Can't deal with a credit balance?

Eric

So, I got a refund to my credit card that caused it to have a credit balance. Quicken apparently can't deal with it. It thinks there is a discrepancy between Online balance of -$741 vs Quicken balance of $741. Either the bank or quicken is seriously confused.

Jon

With credit cards in Quicken, a negative balance means you owe the CC company, a positive balance means they owe you. This is opposite from how CC companies often display the card balance on their websites. I would expect Quicken to show a positive balance in this situation; I would not be surprised if the CC company showed it as a negative balance.

It's been a few years since I had a positive balance on a card, but I don't remember Quicken having a problem with it at the time.

Eric

Yes, CC company and Quicken use opposite signs. Under “normal” circumstances, everything works just fine. In this credit balance case, someone lost track of the sign. Just don’t know which.

NotACPA

IIRC, in trying to reconcile this account, put a minus sign in front of the Ending Balance.

Eric

Thank you for your suggestion as a work-around/hack to the problem. But, that does not alter the fact that there is clearly a bug/defect in the bank's or Quicken's code.

NotACPA

Q expects the ending balance to be a negative number, but you put it in as a positive number, no sign.

What you've actually got is the reverse of that, so you need to input your to match what Q wants.

How is that a work-around/hack?  SOMEHOW, you need to tell Q what the absolute value is.

Eric

I want to use online balance and auto reconcile. I expect Quicken to give the correct answer, that they reconcile, instead of Quicken telling me that it doesn't. If I turn off online balance, and use your suggestion, then yes, it reconciles.

NotACPA

Go back to @Jon's reply re: what the card show on their site vs what they tell  Q.

An online balance isn't gospel, as the banks can/do, change things from 1st post to statement delivery.

Eric

Go back to all my posts and noticed that I've always allowed the possibility that the error is on the bank side. I have no proof one way or the other. The bottom line is this software is not producing the correct output. Your suggestion forces the correct output by turning off a feature (online balance). Now I have to manually enter the correct input in order for it to reconcile correctly.

NotACPA

And now you've got another example why reconciling to the online balance isn't considered to be reliable.

jacobs

Eric said:

Your suggestion forces the correct output by turning off a feature (online balance). Now I have to manually enter the correct input in order for it to reconcile correctly.

@Eric But how often does your credit card account have a positive (credit) balance? For most people, that's a very rare occurrence. So if you have to work around it to reconcile at this moment, it's not like you'll have to do so all the time.

Eric

Just checked my mint account. It does not have any issue dealing with the credit balance. It is shown correctly. So, I'd conclude this is a Quicken issue and not the CC company.

Eric

Hmmm...reconnecting the account apparently fixed the issue.

bmylander

Eric, Thank you. This solved it for me as well.