Suddenly I cannot reconcile my Bank of America account - full of errors never seen before.

Question

Every time you do an update I want to toss Quicken out the window. I manually download activity on all of my accounts: banking, credit cards only. I just did a download of my Bank of America activity and the account is totally messed up. The balance is decreasing with every charge entered and increasing with every payment. I am so stressed out by this that I can't see straight.

Frankx · Answer

Hi again @pkedrm,

Thanks for the additional information.  In the balance column of the credit card register - does the number appear in red or black?  Also, if you page up through the register, do you see a place where the balance switches (or jumps) dramatically in amount, or from red to black?

Frankx

GeoffG · Answer

If you've reset BoA for any reason, there is a good chance your beginning balance has changed. This is a recent bug. Since you came from MM your starting balance may not be $0, but you should be able to determine the correct amount from an older backup. 
It would be advisable to add the starting balance amount to the memo field of the first entry for every account you update should this happen again it becomes an easy fix.

pkedrm · Answer

Frankx - it is a credit card account and I have been using Quicken since Microsoft did away with MS Money - so I have been reconciling to the penny several months for several years. Then today I went to see if I could figure out what is wrong and noticed that every charge/purchase  (entered in the correct column) is reducing the balance as though I had made a payment and every payment is increasing the balance as though it  is a charge! To add insult to injury the previous balance that is carried forward from the previous month is not displayed when you're doing a reconciliation so I don't even know if Quicken picked up the right figure to start with. I'm about ready to go back to manual record keeping but I'm really attached to the idea that I can search for transactions when I need to. I have my records for several years and it's quite handy. So far none of my other accounts have been plagued by this bizarre situation knock on wood.