Auto reconcile uses fails due to pending transactions

Brett97

This problem happens more frequently on weeks and only after the most recent update. When I download my transactions my auto reconcile fails. Quicken Mac is using an online balance that includes pending transactions but does not download pending transactions into my register. How do I get it to use the correct online balance without including pending transactions?

jacobs

This is a function of your financial institution sending Quicken a balance which includes pending transactions, which it is not sending to Quicken. There's no way Quicken can determine the balance adjusting for transactions it isn't getting. I don't know which financial institution(s) you're seeing this with, but there are several which are doing this and causing this problem. All you can do is contact their support, try to get to talk to someone who is actually familiar with Quicken connectivity, and complain that they are sending the wrong balance which includes pending transactions to Quicken. 

--phantom--

This started happening to me a few months ago with my First Republic Bank checking account. Reconciliations fail if there are any pending transactions on the bank's list of transactions. I choose to cancel the reconciliation if this occurs and wait until there are no pending transactions but this is a PITA and I never had issues with this before. It sounds like many others have reported this issue recently with other banks so it certainly seems like it is a Quicken issue. Mac Version 6.8.3 (Build 608.44884.100)

--phantom--

> @--phantom-- said:
>t sounds like many others have reported this issue recently with other banks so it certainly seems like it is a Quicken issue.

Just got off the phone with FRB and it actually may be their issue, as they transitioned to a new way of handling Pending transactions in February 2022. I put in a request to have them change to returning the balance exclusive of Pending transitions to Quicken.

Colombo

Chase Manhattan - opposite prblem - will not balance because pending transactions do NOT dowload.

Brett97

That is the same problem. The balance has the pending and the details do not. Both need to use the same method. Pending should not be included because the true amount is not known. Adding tips is an example.

berthagator

This is *not* an institution problem; within the last 2 months, three different major institutions have starting having this issue with balances using pending transactions; Chase, Bank of America, and Barclays accounts are all doing this for me. I can never get the accounts to reconcile b/c there are pending transactions all over the place that don't get entered until days later. It seems evident that Quicken has changed something with which balance they are using.

Three months ago, the account for Comenity bank was downloading temporary authorizations, so the actual amount would be $1.78, but the temp auth would download in advance of the actual transaction in the amount of $2. That was a disaster to try and figure out. All these institutions did not change what they are sending to Quicken at the same time......

jacobs

berthagator said:

This is *not* an institution problem...  It seems evident that Quicken has changed something with which balance they are using.

You're somehow assuming that Quicken gets sent multiple balances and is choosing to use the wrong one. I don't think that's correct. These financial institutions have started sending Quicken a balance which includes pending transactions, even though those transactions don't download to Quicken. It seems to me that the financial institution has to make a fix to send Quicken the posted account balance, not the account balance which includes pending transactions. 

As you correctly note, if a financial institution starts sending pending transactions, as Community did after updating their system several months ago, it's a mess to straighten out. Quicken would need to know and track the transactions which are pending, and update the transaction amount when the transaction becomes posted. (Quicken typically disregard any downloaded transactions with the same identifying number, the FITID, in its database as previously downloaded.) But that's highly problematic, because users may have already reconciled using the pending amount — so Quicken would be changing the balance and the dollar amounts of reconciliations. That wouldn't be a good thing.