Checking Account Register Column Balance not matching Ending Balance

cmarshall_ak

My checking account register column balance shows $9938.34 while the Ending balance shows $7151.01 for a delta of $2787.33. I have reconciled my checking account using the April 14, 2022 bank's paper statement and the $7151.01 Ending Balance is correct while the register column balance is not.

There are five cleared transactions after April 14 but all transactions prior to April 14 are reconciled.

I backed up the account and then validated it but that did not fix the incorrect register column balance. Any idea how to resolve the incorrect register column balance?

NotACPA

Making sure that I understand what you're saying.  You reconciled the account, to a paper statement as of 4/14/22, and the 2 matched at $9,938.34.

THEN, you've got transactions in the account, that occur after 4/14 that take the balance to $7,151,01.

So, what's wrong with that.  Of course the ending balance, coming after the reconcile as-of include transactions that aren't on the paper statement.

What's the sum of those transactions that are scheduled to happen after 4/14?

OR, what am I misunderstanding?

cmarshall_ak

No that is incorrect. The account paper statement new balance as of April 14 was $7139.53 but the register balance shows $9926.86 as of the last reconciled entry in the registry while the reconciliation process reconciles with the $7139.53 paper statement new balance.

The Ending Balance total includes the newest cleared transactions and agrees with the paper statement new balance plus the newest cleared transactions. The column balance is wrong by +2787.33

cmarshall_ak

I contacted Quicken support today and since I had transactions back to 2007 in that checking account, the tech felt restoring older backups was unwise and recommended I create a new Quicken file and start over.

Chris_QPW

The first thing I would check is the sort order and the filtering if any is being applied.  These will affect the running balance, but not the reconcile or the ending balance.

Sort by Date, with no filters (click on the triangle in front of "Filters" to see the filter pulldown menus).

cmarshall_ak said:

I contacted Quicken support today and since I had transactions back to 2007 in that checking account, the tech felt restoring older backups was unwise and recommended I create a new Quicken file and start over.

This basically the opposite of what I would recommend.
I would recommend seeing if the problem is in a backup or not if it isn't a sort/filtering problem.

If it is actually a problem with the account register, then I would create a new account and transfer the transactions to it using this method (and then delete the old account).  I certainly wouldn't be willing to throw away my whole financial history for such a problem.

FAQ: How Do I Move Transactions Between Quicken Accounts? — Quicken

cmarshall_ak

Just for an experiment, I restored a file a year old and the checking account balance error still exists.

Now I created another checking account and are moving transactions from the corrupted checking account to the new checking account. Is there any way to override each "Moving a reconciled (R) transaction, Continue?" dialog box?

Should I cancel every dialog box that reads, "Deleting transfer to cleared (R) item. Are you sure?" What happens ti the transaction that had the transfer if I just selected OK?

Thanks.

Chris_QPW

The problem with the prompting on every reconciled transaction during a move is a long-standing problem that they have never fixed.

That is why the FAQ suggests using copy which doesn't have this prompt, and then deleting the account.
Another approach that has been suggested is to change all the reconciled transactions to cleared before doing the copy.  But I have found that you will still get the prompt on transfers, so I don't recommend that.

The copy or move will work properly with transfers, so that isn't a problem.

One other thing to look out for is any balance adjustments.  Which includes the opening balance.  The account used will stay as the old account name and needs to be updated to the new one.

cmarshall_ak

Thank you for the tip. I should have read the FAQ closer and did the copy instead of move. I'll start over with the copy.

cmarshall_ak

Thanks Chris_QPW for the tips. Copying transactions to a new account year by year starting with year 2007 showed the balance skew in 2013. There was a corrupted paycheck that had skewed the column balance by $2787.33 too high. Copying that transaction and pasting it back to the same account fixed the column balance error. I guess I had just been paying attention to the Ending Balance and not the column balance until recently when I spotted the column balance error.

Chris_QPW

I'm glad you figured it out.