Reconciliation errors

Question

:/ I’m using Quicken Deluxe for Mac version 6.10.1.  The problem I’m having was on 6.9.0. I installed the most recent version to see if it would fix my problem, but it didn’t.

My Mac is on OS version 12.6

In Quicken I have four accounts – a personal checking account, personal savings account, a joint checking account and joint savings account. Even though two of the accounts are joint accounts, I’m the only one who makes any entries into them.

I enter all of the data for all four accounts manually. I also do all reconciliation for the four accounts manually and do them each month when I receive the statement.

Recently, I was going to reconcile the joint checking account and was told by Quicken that the account had never been reconciled. Sure enough, none of the transactions, which date back to 2014, was marked as having been reconciled.

I checked the joint savings account and it, too, said it had never been reconciled.

Both of the personal accounts are in the correct reconciliation state.

Any idea what would have caused this and why it's happening with just two of the four accounts?

I back up after each change to Quicken so I can restore to a time when the reconciliations were correct, but I’m concerned this may happen again.

Philmguy · Answer

Thanks for the reply. Well, this has gotten even more puzzling. I was going to restore from a backup and went back as far as two months ago, when I know I had reconciled those two accounts, and couldn't find any transactions marked as cleared. So, I decided to just reopen the Quicken file from today. It opened fine. I was wondering if it was possible to begin reconciling an existing account by starting from today. I went to the joint checking account and hit the Reconcile button and the reconcile window opened. Under Previous Reconciliation it still said, "This account has never been reconciled." But, under Use Statement Balance, which is how I always reconcile, it listed Ending Date as 12/14/2019. I cancelled out of the Reconcile window and scrolled the register down to 2019 and found that every transaction prior to 11/14/2019 is now marked as cleared all the way back to when the account was set up in 2014.

jacobs · Answer

In the Accounts > Reconciliation History screen, there is a "Clear History" button. If you click this and confirm, it will delete all your prior reconciliations and mark all the transactions in the account as unreconciled. What you're describing sounds like this process occurred in two of your accounts. It's possible you somehow did this by mistake without realizing what it would do, or it's possible the program somehow did it without your knowledge. I can only say I haven't seen reports from other users describing their reconciliation history spontaneously disappearing.

Absent any more clues or information, I'd suggest going back to your recent backup, verifying that the reconciliations are intact, and move forward from there — keeping a close eye on it for awhile in case there's a bug which strikes again.