When an account is closed and set to a zero balance what is the other side of that transaction?

richuser155

Where does the zeroed amount show up?

volvogirl

Are you making an entry to zero it out?  You can enter a category on it.  Or you can enter the name of the same account for the category so it is a transfer back to the same account.  Those are a special one sided entry and there is no other side.   

richuser155

Thank you for looking at this. This has to do with when I have Quicken close an account and it makes an adjustment to zero. In all accounting there is not a one-sided entry. So where is the other side?

Chris_QPW

richuser155 said:

Thank you for looking at this. This has to do with when I have Quicken close an account and it makes an adjustment to zero. In all accounting there is not a one-sided entry. So where is the other side?

There is one time where in accounting that you don't have a two-sided entry, and that is when the amount comes or goes from an account that isn't in your accounts.

An example of this is would be the change in value of your house.  So, Quicken has a special syntax for a transaction that changes the balance of an account, but doesn't affect any other account or category.

If you are in account "Checking" you enter [Checking].  This is used in the cases the Opening Balance transaction and for balance adjustments.  This "self-referencing transfer" doesn't really make any sense in the "real world" it is just using that syntax for this purpose.  Just like it used that category field for transfers in the first place.

In truth when you go to close an account you should almost never have any amount in that account, and as such this balance adjustment shouldn't have to be used.  Just like a balance adjustment after a reconcile proves that the reconcile was never completed properly.

For instance, if I have Checking account and I close it, then most likely I opened another account and move the move money in that checking account to it.  As such the last transaction should have been a transfer to the other account.  The exception would be if you decided not to track the new account in Quicken, and so you wouldn't have an account in Quicken to transfer the money to.

richuser155

This is the best explanation yet. Thank you. But does Quicken "remember" the adjustments and are they viewable anywhere?

Chris_QPW

These are transactions like any other transaction so that is how they are "remembered".

They show up in reports like the banking account transaction report as "transfers", but you have to make sure that you have "Include all" selected for transfers on the Advanced tab in the report customization because usually they are filtered off it any of the "Exclude" transfer options are selected.

Example: