Huge reconciliation discrepancies

Susie

I reconcile my accounts every month.  When I tried to reconcile two brokerage accounts to 11/30/21, my accounts were off by a lot!  I do not know what to do.  Please help!

Quicken Jasmine

Hi @Susie,

Thank you for coming to the community, I am sorry that you are experiencing this issue. 

In order to better help you towards a resolution, I need a little bit more information. What FI are these brokerage accounts through and what kind of connection are you using (direct, web, etc.)? 

I look forward to hearing your response. 

Thank you, 
Quicken Jasmine

jacobs

Susie said:

I reconcile my accounts every month.  When I tried to reconcile two brokerage accounts to 11/30/21, my accounts were off by a lot!  I do not know what to do.  Please help!

Another question in addition to the ones Quicken Jasmine asked: when you are trying to reconcile these brokerage accounts and seeing they are off, are you referring to using the Reconcile button (or menu selection) in order to reconcile the cash in these brokerage accounts? Or are you comparing values in your Portfolio view for your holdings and finding them in disagreement with your brokerage statement?

Susie

I am using the Reconcile button.  There were multiple duplicate sales and purchases which were not there last month.  I had to go through the accounts and attempt to delete duplicate entries.  Why should this happen????

Susie

I am also getting duplicate income entries.  There is no way to reconcile!  I have not updated to Q 6.4.5

Quicken Jasmine

Hi @Susie,

Thank you for your response. If you are not updated to the latest Quicken software, I would recommend starting there. 

Please let us know if the issue still persists after updating the software and we can go from there. 

Thank you, 
Quicken Jasmine 

Quicken September

Hello, @Susie.

Thank you for your clarification of @jacobs question! I know that issues like this can be very frustrating and we apologize for the trouble. However, in order to help us better assist you, we will need some additional information.

What Financial Institution are these accounts associated with? Are they both with the same institution?
Have you noticed any abnormal behavior with any other accounts or institutions in Quicken?
When did these accounts start misbehaving? Does this date correlate with any changes you or the institution may have made recently?

Once you have this additional information, please reach back out so that we may further diagnose and troubleshoot this error with you. Thank you!

-Quicken September 

Susie

The two accounts with duplicate entries are with Stifel Financial.  I had no trouble reconciling as of October 31.  This was the November 30 reconcile.  The company did change websites.  Do you think this is the issue?

Susie

I have been a little worried about updating Quicken as several people have had problems with this update.

Quicken September

Hello again, @Susie. 

Thank you for taking the time to update us here in the Community! I am sorry that you have been dealing with this problem. It is very possible that if Stifel Financial switched up their website (and in turn the way that they send us their data), it could have resulted in duplicates. Often times when we see a big change involving a financial institution or a connection method, there may be duplicates present upon the first link with the new system put in place.

In this case, my recommendation is to delete the duplicate transactions to get your account back to balance, and then keep an eye on the accounts for next month. If you receive any additional duplicates, it could be indicative of a larger issue, however, with the correspondence to the new website, it seems to me like it was most likely a result of the transition. Out of curiosity, how far back in time do these duplicates stretch?

Of course if this behavior persists, please let us know so that we may try some additional troubleshooting steps. Thank you for your time!

-Quicken September

jacobs

@Susie  Just to clarify terminology a bit, the problem you're having is that duplicate transactions downloaded. It's not really a problem with Reconcile, although perhaps that's where you noticed all the duplicates.

As @Quicken September notes, if a financial institution makes changes to their systems, they do sometimes cause duplicate transactions to download. Every transaction is coded by the financial institution with a unique transaction ID number, called FITID ("Financial Institution Transaction ID"). quicken relies on these FITID numbers to prevent duplicates from showing up in your register. A transaction downloads and is entered into your register. The next time you connect, the same transaction downloads from the bank, but Quicken sees the ID number is a duplicate, so it discards the duplicate transaction and you never see it. 

You can view these normally-hidden ID numbers if you click on the Columns icon in your register and check the box for FITID. Make this column wide enough to view in your register, and now look at two transactions which are duplicates. If the FITID numbers are different, that means the bank changed the ID number of the transaction in their switch from their old system to their new system. There's nothing Quicken can do to prevent this, because the ID numbers are created and sent by the bank. You might think Quicken should see the date and amount are the same, so it should know it's a duplicate, but duplicate amount transactions occur in the real world, so Quicken relies on the FITID numbers to determine what's a duplicate, because each one is supposed to be unique.

The good news is that if this is a one-time issue with the bank, then once you clean up the duplicates from your account(s), it shouldn't recur. The bad news is that if it's a programming error at the bank, and they keep changing the FITID numbers, this will keep happening. That's rare, but it has happened with some banks until they were notified and fixed their software. 

In any case, I suggest you print or download the bank statement and then go through comparing it with your Quicken register one item at a time, deleting any duplicates you find. Then you should be able to reconcile successfully.

I hope that better explains how things work, and gives you a path toward clearing up the problem the bank spewed into your Quicken data. 

Susie

Thank you!  This makes sense.  I have a call in to the Quicken specialist at my financial institution.  In the meantime I deleted the duplicates (I hope I deleted the correct ones)
and it just about reconciles.  It will be nice if this does not continue to occur.  

Quicken September

Hello, @jacobs!

Thank you for your contribution to the Community elaborating on FITIDs - we greatly appreciate your time and energy! @Susie, if this issue continues, or you have any further issues, please reach back out so that we may assist you further. We are always happy to help! Thank you both.

-Quicken September

Susie

Thank you!  I consulted my financial institution and we will check back next week when new transactions should come in to see if there are any duplicates.  

Quicken September

Hello, @Susie

Thank you for the update! I am glad that you have a plan going forward. Please let us know what you find out so that we may assist you further if needed. Thank you and have a wonderful day!

-Quicken September