Marking Reconciliation periods

fschmid

It would be nice to be able to check a reconciliation period for current accuracy. I wish there was a way to mark the "Prior balance" and the "Ending balance" for each reconciliation period in the account after it has been reconciled. This way one could pick any reconciliation period and test if it was still accurate. Now and then I enter or modify a transaction that has the wrong date. Or am I thinking this the wrong way?

mshiggins

I use a "reminder" transaction to mark the reconciliation date. Basically just a zero amount transaction where I record the reconcile date in the memo.

You could use a zero amount transaction and include the balance amounts in the memo. 

Sherlock

Whenever we reconcile a register, we are reconciling the entire register.  The reconciled balance is the total of all of the transactions marked as reconciled and should match the closing balance of the last statement we reconciled.  If the reconciled balance has changed since we reconciled, a reconciled transaction has been added, modified, or deleted.  To determine the source of the change, we compare the running balance of the account register in the current Quicken file with the running balance of the account register from a Quicken file backup saved when the account was last reconciled.  One way to accomplish this is to print the registers to text files and use a program to compare the files.

fschmid

Are you saying I should do more backups?

Chris_QPW

For what it is worth, Quicken Mac has a reconcile history feature, Quicken Windows doesn't.

fschmid

That would be nice in Quicken Windows also.

Chris_QPW

You can vote for it here:
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7889249/quicken-windows-should-implement-the-reconcile-history-re-reconcile-that-quicken-mac-has

Sherlock

fschmid said:

Are you saying I should do more backups?

I don't know whether you need to save more backups or not.  You should at least be saving a backup when you have successfully reconciled a register so that you may reference it.  Disk space is cheap and the stress and time having a good backup saves when there is an issue is immense.

fschmid

How do I vote for it? Just by leaving a post?

Chris_QPW

fschmid said:

How do I vote for it? Just by leaving a post?

Click here:

fschmid

Thanks, I put my vote in.

mshiggins

I don't recall how many years ago it was, but QWin did have a reconcile history feature. It caused more problems than it solved, so it was eventually removed. 

Chris_QPW

mshiggins said:

I don't recall how many years ago it was, but QWin did have a reconcile history feature. It caused more problems than it solved, so it was eventually removed. 

Interesting.  I do see a few posts on the Mac side where people have had problems with it, but nothing major.  But then again, the Mac developers are better than the Windows developer on such things.

I personally, do remember the feature, it would have been one of those things I would have never used.
In fact, the main reason I see these days for it, is the fact that Quicken Windows has bugs in it that changing opening balance and other transactions messing up people reconciles and as such need to know about the history.

I only use Direct Connect and no syncing to Mobile/Web and luckily have never experienced such problems, and as such I have never found a need to go back and check on past reconciles.

Sherlock

Chris_QPW said:

mshiggins said:

I don't recall how many years ago it was, but QWin did have a reconcile history feature. It caused more problems than it solved, so it was eventually removed. 

Interesting.  I do see a few posts on the Mac side where people have had problems with it, but nothing major.  But then again, the Mac developers are better than the Windows developer on such things.

I personally, do remember the feature, it would have been one of those things I would have never used.
In fact, the main reason I see these days for it, is the fact that Quicken Windows has bugs in it that changing opening balance and other transactions messing up people reconciles and as such need to know about the history.

I only use Direct Connect and no syncing to Mobile/Web and luckily have never experienced such problems, and as such I have never found a need to go back and check on past reconciles.

I don't recall the functionality existing in Windows.  Was it removed prior to Quicken 98?

mshiggins

@Sherlock it had to be Q1999 or later as that was my first version. I see in Help the list of improvements made to Quicken over the years mentions Smarter Reconcile in Q2001. That seems like a likely candidate.