Saving account reconciliation Wells Fargo "Save as you go" account problem.

Stinger22

I have a Wells-Fargo "Save as you go" savings account which every time I use my debt card it transfers $1.00 to my savings account from my checking account and a $100 dollar once a month transfer.

I used Quicken several years ago and back then notice I could never get that account to reconcile. It would show a dollar or two off, I would make a balance adjustment, next time it's off the other way, and just a circle dance. Checking reconicilations were just fine to the penny every month. Due to situations those accounts were closed and no longer a concern.

About a year ago with new accounts have been in place a couple of years decided I would fire Quicken back up mainly to get my retirement budget in order and to better track my spending than I can online with Wells-Fargo.

So the first few times everything reconciled fine then the slight discrepancies started showing up again in just the savings account again. I decided just to ignore and let it go see if it would just work itself out but it stays, with differing amounts. After a few weeks made a balance adjustment. A week later the differences show up again.

Anyone else with a "Save as you go" savings account see this with their reconciliations?

Chris_QPW

My recommendation would be to actually do a reconcile.  Reconciling is the process of checking your Quicken transactions against what the financial institution has, and if different track down exactly what is different.  Note that if you are reconciling to the online balance the problem can be the online balance or the date on the online balance.

When someone comes in and asks why their reconcile fails there is little anyone can do other than throw out generalities of things that go wrong because we can't see what you are seeing and track down the problem.

But in that general vain if it is only this kind of problem than I would certainly look to make sure that the "savings" is being recorded properly as a transfer to the savings account.

Stinger22

This type of savings is a special as I described with the automatic transfers which is why I asked if anyone using THAT type of savings with WF sees the same thing happening with their reconciliations. As I noted I used Quicken previously with other accounts and noted it had happened and could never get them to sync with out the discrepancies. Then after not using Quicken for several years and with brand new accounts started using again and the same discrepancies started occurring. I end up making a balance adjustment and then in a few days they don't balance again. I end up just never trying to reconcile the account.

Chris_QPW

Reconciling an account is always possible.  Adding a balance adjustment is giving up on reconciling.  And as you have seen adding a balance adjustment will not find/fix the underline problem.

Part of the process of reconciling is finding out why your Quicken records don't match the financial institutions.  Selecting the reconcile button and selecting Done isn't reconciling.

One can't even start to fix or workaround a problem if they don't know what the problem is.

Reconciling is work, and if one wants an answer they have to put in that work.  The likelihood that someone is going to come in and post an answer to your question that says "do this and then that and it will work" is very remote.

This is basically an "compare" and a "math" problem.
You compare that you are starting with the same opening balance, and that you have all the same transactions, and that you end up with the same ending balance.

When you find something that doesn't line up, then it is possible for someone else can suggest how to fix/workaround the problem.  Note that workaround might involve manually entering transactions.

To do this kind of comparison you have to understand where Quicken is getting all the numbers.
If you are reconciling to the online balance, you need to know how to find what was downloaded, and for what date, and see if that information is correct.  It isn't always correct and then you might have to resort to reconciling to a "paper statement" (actually the information can come from the financial institution's website at any time).

If the problem isn't there it could be in what transactions are downloaded.  They might not be correct or more likely some might be missing.  And then there is how you enter them into the register.  For what you are talking about they probably need to go in as transfers, and be properly matched in the second account.

And the final piece is that the starting balance has to be correct.  If something messes up past transactions your reconcile will also fail.

The bottom line here is there isn't going to be an answer where all of this just magically "works".