Accepting Credit Card Payments distorts Balance Outstanding

rawilkinson

I am on Windows 10 Home, Quicken Version R46.12. This must be a recent change or issue. In the past when accepting downloaded cleared credit card payments into the Register, Quicken accepted it. Now for some reason it distorts the overall balance outstanding if I try and accept it.

Tom Young

Could you add some detail here because you've not given us much to go on. 

You say "If I try" to accept the payment, which suggest that you're not able to accept the payment into the register?  Is that the case?  You click on "Accept" but the payment isn't really accepted into the register, it's stuck in the "Downloaded Transactions" area?

The overall balance is a calculation by Quicken of all transactions from the time the Account was created until "today" so if you can accept the payment into the register you'd expect the balance to go down accordingly, but what's actually happening?  Is the balance increasing by the amount of the payment, or is the balance changing by some amount, up or down, that you can't relate to the payment?  Is the payment going into the correct column - "Payment" - or into the "Charge" column?

If you can't accept the payment into the register you'd expect that the overall balance would be unchanged but you say it's distorted.  How is it distorted? 

Frankx

Hi @rawilkinson,

It is possible that the opening balance of your credit card account in Quicken has been changed, which would make the current balance incorrect.  Other users have reported this problem in certain accounts.  I suggest that you look at the opening balance of this account to determine whether it may have been changed.  If it was, you should correct that opening balance.

Let me know if you have any followups.

Frankx 

rawilkinson

Apologies. I was trying to be concise. which was obviously not a good idea. My other credit card is due in shortly and will make specific notes as to what happens and when. Thank you for responding.

rawilkinson

Hello and thank you for being patient. Here is a step by step process:
- Both my BANK account and AMEX account in Quicken.
- I am reconciling charges on my AMEX card starting with ZERO balance having paid/transferred the amount due from the BANK account
- Downloaded all current transaction as on recent statement
- Accepted all charges/refunds, etc. into AMEX register which resulted in amount due same as on current statement.
- At this stage the ONLY item not accepted into the register is last month's payment, showing as NEW
- If I ACCEPT it it changes the debit balance to show a credit owing (in this case because the last payment was greater than the current outstanding balance)
- I accepted it manually instead and now it is correct and retains thecorrect AMEX due amount.
So my question is - why? I seem to remember a few months back I only needed to ACCEPT it, not do this manually. Did something change or am I losing it? It has been an issue for me for a few months and not had time to research.
Thank you in advance
Rose

rawilkinson

Hello @Tom Young
@Tom Young
Hello and thank you for being patient. Here is a step by step process:
- Both my BANK account and AMEX account in Quicken.
- I am reconciling charges on my AMEX card starting with ZERO balance having paid/transferred the amount due from the BANK account
- Downloaded all current transaction as on recent statement
- Accepted all charges/refunds, etc. into AMEX register which resulted in amount due same as on current statement.
- At this stage the ONLY item not accepted into the register is last month's payment, showing as NEW
- If I ACCEPT it it changes the debit balance to show a credit owing (in this case because the last payment was greater than the current outstanding balance)
- I accepted it manually instead and now it is correct and retains thecorrect AMEX due amount.
So my question is - why? I seem to remember a few months back I only needed to ACCEPT it, not do this manually. Did something change or am I losing it? It has been an issue for me for a few months and not had time to research.
Thank you in advance
Rose

Frankx

Hi @rawilkinson

What makes you thinks that - if you had "If I ACCEPT it it changes the debit balance to show a credit owing"?  You didn't do that, correct? So how can you tell us how that would have "changes the debit balance to show a credit owing"?

Just because you "accepted it manually" do you really think that it changed the transaction or it's effect?  It did not.  The fact is that a transaction's "effect" does not change if you "accept it manually" or if you accept it as part of a Quicken download.

Frankx

Tom Young

"- Accepted all charges/refunds, etc. into AMEX register which resulted in amount due same as on current statement."

I assume that you are looking at the credit card register here, and that you've gone through the transactions one-by-one, accepting all the transactions downloaded except for the actual payment.  If, having done that, the balance shown on the register is exactly the same as the statement balance, then you're done.  That says to me that the payment is already in the register and accepting another payment, a payment that occurred during the statement period and shown in the Downloaded Transactions area, is going to throw your balance out of whack,

I have no idea why a payment that presumably should be indicated as a "Match" is instead being shown as "New" - does the amount shown for that "New" transaction match the actual payment, and has a date reasonably close to the actual payment date?  

If my string of assumptions and statements of the process are reasonably accurate, then right clicking that "New" payment and manually matching it to the actual payment already in the register should work. 

rawilkinson

@Tom Young
@Frankx
I think I figured this out with your input. Enough to close the discussion at this point.
My thinking is that because the payment is already in the register (having transferred it from my Bank Account in Quicken), that just accepting it obviously distorts the balance, whereas doing a Manual Acceptance provides you the opportunity to match against the original payment without impacting the overall balance. Again I do not know why and at some point will research further. Thank you.