It would be nice if "Reconcile using online balance" was actually implemented

Chris_QPW

If you bring up the Account Details for an investment account, you will see:

But this option actually doesn't do anything in an investment account.
Now like all the online (cash) balance this might not be reliable for all financial institutions, but I have found it to be accurate with the ones I have used.

If one selects the gear icon and then Update Cash Balance, you will get a dialog like this:

As you can see, clearly Quicken has the online cash balance, which could be used in the reconcile.  Note this account is setup with Express Web Connect +, but this same information is provided by Direct Connect.

Chris_QPW

A bit of an update to this.  I have that setting to do automatic reconcile on, and now Quicken is now posting this dialog at the end of importing transactions into the investment mode with automatic transaction entry mode on:


Another indication that it is "sort of there".  (But this dialog is nonfunctional and has to be canceled to go on).

Chris_QPW

Well, with R46.9 they sort of fixed/implemented this.  I'm not sure if this is better or worse.  I guess a bit better, but not as useful as it could be.

Here is how the dialog now comes up.


What of course is missing is the online balance entered as the ending cash balance.

After all the option says: "Reconcile using online balance", not "start manual reconcile".

And in sort of it just gets in the way.

Once the dialog comes up, I can't use the "Update cash balance" dialog to get online balance.
I suppose someone could login online get their balance and reconcile, but that isn't really the point.

If fact, all this option is like right now is selecting Ctrl+R after the download.

Chris_QPW

Above I wasn't sure if the current behavior is better or worse, and my conclusion is that "it is the same", useless at this point.
When you finish the download, this dialog comes up blocking all access to the registers.  So, it doesn't fill in the online balance, and it blocks you from determining what the online balance is.  So, unless you are going to log into your account at the financial institution's website and check it there, you just end up canceling this dialog anyways.

Also, the sequence of how things are processed seems to be wrong.  To reconcile an investment account, you should always check that the number of shares in each security are correct, before you do the cash reconciliation.  This dialog comes up before the one that checks that your security positions are correct.  It should be the other way around.