Bank not providing correct balance?

davidr418

I've been successfully using Quicken Premier to download my bank transactions a few times per week for perfect, painless reconciliations. Recently this quit working.

The bank totals no longer match Quicken's totals. Since I almost never make manual entries, this is very puzzling to me.

For example, a few days ago I tried to reconcile, but found that the bank thought I had $232.81 more than Quicken thought I did. I wasn't able to find the source of the discrepancy so I let Quicken add the amount in as an "adjustment". Weird, but there you go.

Today, I tried reconciling again. Quicken downloaded 6 transactions from my bank. With a calculator, I manually subtracted each one from my previous Quicken balance, and the results matched with what Quicken says.

But my bank-- Bank of America-- says I have $109.11 less than Quicken does.

In other words, every reconciliation, even one made with few transactions _after_ an adjustment was made for the previous reconciliation, now fails.

Since I've done the math on my side and Quicken is correct-- that is, the (adjusted) amount of the last reconciliation minus the subsequent transactions matches the current amount Quicken shows, it seems as though my bank is providing an incorrect total.

Again, this is occurring on _every_ reconciliation, for the last 3 reconciliations.

This Quicken file has been in use for years. About the only thing I can think of at this point is to start anew. But before I do that, does anyone have any ideas?

jacobs

Yes, some banks (incorrectly) tell Quicken your balance including pending transactions which have not yet posted, while the actual transactions are only those which have posted. This can create a discrepancy simply due to mis-matched timing. (Banks should not transmit the pending balance, only the posted balance.) To make things more confusing, if you log into your bank's website, what you see may contain transactions which just recently posted but have not yet been provided to Quicken (which typically happens once a night with Quicken Connect).

And because financial institutions are always making changes in their systems and websites, this may have worked flawlessly for many years and suddenly not be working correctly.

You should not need to abandon your longstanding Quicken data file.

davidr418

> @jacobs said:
> Yes, some banks (incorrectly) tell Quicken your balance including pending transactions which have not yet posted, while the actual transactions are only those which have posted. This can create a discrepancy simply due to mis-matched timing. (Banks should not transmit the pending balance, only the posted balance.) To make things more confusing, if you log into your bank's website, what you see may contain transactions which just recently posted but have not yet been provided to Quicken (which typically happens once a night with Quicken Connect).
>
> And because financial institutions are always making changes in their systems and websites, this may have worked flawlessly for many years and suddenly not be working correctly.
>
> You should not need to abandon your longstanding Quicken data file.

So, I guess the only solution is to return to manual reconciliation?

jacobs

davidr418 said:

So, I guess the only solution is to return to manual reconciliation?

Well, the first thing I'd do is contact BOA about what they're doing. Hopefully if others contact them, they'll have someone look at it and correct it.

Meanwhile, you can still use Quicken to reconcile to your monthly BOA statement. The statement they generate is consistent with transactions and the balance it shows. Use the balance on the statement rather than the online balance which may include pending transactions. If there is a discrepancy of a day between the transaction dates on the BOA statement and what they download to Quicken, you can enter an ending date for your reconciliation one or two days past the date on the statement.

davidr418

Found it: BOA has started reported the current account balance, taking into account transactions that are still "processing". Quicken only downloads cleared transactions, not processing transactions, so the balance will always be off by the total of the non-cleared transactions.

BOA must have changed this in the last month or so, sigh.

davidr418

And here's the (hack) solution:

1. Reconcile account and note the "disagreement" amount.
2. Log into bank account and total "Processing" transactions. Ensure that this matches the amount in Step 1.
3. Reconcile account with "adjustment".
4. Delete the adjustment.

Sigh...

dm583

I have this issue too - ongoing since at least December 2021. Can someone at Quicken work with BOA to fix this??? I'm sure there are a very significant number of Quicken users with BOA accounts.

Quicken Anja

Hello @dm583,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community, however, since this is an older post that was originally created back in November of 2021, it is less likely to receive an answer now.

I would suggest creating a new post in the proper Windows category for better visibility and to potentially receive responses from other users who may currently be experiencing the same problem. Doing so will also assist us with better tracking ability in the event that this issue may result in an escalation being required.

Please be sure to include a description of the issue, any error messages (if applicable) as well as the version of Quicken you have currently running (Help > About Quicken). The more information you are able to provide will help the Community to better understand and assist.

Thank you!