How to reconcile credit card account with correct positive balance

largosunset

My credit card account has received some refunds resulting in a correct positive balance at the end of the statement period. When I reconcile, the reconcile dialog box correctly shows the cleared balance as a negative number (credit), but it shows the statement ending balance as a positive number, resulting in a difference of twice the cleared balance, when it should be 0.

Frankx

Hi @largosunset,

I suspect that this particular credit card is a "Citi" or Citibank" credit card - is that correct?

If so, this is a known problem where the bank is sending an incorrect sign (+/-) for the balance. The fix for this is for you to not use the online balance provided in the reconcile window, but rather use the "Reconcile to: Paper statement" instead, until such time that the balance becomes a negative number (i.e. you no longer are overpaid in the account).

Hope this helps.

Frankx

q_lurker

I believe it has been shown that a true credit balance from the CC (they owe you money rather than you owing them money) at the statement date does NOT flow through Quicken correctly.

I suggest you accept the reconcile as presented, let Quicken add in a balance adjustment transaction, let all the applicable transactions go to status of "R:, and then delete the added balance adjustment transaction.  

Frankx

Hi @largosunset,

I suspect that this particular credit card is a "Citi" or Citibank" credit card - is that correct?

If so, this is a known problem where the bank is sending an incorrect sign (+/-) for the balance. The fix for this is for you to not use the online balance provided in the reconcile window, but rather use the "Reconcile to: Paper statement" instead, until such time that the balance becomes a negative number (i.e. you no longer are overpaid in the account).

Hope this helps.

Frankx

q_lurker

I believe it has been shown that a true credit balance from the CC (they owe you money rather than you owing them money) at the statement date does NOT flow through Quicken correctly.

I suggest you accept the reconcile as presented, let Quicken add in a balance adjustment transaction, let all the applicable transactions go to status of "R:, and then delete the added balance adjustment transaction.  

grgrsu

I have the same issue. I have a credit balance due to a large refund. It does not matter what credit card it is. When I try to reconcile to the online balance, the program tries to reconcile the balance to the reverse operation. This is a bug in the program that Quicken should fix. Also, if I choose Reconcile to Paper Statement instead, I get a pop up saying "Reconciling to a paper statement after reconciling to your online balance can cause some problems. Click help for details," but it does not say what what problems it may cause.

q_lurker

@grgrsu - The only issue I know about regarding the change of approach for a reconcile is that the prior online reconcile may have set the status to ‘R’ for transactions that are not yet reconciled through the paper statement.  In terms of getting to the proper ending balance, there should not be any problem. Yes, the message could be made clearer. 

Yes, it is a bug that the ending credit balance is mishandled. I do think that was an early design decision by Quicken. I believe they saw it more likely that the user would enter the wrong sign than that the user would actually have a credit balance, so they opted to treat all ending balance entries as debts owed by the card-holder. FWIW. 

maddogxx

Frank X : has the correct answer , but it's Navy FCU ; reconciling to statement and using the - balance for a credit results in positive balnce for quicken and reconciles to 0