Reconcile off by over $5000

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: I've reconciled my bank statement to the penny every month. This month there's a $3,500 discrepancy.

mdalva

This is my exact problem but I'm in Windows v.R34.24. I can't find any way to see reconciliation history, although the problem appeared in June 2021. I went back and manually compared register and bank statement from Jan-July 2021 and they match. What is going on? How can I fix this? It is a +$5000 difference in the bank's favor.

TTSguy

Just an idea. I've had similar problems, and it happened that the beginning balance was deleted somehow. Check to see if your account beginning balance is correct.

jacobs

[removed - post has been moved, comment is no longer relevant to the conversation]

NotACPA

@maldava & @TTSguy

The Beginning Balance of a Reconciliation is a CALCULATED, not stored figure. It's the sum of ALL transactions (past, present or future) in the account that have an "R" in the CLR column.

SO, one or more of the following happened:

• You deleted  a transaction with the R
• You added a transaction  and manually input the R
• You changed the amount of a transaction that had the R
• You deleted the other side of a transfer transaction, and the side in this account had an R

To remedy this you need to pull out your prior statements for the account and work backwards until the

Date and Amount on a statement match what you show in  Q.  This is the last time that the account was reconciled.

Then, select all of the transactions that come after that, the ones that have the R, and change them  to "c" (cleared).  Lastly, re-reconcile the account,  month-by-month, until you get back to the latest statement.  By doing this, you'll be able to identify when/what went wrong.  Once you find that ... the  reconciliations should go quite quickly.

TTSguy

Something I have done to make this process easier is go back with my banks statements and start with the middle transaction year. If your transactions start in 2000 and end in 2020, go to the closing statement date of June 30, 2010. Take the closing date amount and enter it in a NOTES column ie:$123.45 in your register for June 30, 2010. ? Now just look at that amount you just entered. Does it match the balance in the register for that date? If not, the problem is further back in time. So now go half way back in time to June 30, 2005 and do the same. If the amount is still off, go back half way again half way again until the register balance matches.
As soon as you get to the transaction where it matches, start moving ahead, in year dates in time half way, enter the amount in NOTES, compare to register balance. Always move halfway until you find the year the problem began.You will eventually narrow down to the exact month where the missing/extra transaction exists The BIG advantage to this is that if you ever have to go through this again, you have all your statement closing dates right in you register, and you can use them again to find the error very quickly. If this sounds daunting to you, well it kinda is, but it's very effective! Good Luck!

NotACPA

TTSguy said:

Something I have done to make this process easier is go back with my banks statements and start with the middle transaction year. If your transactions start in 2000 and end in 2020, go to the closing statement date of June 30, 2010. Take the closing date amount and enter it in a NOTES column ie:$123.45 in your register for June 30, 2010. ? Now just look at that amount you just entered. Does it match the balance in the register for that date? If not, the problem is further back in time. So now go half way back in time to June 30, 2005 and do the same. If the amount is still off, go back half way again half way again until the register balance matches. As soon as you get to the transaction where it matches, start moving ahead, in year dates in time half way, enter the amount in NOTES, compare to register balance. Always move halfway until you find the year the problem began.You will eventually narrow down to the exact month where the missing/extra transaction exists The BIG advantage to this is that if you ever have to go through this again, you have all your statement closing dates right in you register, and you can use them again to find the error very quickly. If this sounds daunting to you, well it kinda is, but it's very effective! Good Luck!

A large block of text, with no paragraph breaks, is hard to read ... and many of us won't even bother to read them for that reason.

q_lurker

@mdalva You originally added to a Mac post though you appear to be a Win user. Thus your post was split away and relocated. That breaks your “same problem” flow.  Win problem is not likely the same as a Mac problem. Would you then please expand on where and how you are seeing this $5K discrepancy?  

TTSguy

I wrote this to help any users that it might be interested. I feel it's very effective. If it's too long for some users, that's okay. Everyone's different.

NotACPA

TTSguy said:

I wrote this to help any users that it might be interested. I feel it's very effective. If it's too long for some users, that's okay. Everyone's different.

It's NOT too long.  It's unreadable because of the lack of white space and line breaks.

TTSguy

@NotACPA, I think my idea has merit, however I'm not as good at technical writing as I was 20 years ago. I'll probably give it up on the Community. If you think my idea might be good enough to help some of the users, I wouldn't mind if you wanted to rewrite it in a manner that would render it "useful" to others. If you don't care to I understand. I like brainstorming, but find it difficult for me to write what I'm thinking anymore. Probably time to retire from attempting to do that. I respect your feedback, But enjoy trying to help others with ideas I come up with that may help and be useful to others. Thank You!