Reconciliation cleared balance is not zero; no transactions yet cleared

Tom Knueven

Reconciling a credit card account. I have entered in the correct statement date, charges, payments and ending balance as per the statement. After clearing everything, quicken showed a difference. I rechecked my entries to ensure they matched the statement (they did); cleared all marked transactions and manually went through each line in the statement reconciling as I went; quicken showed a difference again. I re-cleared everything and realized that quicken was showing a positive cleared balance ($3,600.58) with no transactions cleared.
I always thought the cleared balance should be zero until I started clearing during reconciliation.

Quicken Alyssa

Hello @Tom Knueven,

Thank you for coming to the Community with your question, though I apologize for the delayed response. 

When reconciling using a paper statement, the cleared balance at the beginning of this process is actually the ending balance of the previous reconciliation. 

Hope this helps! Do let us know if you have any more questions!



Quicken Alyssa

Tom Young

"Reconciling a credit card account. I have entered in the correct statement date, charges, payments and ending balance as per the statement. After clearing everything, quicken showed a difference. I rechecked my entries to ensure they matched the statement (they did); cleared all marked transactions and manually went through each line in the statement reconciling as I went; quicken showed a difference again."

Having worked through all "this month's" transactions twice to ensure they are recorded accurately, you pretty much have to conclude that the opening balance for the reconciliation is incorrect.  That is, some prior period transaction or transactions have changed such that you're never going to reconcile the account until you track down why the prior period balance has changed.

RhondaD_123

Seeing the same issue for the first time in one of my accounts. Both cleared and ending balances are correct and Quicken is showing an erroneous difference, though I reconciled to the penny on this account every month. Makes no sense.

Steve Mills

Same problem here. This has been an issue for a long time. No solution that I've found.

MBechard

First time happening for me - does anyone have a solution?

karjojr

I'm having the same issue: I enter all the balances on the first reconciliation screen, go to the second screen that lists all transactions to be reconciled. At the very beginning, no transactions have been cleared. Shouldn't the "Cleared Balance" field be $0.00 to begin??

Carl_in_CA

In my situation, the register had correct opening and final balances AND the transactions were correct, however, in the reconcile window, it would not reconcile. Unselecting all transactions showed "-1 entries selected" and a negative balance equal to the reconcile error. There was no opening balance error as others have found. The numbers just didn't add up in the reconcile window. Curiously, selecting all the transactions caused the error to double. So, I selected and unselected the transactions in the reconcile window until the balance went to zero. Very odd. I was then able to select all the transactions and it reconciled. This isn't a satisfactory fix, but I was able to move on for now.

Carl_in_CA

More to the story: The count for number of cleared entries is incorrect. Unclearing the entries by dragging the mouse over the cleared expenses seems to get to zero balance quickly. The unfortunate side effect is that there are entries in the register that don't get the "R" for reconciled that have to be set manually so that the next reconciliation has the correct opening balance.

Carl_in_CA

Even more: Once the count is cleared by dragging the mouse, each entry must be selected individually (no dragging) to get the correct sum.

Also, if the starting balance in the reconcile window doesn't match the register, close the window without saving and open it again. It will likely be correct the second time.

This is painful

K Walsh

I am having this problem now and cannot get it to resolve.
I reconciled 3 times. My numbers ARE correct.
I cancelled and started over.
I cancelled and restarted my computer, just in case.
I unreconciled my previous statement.
It is still showing a non-zero "cleared" balance, which doesn't make sense when nothing has been cleared.
It is still showing the wrong "difference"--there should be none.
It is also showing the wrong previous statement date.
This is a major issue--I can't reconcile this account.
I have reconciled 2 other accounts today and there was no problem.

Tom Young

"I reconciled 3 times. My numbers ARE correct."

I assume what you're saying there is "all my current period numbers are correct."  But you need to understand that the implicit assumption for a "current period" reconciliation is that nothing has changed in any of the prior period transactions, that is that the "opening balance" for the period to be reconciled is correct.  If the opening balance is incorrect - which sounds like that might be the case - then you'll never be able to reconcile the statement balance to Quicken's balance.

The opening balance for a reconciliation is the sum of all transactions before this statement's ending date with an "R" in the Clr column, and the date of the opening balance is the date of the last transaction with an R in the Clr column.  Since you've said Quicken is showing a wrong previous statement date - earlier than it should be? - that does suggest that some previous transaction with an R in the Clr column has been changed, like maybe a transaction subsequent to the incorrect date was deleted? 

If you have a backup at or shortly after the prior period's ending date you might open that backup and note the Account's balance as of the statement closing date (checking to see that it still reconciles to the statement) and compare that balance to your current file's Account balance as of that date.  Ordinarily they should be the sane number if it they're not then you have to hunt down what transaction or transactions are causing the difference.

lula

same problem: I looked back at the beginning balance for the account (10/2012) and the OPENEING BALANCE WAS THE SAME NUMBER AS THE 'CLEARED' AMOUNT showing with no checkmarked transactions. I changed the opening balance to zero and it fixed the problem. Don't ask me why i decided to look there and that transaction was marked Reconciled. totally strange. but it's fixed now...

lula

OPENING...
also going to try linking another account and see if I have the same problem with the same solution.

lula

YES!!! I checked the opening balance of the account before downloading the statement and it was $0
After I connected to the website and downloaded it changed the opening balance. I have no idea why but as soon as I put it back to $0 it fixed it. SO Annoying and random! The opening balance was from 2012 and it was marked as R (reconciled) so it wasn't showing up anywhere as a red flag. but it matched the discrepancy amount for both new accounts that I linked to Quicken. And they were both different amounts so I'm not sure where Quicken's glitch is with this issue.

Tom Young

As a prophylactic to this "opening balance gets changed" issue I'd suggest entering a new transaction, dated the same as the date of the opening balance entry, with the correct opening balance in the memo field.  That makes this problem easier to handle.

quickenistheworst

[Removed - Rant]