Register "Online Balance" doesn't match bank

George P
George P Member ✭✭✭
I see other posts that have been closed because Quicken and other users did not understand the comments regarding online balances. After updating to R43.32, the online balances are wrong. To be perfectly clear, the balance in the register is correct and matches the balances when I manually go online and compare balances.
Quicken has added pending transactions to the online balance and gives the option to include or exclude pending transactions. However, the issue is not the pending transactions. The issue is the downloaded online balance that appears below the register.
The problem is not limited to one financial institution. This is not an issue of the opening balance changing. This is not an issue of deleting a reconciled transaction. This is not an issue of changing the opening balance during reconciliation. This is not an issue of uncleared transactions.
For example:
My Quicken checking account register has a current balance of $2,068.47.
I log onto my bank website and the current balance is $2,068.47 not counting pending transactions. (Correct)
Below the register, Quicken shows my current online balance as $5,907.85 not counting pending transactions. (Wrong)
In my case, I rarely enter transactions, but download transactions so I expect the online balance and the register balance to always match.
This has only been an issue since R43.32.
Before closing discussions, please understand the issue first. This is an ongoing problem that others have also identified, but Quicken quickly dismissed.

Comments

  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    What are the values for the 3 bottom Balance lines -
    - Online
    - Current
    - Ending
  • Steven
    Steven Member ✭✭
    I may be able to help with this. The balance you see below the register is the online balance. The one you see online is the available balance which is the current balance minus the pending transactions. If you add the pending transactions to the available balance the amount you get should be what you see under the register in quicken. At least that is what it is for me as a BOA customer.
  • miklk
    miklk Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
    Turn Off the new so called feature of pending transaction

    Click the tiny hourglass at the bottom of each account register to see an option to Hide Pending Transactions. It has to be done for each account register that has an hourglass, which is most of the EWC+ accounts.

  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    edited October 2022
    > @Ps56k2 said:
    > What are the values for the 3 Quicken bottom Balance lines -
    > - Online $5,907.85
    > - Current $2,622.28
    > - Ending -$410.59
    My Quicken checking account register has a current balance of $2,068.47.
    I log onto my bank website and the current balance is $2,068.47 not counting pending transactions. (Correct)
    Below the register, Quicken shows my current online balance as $5,907.85 not counting pending transactions. (Wrong)

  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    > @miklk said:
    > Turn Off the new so called feature of pending transaction
    >
    > Click the tiny hourglass at the bottom of each account register to see an option to Hide Pending Transactions. It has to be done for each account register that has an hourglass, which is most of the EWC+ accounts.

    I did that and nothing changed because pending transactions don't change the online balance.
  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    edited October 2022
    > @Steven said:
    > I may be able to help with this. The balance you see below the register is the online balance. The one you see online is the available balance which is the current balance minus the pending transactions. If you add the pending transactions to the available balance the amount you get should be what you see under the register in quicken. At least that is what it is for me as a BOA customer.

    With pending transactions, the available balance is more that $50,000.

    I'm not talking about available balance. I wish this chat allowed screenshots, but I guess Quicken worries someone would post account information.

    Until this update, the online balance at the bottom matched the total for cleared transactions and matched the online balance at the bank.

    Now the online balance matches nothing. Even trying to account for pending transactions, the online balance is wrong.

    If I go past the cleared transactions in my register and included pending transactions, the total with pending transactions in the Quicken register match the total with pending transactions with my bank online.
  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2022
    George P said: My Quicken checking account register has a current balance of $2,068.47.
    where or what do you mean by the wording "current balance" ?
    Here is my biz checking - and the numbers all match up ..... but of course NOT against the Account List Balance.
    So...
    Online = actual bank balance and Quicken Register of cleared entries
    Current = Quicken Register (above the blue line for Reminders)
    Ending = Quicken Register including all entries showing below the blue line




  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    > @Ps56k2 said:
    > where or what do you mean by the wording "current balance" ?
    > Here is my biz checking - and the numbers all match up ..... but of course NOT against the Account List Balance.So...
    > Online = actual bank balance and Quicken Register of cleared entries
    > Current = Quicken Register (above the blue line for Reminders)
    > Ending = Quicken Register including all entries showing below the blue line

    Current balance is the number above the blue line, which is the same number at my bank. In my case, the current balance that appears along side online and ending balances does not match anything.
  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    So you can add photos; thanks @Ps56k2.

    I'm not sure why this is so difficult to understand. The Online balance does not change. I updated the account today and the online balance is the same. The register is correct and matches the bank.
  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    Where is that Ending Balance coming from ? 
  • reb25
    reb25 Quicken Windows Subscription Member
    Since the last update, the charges on my credit card when downloading decrease my balance instead of increasing the balance owed
  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    > @Ps56k2 said:
    > Where is that Ending Balance coming from ? 

    That is future transactions that I have in the register.
  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    Even with Quicken disabling the pending transactions feature, the Online Balance is still the same.
  • George P
    George P Member ✭✭✭
    Props to Quicken for using a pop up window to post an important notice.
  • berthagator
    berthagator Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    > @George P said:
    > Even with Quicken disabling the pending transactions feature, the Online Balance is still the same.

    Yes!!!!! You're 1000% correct - I've been trying to explain the same problem, but nobody seems to understand. My online balances all seem frozen around 9/30/22. New transactions download and go in my register, but the online balance never moves. I don't know why this is so hard to explain. It has absolutely *nothing* to do with the pending transactions, which I turned off the minute we could.
  • usfmom
    usfmom Quicken Windows 2017 Member ✭✭
    I have the same issue. However, I also have an issue when I reconcile manually. It states that the
    BALANCE IS AS OF 12/31/22. IT IS NOT DECEMBER!
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    > @George P said:
    > Even with Quicken disabling the pending transactions feature, the Online Balance is still the same.

    Yes!!!!! You're 1000% correct - I've been trying to explain the same problem, but nobody seems to understand. My online balances all seem frozen around 9/30/22. New transactions download and go in my register, but the online balance never moves. I don't know why this is so hard to explain. It has absolutely *nothing* to do with the pending transactions, which I turned off the minute we could.
    Even before they turned on the showing of the pending transactions in the register, it has been reported that the Online balance isn’t correct in a lot of cases.  For instance here is a notification for Chase’s being wrong:
    https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7918391/ongoing-10-13-22-chase-online-balance-including-pending-transactions

    The big problem with this kind of problem (And with Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect +) trying to get at the heart of the problem is really hard because you have Quicken (the program), Quicken servers, Intuit servers, and the financial institution involved and what might be the cause on one isn’t the cause on another.  For instance, in the case of Chase it is updating, but including pending transactions where it shouldn’t.  In other cases the online balance might not be updating at all.

    That is why a lot of the SuperUser’s have long given up on reconciling to the Online Balance and just do it manually.

    usfmom said:
    I have the same issue. However, I also have an issue when I reconcile manually. It states that the
    BALANCE IS AS OF 12/31/22. IT IS NOT DECEMBER!
    When it is stated to reconcile manually people are referring to reconcile to the “statement balance” not the online balance.  Not the “statement balance” might actually just be the current balance on your account on the financial institution’s website, not necessarily to an actual statement balance.

    It might be a bit confusing since there is Quicken’s “automatic reconcile” option which kicks off the reconcile after a download, or that might be off and you kick it off with say Ctrl+R, but both of these are reconciling to the online balance and given that it is wrong you will of course not be able to reconcile with it.
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  • berthagator
    berthagator Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    >
    > The big problem with this kind of problem (And with Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect +) trying to get at the heart of the problem is really hard because you have Quicken (the program), Quicken servers, Intuit servers, and the financial institution involved and what might be the cause on one isn’t the cause on another.  For instance, in the case of Chase it is updating, but including pending transactions where it shouldn’t.  In other cases the online balance might not be updating at all.
    >
    I get this, but in this case, I'm not talking about the online balance including pending transactions. It simply stopped updating completely at the end of September for at least 3 different institutions. The fact that it is happening at multiple institutions, multiple accounts, all on the same date would seem to indicate the problem isn't with the sending institutions.....
  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    @berthagator All I can say is that I have definitely seen an up tick in the reported problems with the online balance in the last 6 months.  I have never seen any definitive answer on a “general problem/fix”.  For that matter, I have even really seen anyone reporting their problem as fixed.

    I will also add this, I don’t believe any fixes will come about by reporting them on this forum, and the most they seem to get is posted notification like the one I posted above that just goes on and on with no solution.

    The only way to really drive a solution is through collecting the logs and tracking down were it is going wrong.
    And for that the only way it seem like you can get that done is by contacting Quicken support and getting them to escalate the problem to the proper group.

    About a year ago they put the Quicken servers into the flow and claimed that they would be able to better track problems, but all that seems to have done is put another part that might go wrong into the process.  Then again maybe the only things they really track are hard failures not an opening balance not updating/being wrong.
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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭
    edited October 2022
    @berthagator I see in another thread that you also reported the problem with Help -> Report the problem, which is the right thing to do.  I do sort of think you get better results if you contact support and get them to escalate the problem.  To me it seems like there are two roadblocks to getting this kind thing resolved.  One is to get Quicken to submit a request the “scripts team/Intuit”(which I doubt they do on the first time a submitted problem comes in), and the other is Intuit probably has a big backlog of such requests and no hurry to fix them.
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  • berthagator
    berthagator Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    I tried to reset one of the accounts belonging to Ally, but the online balance won't change. Kinda stuck at the moment - when I contacted support they asked me to create a test file, but on the initial download the online balance is correct, but I don't have enough transactions in that account to be able to see readily if it will update.
  • berthagator
    berthagator Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    Then, based on another thread, I actually deactivated and reactivated the online services for both of my Ally accounts. When they download now, there is NO online balance at all. I didn't think it was possible to make this worse, but it certainly appears that way.....
  • berthagator
    berthagator Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭
    I *think* I have this working now - I had to follow the instructions below, but this is bonkers:

    "Spent time via chat, to get the following solution (pasted verbatim below). Took some time, but it worked for my roughly 10 bank/credit card accounts. Effectively, deactivate downloads (and clean out institution/account number info), then reactivate each account download.

    • Is your file saved in a cloud service?
    • Let’s talk about how Quicken datafiles & cloud drives (Dropbox, google drive, etc) work together. Data files should never be opened/ran from a cloud drive (this also includes network drives). Users should not be using their file off one of those drives because of the high risk of data loss & corruption to the file. This happens because a single file is being accessed by two applications simultaneously, and the Quicken file was not designed to run in such an environment. You should also never restore from cloud/network drive. Similar to our first point, the file will be accessed by two applications simultaneously. Make sure to always move the back up to local storage and restore from there. However, you CAN save a backup directly to the cloud/network drive.
    • What I recommend you to do sir, is copy the file and paste it on this location. Local Disk C: > Users > ( Select your user ) > Documents > Quicken ( if the folder is not there please create it)
    • Please deactivate the downloads of all of the accounts you are having issues with, Make sure to Show Hidden Accounts, if that option is available. Select the Tools> Account List > Edit (Next to the account name)> Online Services> Deactivate > go back to the General Tab > and Remove the Financial Institution name and account number
    • Go to File > Validate and Repair > Validate file> OK
    • Close the log file after it finishes and go to Tools> Add account> search the Financial Institution> Next> Enter your credentials You are going to have a list of all the accounts you have with this Financial Institutions, if the account is already on Quicken please make sure the account is LINK TO AN EXISTING ACCOUNT"
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