Removing a reconciled transaction

StephenKoeppen

I just discovered a duplicate transaction that was made about 2 years ago. How do I delete one of the duplicates without messing up the balance of all reconciliations made since then?

NotACPA

I'm confused.  How were you able to successfully reconcile the account, 2 yrs ago, with a duplicate transaction included?  The account should have been out of balance by the amount of the duplicate.

Did you create some sort of offsetting transaction?

StephenKoeppen

It looks like it happened when I was using Quicken 2007 and when I upgraded to Quicken Deluxe in 2021, I did a reconcile adjustment assuming the account was balanced. I'd like to delete the duplicate without messing up subsequent reconciliations.

lhossus

@StephenKoeppen

What you want is Quicken's Reconciliation History. I suggest you start by reading Quicken's Help on the subject - which may be accessed via Using Reconciliation History to fix a previous reconciliation (this page can also be accessed via the Quicken Menu > Help > Quicken Help, and then searching.)

But first, be sure you have a backup of your Quicken Data File - just in case things don't go as expected.

Then
- delete the duplicate transaction
- open the Reconciliation History
- locate the reconciliation that now has a discrepancy due to the deleted transaction. Select it and click the Re-Reconcile button.
- then re-Finish the reconciliation and accept the new adjustment amount.

And a very useful tip:

Undo is your friend: you can step-by-step back-out changes to where your started - while watching the changes get undone in the register. It is best to re-start Quicken before beginning the above process so that the Undo stack is empty and does not contain any other changes that you would not want to Undo.

Good luck.

jacobs

No, sorry there would be no Reconciliation History for the duplicate transaction reconciled in Quicken 2007. Reconciliation History only exists for reconciliations done after migration to Quicken Mac.

StephenKoeppen said:

It looks like it happened when I was using Quicken 2007 and when I upgraded to Quicken Deluxe in 2021, I did a reconcile adjustment assuming the account was balanced. I'd like to delete the duplicate without messing up subsequent reconciliations.

If understand correctly, you have a duplicate transaction from two years ago, which is marked reconciled, and an adjustment transaction from last year, also marked reconciled. These two transactions are for the same amount, in opposite directions, thus offsetting each other. Is that correct?

It is possible to delete the two reconciled transactions. If you click the transaction and press Delete, Quicken warns you that it's a reconciled transaction, and deleting it will affect your reconciliations — but if you say okay, it will delete the transaction. If you delete both transactions, you'll be back to the same current balance. However, when you delete a transaction which was reconciled after you moved to modern Quicken Mac, your Reconciliation History screen would then show that there's an error in whatever month's reconciliation contained the deleted transaction. And you can proceed happily along ignoring that discrepancy.

But it bothers me if I open Reconciliation History and see anything in red. So my question is: why delete anything? You have a duplicate transaction, and you have an offsetting adjustment transaction. Why not just leave those transactions? If you want, you can edit both transactions to add a note in the Memo field, and you can also change the category on the duplicate transaction to Adjustment if you wish. But I would probably just leave both the transactions so your reconciliations and your balance are all still okay.