Bank account disparities between my bank and Quicken

Bdrake100

I think this is the same issue being discussed here. Quicken consistently shows the balance I have to spend as $5000 or more lower than what shows on my bank’s site or app. My bank assures me what what their app shows or displays when I log onto my account there with a PC is what my spendable balance actually is. But the disparity does cause me some discomfort. Can someone help me understand what’s going on?

I mainly use Quicken because it helps me sort out the info I need at tax time. I suspect this is a defect in Quicken because the same disparities show for my Fidelity. Investment holdings, but in balances and the stocks it says are in my account (some of which I haven’t held for years).

jacobs

Your "spendable balance" visible on the financial institution's website likely includes any pending deposits or payments which have not yet posted. If the bank is passing this value to Quicken as your online balance, it won't match the transactions in Quicken, because Quicken hasn't yet received the unposted pending transactions.

If you use your actual posted balance (not spendable balance) from the bank website, and in Quicken reconcile to statement balance instead of online balance, I think you'll find your reconciliation will work. 

Bdrake100

Thanks for your answer, Jacob.But I’m not sure I understand and am skeptical because when I do spot checks, the pending transaction on the bank app to not account for the amount of the difference. I may have used “spendable balance” too loosely. I just meant the true hard balance. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m just going to assume that if I didn’t have Quicken, I can rely on the data provided by the bank when it comes to how much cash I really have.

jacobs

@Bdrake100 Well, there might be more that's wrong between Quicken and the bank; I was just seizing on the spendable or online balance differing from Quicken's balance. 

I don't know if or how you typically reconcile your Quicken balance versus the bank's. Do you ever reconcile to a monthly statement from the bank? This is what I'd suggest, at least to get things squared away. Make a copy of your data file, in case you make things worse instead of better. Then go back to the last time you correctly reconciled Quicken versus a bank statement, or if you don't routinely do this, then perhaps go back to your year-end statement from last year, or some other point in the past. The goal is to get some point isn time where your Quicken reconciliation matches a bank statement. Then you can move forward in time, perhaps a month at a time, or several months if things seem in order, until you arrive at a month where things don't reconcile correctly. Perhaps there's a missing transaction, or a duplicated transaction, in Quicken. But because you're simply comparing transactions on the bank statement to transactions in Quicken, it's just a matter of methodically moving forward until you find/fix whatever discrepancy there might be.

I reconcile my bank account and all my credit card accounts to Quicken upon receipt of each account's monthly statement. I never have any errors in these reconciliations, except when I find I've entered something wrong; upon correction to match the bank statement transaction list, the reconciliations simply have to work out. I'm not saying you need to do it this way, as Quicken gives you other options, but this is a sure fire way to make sure the two sources of data are in agreement.