BUG - Credit Cards with Credit Balances confuse Quicken Reconciliation

James Wallerius

Received a refund on my credit card when I had a zero balance so my balance became positive (rather than money owed). Whenever this happens, Quicken for Mac can't reconcile it.

When reconciling, My Quicken Balance reports +$74.15, but my Online Balance (from USAA Banks) reports as -$74.15. Because of the sign problem - Quicken thinks there's a $148.30 discrepancy rather than a balanced account.

Could Quicken Debuggers look at how they & USAA are transmitting credit card balances? Again, this only happens with credit balances. THANKS.

UKR

You might want to "report a problem" in Quicken, to send in your log files and the URL of this discussion (click Quicken / Report a problem).

This should give Quicken information about the latest credit card download showing the overpaid balance and possibly give them a clue about the problem.
Online balance being incorrect for credit balances (from many banks, not just yours) is a very long standing problem which has yet to be fixed.
For as long as your credit card account has an overpaid balance turn off reconciling to online balance and reconcile against a paper statement (where you'd have to input the overpaid balance as a negative amount)

jacobs

Or call Quicken Support so you can have them see the issue and document it for a bug report. There are two problems with Report a Problem for issues like this: (1) Unless you send all appropriate screenshots, they can't replicate the problem because it involves your credit card account with USAA, and (2) you get no feedback from Quicken about whether they can or cannot understand/replicate/document your problem. 

NotACPA

To the bank, USAA, the negative amount shows that they owe you money ... this is exactly the same as the positive amount (with the same absolute value) that Q's is displaying.

Card reconciliation normally assumes that you owe the bank money.  Input, into the reconciliation screen the amount with a Negative sign (instead of no sign) and it should work.

jacobs

@NotACPA The problem appears to be that James is using the "Use current balance" option where the balance comes from the financial institution — and the balance is coming in incorrectly signed. (It's not clear if the problem is USAA sending the balance incorrectly signed or Quicken incorrectly signing it.)

@James Wallerius There should be any easy way around this if you don't want to pursue trying to get Quicken to look into fixing this. In Quicken Mac, on the starting Reconcile screen, select "Use statement balance" instead of "Use current balance". Enter the same date, and the proper balance as a negative number (e.g. -$74.15).

Then proceed to the main reconciliation file screen, and you should see it showing the Statement Ending Balance of -$74.15, and the reconciliation should work.

Next month, assuming you don't have a credit balance, you can switch back to "Use current balance" if you wish.