Credit card payments and charges started showing in reverse

carljh

All of a sudden all my credit card transactions are showing in reverse, charges are subtracting from balance and payments are adding. This has only happened since I transferred my monthly payment to my bank account in July, before that everything was working OK. It would appear that this has just happened as I reconcile my account every month and up till last month everything was working alright as the accounts balanced. I have attached 2 screenshots, normal is what was happening before this happened and abnormal is what is happening now. I have done a validate and super validate on the file and it shows no errors, also did a Norton scan to check for viruses but all OK. This and another problem I had with missing transactions has only happened since the last Canadian update last month so am wondering if there is a bug there? My bank account is working correctly.

volvogirl

Sounds like you're running a credit balance. Is the balance in red or black? Look back through your transactions and maybe you'll spot one that was entered backward. Or a payment in the charge column or a charge in the payment column. Look around back where this first started happening.  Or maybe you are missing some charges? 

If the balance is in Black, it means you have a credit on the card.  Like if you overpaid the bill or got a refund for something you returned.   When you enter a charge it will reduce (decrease) the credit you have available on it.   And a payment will increase the balance.

Also make sure you have the right starting balance.  If it's zero you might need to add a beginning balance for when you started the account in Quicken.

 The credit card balance you OWE should be in RED. If the balance is Black then it's showing the credit card company owes you and you have a credit balance. And then when you make a payment it's like the cc owes you more. So you need to go back though your entries and find where the balance switched to black to being in your favor.

See this for more info.....

https://www.quicken.com/support/positive-black-balance-credit-card-account

carljh

Thanks for the quick reply and I get exactly what you are saying as I have experienced that problem before, but this is different as I can't find any offending transactions. As I said, the problem started with the transfer to my bank account in July and have attached all my transactions from that date and the one before that shows it was behaving correctly at the time. I deleted the transfer transaction and entered it manually, but still the same result. I don't know exactly when the behavior started, at least a couple of days ago and was obviously OK when I reconciled my account in November as everything balanced out. I am thinking it may be some bug with the last update as I found the cash account for my investment account was down $3800.00 without me doing anything with the account in the previous week. When I checked the statement with the register, it turned out that 3 investment payments from early last year were missing. Also, is there a limit to the size of the data file as I have been using the program in one form or another for 25 years and the size is over 52mb?

Tom Young

As far as I can see that $4,079.63 transaction, entered as a payment to the credit card company, threw your balance from "I owe the credit card company" (RED $2,443.32 number with a minus sign) into a "the credit card company owes me" situation (BLACK $1,636.31 number, no minus sign).  Everything thereafter flows logically. 

So, the first transaction after the payment, a $21.99 charge, REDUCED the balance in the Account, changing the amount the credit card company OWED YOU from $1,636.31 to $1,614.32.  And every other transaction after that is entirely logical: charges reduce the amount the credit card company owes you, payments increase the amount the credit card company owes you.

You say you've been reconciling all along OK, until just recently, so my guess is that payment of $4,079.63 is in error or something "upstream" from that payment has changed.  Do you have a statement from the credit card company stating that you owe $4,079.63?  If you do, then you need to work backwards from that time. 

carljh

Thanks for your quick reply, Tom. Understand what you are saying but think the problem is within the program. I rolled back to my old backups and found everything was working fine until the 5th of this month as you can see in Backup 5.12.22, the $4079.63 is correct as are the following transactions. I have also attached AMEX 5.12.22 which shows both accounts with a negative balance. It is after this date that everything seems to have gone haywire.

Tom Young

I'm not convinced. 

What you didn't show in Backup 5.12.22 was the transaction immediately preceding the payment.  If Quicken is doing correct math, then the balance just before that payment was $4,498.17.  ($4,498.17 - $4,079.53 = $418.64, the balance immediately after the payment.)  But in your Report 1 above you show the balance of the Account right before the payment as $2,443.32, which from my perspective says "something has changed before that payment date, otherwise the balance before the payment date would still be $418.64."

carljh

Thanks for getting back to me. Have attached a screenshot of the prior transactions and as you can see, the program was operating correctly at the time. Report 1 is from the current state of the register where things are not correct. Looks like I am going to have to work on updating all my transactions on the backup to make my register correct again. As I said in my first post, this isn't the only problem I have had recently with transactions going missing from another account.

Tom Young

So, we are in agreement that Quicken is currently working properly with respect to how current transactions are affecting the Balance in the credit card Account, and that the problem is that something has happened in the time before the payment of $4,079.53, the payment that changed the balance from "I owe the credit card company" to "the credit card company owes me?"

The first place to look would be the Account's Opening Balance.  Quicken has been known to change that figure.