How to match reconciled statement balance with Quicken Balance?

Rusty Dockery

Quicken for Windows. I diligently reconcile all transactions to the printed statement each month but the balance shown on the Q register if different by thousands. It seems work from beginning and ending balances and compares the difference to the total of debits and credits for the month but doesn't look at bank vs Q balances. I use the bank statement balance option. Going on in all three accounts. I suspect transfers.
Should I just compute and make a big ol' adjustment and go from there, see if I can clean up at end of January?

Frankx

Hi @Rusty Dockery,

One thing you should do before you make a "big ol' adjustment" - especially since you seem to be diligent about matching transactions to the printed statement - is to look at the account's opening balance.  It is a known issue that Quicken sometimes will, without any warning or notification to you, adjust an account's opening balance.  For this reason, I advise all users to make a "memo entry" in the opening balance of each account that includes the date and the opening balance amount.  Here's an example:


Doing this can save you a lot of time if/when Quicken adjusts the opening balance.

If, after you check the potential opening balance issue and find that it is okay.  I would suggest that you either wait until you get your month-end statement and then do an account reconciliation, or give it a little more time before pluging the account balance.  Data may come in before month end that fixes or partly fixes the current unbalanced situation.

Hope this helps.  Get back to me with any additional questions you may have.

Frankx 

Frankx

Hi @Rusty Dockery,

One thing you should do before you make a "big ol' adjustment" - especially since you seem to be diligent about matching transactions to the printed statement - is to look at the account's opening balance.  It is a known issue that Quicken sometimes will, without any warning or notification to you, adjust an account's opening balance.  For this reason, I advise all users to make a "memo entry" in the opening balance of each account that includes the date and the opening balance amount.  Here's an example:


Doing this can save you a lot of time if/when Quicken adjusts the opening balance.

If, after you check the potential opening balance issue and find that it is okay.  I would suggest that you either wait until you get your month-end statement and then do an account reconciliation, or give it a little more time before pluging the account balance.  Data may come in before month end that fixes or partly fixes the current unbalanced situation.

Hope this helps.  Get back to me with any additional questions you may have.

Frankx 

Rusty Dockery

Thanks, Franx,
Memo is a great idea as I've had the misery of ghost opening balances ... different than previous month's ending. Sure takes the fun out of it. This is off by thousands over a long period of time. I rarely look at the Q balance and just didn't realize it was out of whack. All you advice is good and I'll be following. Interested to see what end of January brings.

Rusty