.

Penney

Thank you so much for all the great help and information! I'm a photographer/artist, accounting is not my strong suit! LOL I manage to muddle through most months but some times I hit snags. Thank goodness it is all on the computer so I don't have to do much actual addition and subtraction. I will tackle the history and hopefully minimize future issues.

Thanks for everything!