Quicken just changed my balances every month going back to February 2022

LMRollins01

[Removed - Language] I reconcile my bank statements with Quicken religiously. I have done this every month...forever. Today, 16 February 2023, I noticed a large difference in the balance my bank was showing and what Quicken was showing. I couldn't find any large charges against my checking account that were not accounted for, so I started going back over all of last years bank statements. Quicken had changed every one of them going back to February of 2022. February of 2022 was the first month that showed Quicken was still reconciled to my bank statement. Now I have to go back and re-reconcile all eleven of my bank statements with Quicken starting with March 2022. I'm not happy about this, and if I could find a way to do it I would send them an email complete with attachments so they can see how badly their program has [Removed - Language] me over.

Tom Young

Programmatically, the Balance showing for an Account is simply the sum of all transactions from the time the Account was opened to whatever date you're looking at.  Accordingly we know that in March some transaction or transactions were either deleted, changed as to dollar amount(s), or a new transaction(s) slipped into March that shouldn't be there.  So correcting March should put everything back into alignment, assuming there aren't any other problems (transaction changes) in subsequent months.

It's not really clear that "Quicken" did anything here, you might have created the problem yourself, in error and without knowing it.  To try and avoid some sort of human error from occurring I follow the practice that after all Accounts for a given month are reconciled I password protect all transactions through that month end Using the "Set password to modify transactions..." feature.  That has worked well for me so if this sort of problem crops up in an Account I'm reasonably certain that it IS a Quicken problem, and typically I'll find that Quicken has changed the Opening Balance of the Account.

q_lurker

I agree with @Tom Young that correcting the March 2022 transactions should bring the remainder of the months back into balance.  That assumes all those months are off by a consistent amount.

A very likely possibility is that a transaction intended for March 2023 was inadvertently entered for March 2022.  While my Quicken is set to prompt me if I am entering a transactions more than 12 months ago, that inadvertent entry would not have cued that warning.  

TTSguy

Another handy tool is to open and allow "downloaded posting date" column in your register. you can go through and look at the actual date and posting date. If they are not the same you'll find the error. Another thing I do (when your balances are the same) is to go back and enter the balance amount in the notes column in your register on the closing date for the month from your FI. So on the last day of the month when my FI closes out the month for my Checking account, the last transaction  in my register will have $XX.XX in the notes column for that last day of the month. I do the same thing for my CC acct, but it is on the 15th of the month. This will allow you to scroll through all your transactions quickly until you find one where the Note amount  doesn't match the registerer balance. At that point you know the problem is back farther than that date. make note of that date, keep scrolling back until you find the note balance that matches you register and note that date.Your problem will be somewhere between those dates, It's important to note that the register sort order must remain the same for this to work properly.

scheeler75@

This happened to me, too, and it appears that the problem started sometime in late February to mid-March, so Tom's comment that "It's not really clear that "Quicken" did anything here" is probably not accurate. Also, I most recently reconciled this account a few weeks ago so why would the reconciled balance change for an "erroneous" Feb/March input that wouldn't have even been reconciled yet. It will be interesting to see if others have experienced this same glitch. I've been using Quicken since it bought Managing Your Money and nothing like this have ever happened to me. So much for the "quick" task of reconciling my accounts

Joanne H

Quicken has been doing this to me for months now. The issue for me is in the paycheck feature. Every time I restart quicken, it randomly deletes an earlier reconciled transaction. I have not gotten a good fix for the issue yet. I have to re-reconcile every time and it gets so tiring. I have a good back up from Jan1 2023, but have not touched quicken since as I am waiting for some answer.

Evanlouros

Similar experience for me. This issue raised happened to me but typically just to one of my accounts, which happens to be my primary account. I will see multiple duplicate paycheck tractions show up and I manual review and delete to get back to a steady state. I am not clear if the root cause is Quicken or my bank. Also, a few days ago some of the monthly reoccurring transations (from prior months that were reconciled) posted again for no reason. I manually cleaned up/delete to back to steady state. The clean up was not difficult as these are uncleared/unreconciled transations, it's the ability to trust my quicken book balance that is the bigger concern for me. If it's user error on my side then I would some appreciate quidance for what I can do better. If it's not me, then I kindly request the Quicken team to identify opportunities to improve the user experience. Thank you.

LMRollins01

I want to thank everyone for their input. It's been really helpful to find out that I'm not the only one who is having difficulties. Referring back to Tom Young's comment. I believe that the problem is a Quicken problem simply because there were two deleted entries in two different months. One was a $19.99 payment to Amazon in March. The other was a $637.43 payment to Capital One in July. These months had been perfectly reconciled, and then one day these entries were simply deleted from my register. I've found the correct entries in the hard copies of my bank statements and made the corrections to my register, so now everything is back in balance again. However, I am going to use the suggestion to "set password to modify transactions." I'm hopeful that this will prevent problems like this from happening again. Again, thanks to everyone for your comments.