Pending Transactions x

Boatnmaniac

Quicken Anja said:

Hello All,

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community and reporting the issues with Pending Transactions, though we apologize for the trouble.

Our teams are aware of the issues and have released a server patch (this is not something that needs to be installed) to turn off the feature while we work on the issues. No action is required on your part. Unedited, pending transactions should no longer appear in your account registers.

Thank you!

Thanks.  I closed and relaunched Quicken and got this popup confirming what you said.  Very appropriate move.

Mark1104

@Matt - simply go to File> validate and Repair and then click the first check box. 

Frankx

Glad to hear that Quicken has turned off this feature. 

I note that since the pending transaction feature was rolled out - even if a user deselected the "pending transaction" box - it would automatically be checked if you close out Quicken and then restart it.  I am hoping that the Quicken techs fix that problem as well as when they fix the actual feature.

Personally, I don't see a whole lot of benefit to having pending transactions appear in a register, but I do understand that others may view it as desirable.  I never checked this box when this feature was first rolled out and yet I was seeing pending transactions in my registers - which was initially a shock to me.  So I would suggest when the feature is re-implemented, that the default should be to NOT show pending transactions, so users who don't want it will not have it automatically turned-on.

Frankx

dalesdervin

No- as a paying customer, YOU ARE BEING WARNED.

mark.granoff

FWIW, I can report that one of my checking accounts at Bank of America is off by the bizarre amount of $304.64. I cannot reconcile the account. I have searched at the bank for this amount (and variations). I have searched by Quicken transactions as well. I usually reconcile using the online balance, but as a test, I used bank statements from August and September (which both run 1st to last day of the month). Using the August statement, there were "no transactions to reconcile", which I take to mean "your Quicken data through August 30 is ok". Using the September statement, I come up with the same disparity. There are some uncleared transactions from September, but they total a larger sum. All this to say, no smoking gun there. I have also deactivated and reactivated online services for the checking account in question. No change with that either.

Now, the interesting thing is that at this point, Quicken has disabled the Pending Transactions feature, so I can't even twiddle with enabling/disabling it to see if that fixes my issue.

I am habitually fastidious about keeping my Quicken data correct and aligned with the bank. This issue is VERY disconcerting and I am honestly appalled that Quicken is so cavalier about releasing new "features" that they put the integrity of our data -- of our financial lives! -- in peril with every update.

Come on Quicken! Do better. As paying users we deserve it.

Mark1104

  @mark.granoff- if the account reconciles in August but not in September, it has something to do with the September transactions (probably stating the obvous).  The Pending Transactions should not be part of the problem as 'pending' transactions are not part of the balance at the bank. 

Suggest taking the BANK statement from September and TRACING each debit and each credit TO Quicken. It could be for some unknown reason that you have the same transaction in Quicken and at the Bank but with a different amount. 

if the amount is on the Bank statement, then a corresponding transaction for the SAME amount is reconciled on Quicken (be sure to change an unreconciled item to "R") if that occurs. 

if the amount is not on the Bank statement (but in Quicken) there should NOT be an 'R' in the reconciation column.

mark.granoff

@Mark1104 Certainly worth a try. Sigh. Will do though. I really want to get this resolved.

There have been other times (well before now) where things got messed up but in a few days the issues resolved themselves. Seems not likely to happen in this case (as it's been a while now....)

mark.granoff

@mark1104 That was a reasonable thing to try. The September bank statement exactly matches what I have in Quicken. Nothing extra on either side (bank or Quicken). I won't get the October statement for some time (November).

Mark1104

@mark.granoff  - now I am confused....

Above you stated :"Using the September statement, I come up with the same disparity"

then you state that "The September bank statement exactly matches what I have in Quicken"

So the problem is in October and not September?????

cdennett

If you attempted (successfully or not) to switch to the new EWC+ connection for Chase or whatever account you are having issues with, it probably changed your opening balance without your realizing it.  I know I and others had this issue with Chase and I've run into it in the past with other accounts.  Someone suggested using the memo field of the very first transaction in an account to record the opening balance.  When I was mucking around with my one Chase account I had to go and restore from a recent backup more than once before I figured out the opening balance had been changed.  Not saying this is what happened to you but it may be worth looking at.

mark.granoff

> @Mark1104 said:
> @mark.granoff  - now I am confused....
>
> Above you stated :"Using the September statement, I come up with the same disparity"
>
> then you state that "The September bank statement exactly matches what I have in Quicken"
>
> So the problem is in October and not September?????

When I used the September statement beginning date, ending date, and ending balance in the Quicken non-online balance reconcile workflow, the balance was off. That's what I meant when I said I came up with the same disparity with the September statement (using it for the workflow inputs).

When I verified each individual transaction on the September statement against what was recorded in quicken, I found nothing missing, nothing extra.

Sorry for that confusion! But thanks for asking for the clarification.

mark.granoff

@cdennett Indeed, I had that thought. And I've seen that issue in other accounts that "don't matter as much" and where the disparity was smaller.
The account in question was recently changed over to EWC/EWC+ (Bank of America). This is my primary checking account (among many accounts at this bank). I am hesitant to add an adjusting transaction, and it doesn't help that my data in this account goes back to 1998. The opening balance on this account is not the value by which the current reconciliation is off either.

Mark1104

@mark.granoff- still not making sense

1) does the BANK BALANCE from your august statement match the QUICKEN balance as of the end of august?  if yes, then your problem is after August 31

2) does the BANK BALANCE from your september statement match the QUICKEN balance as of the end of September.  if yes, then your problem is after Sept 30. If no, then your problem is IN SEPTEMBER

3) if the BALANCES don't match, then and only then should you trace each transaction from the BANK to quicken.

mark.granoff

@Mark1104
1: nope
2: nope
3: The bank statement transaction for September are all represented in Quicken, and there are no extra reconciled transactions in Quicken.
Everything was working just fine until only recently. I really think the pending transactions feature is the cause, but that's just a gut feeling. And with no way to turn it off now (because Quicken has disabled the feature now), I think I am stuck until they release another update or turn the feature back on.
I am not throwing in the towel on this, but things are not adding up (literally!).

Mark1104

@mark.granoff - then the problem is from prior to August..... others have suggested that the opening balance was somehoe changed.... might be easier to create an adjusting transaction to match the Bank Balance and move on.

jrich75

I recently had an opening balance change occur on a BofA credit card.  I had to use a backup to find out that the opening balance had changed.  I don't like using adjusting transactions.  Correcting the opening transaction resolved the balance discrepancy.
Others have suggested that the memo field of an opening balance transaction is a good place to record what the transaction amount should be since changes there seem to have been a common problem recently.  I've done that with all my accounts now.  

miklk

On conversion to EWC+ Unfortunately Quick is frequently adding an incorrect Opening Balance. In addition, it has been including some pending amounts when that was on.

I actually found it easier to fix one file by restoring a backup Before the switch and then converted to EWC+ again. Deleted the fake Opening Balance and all was OK. (Pending "Feature" off helps) 

dc0063

@mark.granoff
I experienced similar 'odd lot' difference on the conversion to Chase. They downloaded some transactions at the original connection and not shown in the approval window [I never let Q auto post}. Ultimately there were duplicate records but with a date one or two days after the original item. After finding one and lowering the outstanding difference, it was easier the find the other items.
As one who basically reconciles daily [with pending trx] to a final net balance, good luck.

mark.granoff

@mark1105 @cdennett @dc0063 et al

This morning I examined a backup from 9/30 and 10/1. Neither had an Opening Balance entry for the account in question, which now does post the conversion to EWC/EWC+. (Fwiw, this opening balance entry shows up with that description, as a deposit. So weird. Why do they do that?! I imagine it is because accounts are "supposed" to have such an entry. Anyway....)

So that would definitely seem to be the cause of my reconciliation woes. Now to figure out what the "right" value there ought to be. I am not opposed to keeping the entry and adjusting the value so that I can (as someone suggested), just "move on" to the next issue (and there is one!)

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of comparing backups. I've been using Quicken H&B for a long time. I am aware (as are we all, surely) of many, many quirks about this program and how to live with them. But when the numbers literally do not add up, as I said, that is quite disconcerting. Matters are made worse when Q does this kind of stuff "to help" or erroneously. I do wish that as a software organization, Quicken would re-double their quality assurance efforts.

Chris_QPW

@mark.granoff When you create a new account, they always create the Opening Balance transaction, even if the amount is zero.  In reality there isn't anything that special about it other than the category being [The Account], which BTW is the same syntax used for a balance adjustment transaction.

But it isn't that uncommon to just delete a zero amount Opening Balance transaction (it something I do all the time).  If that was the case in the backup the proper workaround might be to just delete it in the new one.  Or just change the amount to zero based on how much confidence you now have in Quicken not to repeat this problem.  If one thinks Quicken is going to do it again, then the better thing would be to zero the amount and put in a memo that says it should be zero so that you know what it is supposed to be in the future if it happens again.

The source of this problem is that there is some code that is running when it shouldn't.
If creating a new account that has already been around for a long time, the financial institutions will only provide about 90 days of the history, and that might not go back to the start of real account's history.  So, what Quicken is supposed to do in that case is look at the Online Balance it gets with the downloaded transactions and back calculate to get the Opening Balance transaction based on the transactions it did download.

Unfortunately, this code for the back calculation/entering the Opening Balance transaction is being triggered for some people when they reset Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect + account connections or in this case change the connection type. 

Gopher651

Why isn't a message box presented maybe "ending balance conflict detected. Adjustment transaction entered to correct" or "opening balance adjusted" something along those lines?

Chris_QPW

Gopher651 said:

Why isn't a message box presented maybe "ending balance conflict detected. Adjustment transaction entered to correct" or "opening balance adjusted" something along those lines?

That sounds like a great idea.  Maybe that is something you could suggest with an Idea that people can vote on.  Do start a new Idea go to the Home page and select New Post -> New Idea.

TTSguy

Yep another new feature, and also a new problem that needs to be fixed because of it. Why does this happen every time??? " One step forward, and two steps back....again. 

LMartini

I seem to still be having issues with the pending transactions. I go to my bank account website and transactions show as pending, but in my Quicken register they have a blue pencil next to them and do not show 'cleared'. I don't even have my accounts setup to auto-enter downloaded transactions. Is anyone else having this issue?

mark.granoff

As a follow-up, my particular out-of-balance issue was resolved by adjusting the Quicken-added Opening Balance entry that did not exist before convert my Bank of America accounts to EWC/EWC+.

Interestingly, I had also been seeing a really bogus projected balance on one BoA checking account. Somehow (gladly) that issue has disappeared. So, all good there (finally).

The latest nuance is that it seems that no BoA transactions are downloading now! It's only been a day, so I am willing to wait a bit to see if this is an intermittent issue or something worse. So far, I have not found any new topics here about this. But I wanted to mention it, and I wonder if any other BoA customers are also seeing no transactions downloaded (from otherwise successful update attempts).

Mark1104

@mark.granoff - I am a BofA customer and successfully downloaded my checking account and credit card transactions this morning - haven't had a problem since the change to EWC+

mark.granoff

> @Mark1104 said:
> @mark.granoff - I am a BofA customer and successfully downloaded my checking account and credit card transactions this morning - haven't had a problem since the change to EWC+

Good to know. Thanks!

So now I wonder if this will resolve itself in a day or so, or if I have yet another unique issue... So much fun.

I wonder if I unlink all the BoA accounts, and then re-link them... that could be it's own fun nightmare all over again. I think I'll wait a day or two and see what happens.

jonarcherjones

Just upgraded this morning and it caused all kinds of issues. I think I have most of them fixed but my "ending balance" is still including "pending transactions". So I will never be able to balance. I have read through several of these threads and don't see a solution

berthagator

> @Mark1104 said:
> @"mark.granoff" - I am a BofA customer and successfully downloaded my checking account and credit card transactions this morning - haven't had a problem since the change to EWC+

But I can't get my BofA online balance to update correctly.....it's stuck where it was at the end of September, and won't update, even though new transactions are downloading. Happening with other institutions too, but just getting crickets from Quicken Support.....

Mark1104

@berthagator - an idea

repair and validate the file. I have found in the past when I have 'stuck' transactions, that clears the out.