Online balance vs. Ending balance

bhewey

Both my bank web site and my Quicken checking account register window Ending Balance is the same. The Online balance showing at the bottom of the checking account register window is different. How is the Online Balance calculated in Quicken?

NotACPA

Online Balance ISN"T calculated in Q ... it's downloaded from your bank and represents all transactions that have POSTED at the bank (i.e., it excludes future dated transactions and "Authorized", but not yet posted) transactions.

NotACPA

Online Balance ISN"T calculated in Q ... it's downloaded from your bank and represents all transactions that have POSTED at the bank (i.e., it excludes future dated transactions and "Authorized", but not yet posted) transactions.

bhewey

Not too sure. Ending balance on bank website before any pending transactions is higher than Quicken online balance. When I include all pending transactions the bank balance is lower than the Quicken online balance.

Chris_QPW

bhewey@comcast.net said:

Not too sure. Ending balance on bank website before any pending transactions is higher than Quicken online balance. When I include all pending transactions the bank balance is lower than the Quicken online balance.

Quicken reports what it gets, but there isn't anything that ensures what it gets is right or "up to date".  One needs to also look at the date that came with that online balance.

With Direct Connect it is pretty straightforward, the online balance and date come down in the downloaded transactions directly from the financial institution.  If it is wrong, then it is the fault of the financial institution.  And that has certainly happened.  Like them sending transactions, that aren't in the balance or the other way around.

With Express Web Connect it gets a lot more convoluted.
Quicken talks to the Quicken server to sync transaction data and this kind of information with the Quicken Cloud dataset.  That server in turn talks to an Intuit server which in turn fetches the data from the financial institution's website using an "agreed method".  So, this method has a lot more "players" involved so it is hard to tell exactly which has the problem.

There are the "rules", like "don't send pending transactions, and don't include them in the online balance, and give me the online balance as of now."  But that doesn't mean all the "players" will get it right.

When the online balance is wrong with Direct Connect you need to talk to the financial institution, but when the online balance is wrong with Express Web Connect you have to contact Quicken support so that they can escalate it so that someone can figure out what is going wrong.