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2 Reconciliation Questions

Bob.

Had an issue where my bank online and Quicken agreed on balance, but my checkbook was oof. My error, found it, now all agree on balance, BUT….I had never (since 2009!!) reconciled this checking account. I tried it today.

Reconcialiton shows the account off by exactly $10.00. How can that be if online balance, Quicken and checkbook all agree?

And, how do i fix it? I assume that if I complete the reconciliation Quicken wil create an adjustement and then Quicken and the bank online will no longer agree. True?

So what is the best solution?

Thanks.

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Comments

UKR

Remember that Online Balance is a downloaded amount.
Current and Ending Balance are amounts calculated based on transactions in your register.
Compare your register to the statements from the bank. Going back in time, does the register's running balance at the end of every month ever match the statement ending balance? At some point in time it should. That means, the discrepancy is in a transaction between now and that particular month.

Of course, the problem could also be with the Opening Balance transaction. When you opened the account in 2009, there should be an Opening Balance transaction as the first and oldest transaction. Amount $0.00 … if it's not zero, it should be. The next transaction should be your first deposit. Anything else is, IMHO, incorrect.

Bob.

Thanks. OK. I think I found the erroneous entry and it never cleared. BUT, when I delete it (exactly the 10.00) then the online balance and current balance agre, but ending balnce now 10.00 too high and 10.00 more than checkbook.

I must be missing something for how to correct this.

BTW, opening balance is fine.

UKR

Looks to me like there might be a future dated register transaction or perhaps a scheduled future reminder still lurking. Or perhaps a past due, never recorded reminder?

Bob.

Thanks. I do understand the differences.

Easy to find exact $10.00 transactions and this is the one. But what baffles is I can have online and current agree and ending off, or online and ending correct and current short by $10. And there is only one questionable transaction.

I wonder if I just mark it cleared what will happen. Will go check.

Chris_QPW

You are making an assumption that because your discrepancy is $10.00 and the transactions is $10.00 that is the problem. That might not be the case. Let me jump back to your question about what Quicken will do in the reconcile if you select to accept the reconcile with the imbalance. It will do what you think and put in a balance adjustment. The reason is because you in fact you haven’t reconciled. Reconciling is the process of bring your Quicken records into alignment with the financial institution’s. You haven’t done that. The process isn’t just bringing up the reconcile window and pressing OK. If need be, it is checking every single transaction and the math too.

In other words, one can’t assume that anything in Quicken is correct. Not any transaction or the downloaded online balance, and its date. Everything thing in Quicken is subject to being checked for accuracy.

It is extremely unlikely that that this is a calculation problem on Quicken’s part, but even that would be part of the process. BTW you mentioned that your current balance and your ending balance aren’t the same. That implies that you have future transactions. I will warn you about one thing I think Quicken does wrong. If you have a transaction in the future that is marked R (reconciled) Quicken will include it in the balances that it calculates during the reconcile, even if that date is past the ending date of the reconcile.

And on the subject of what marking a transaction cleared does. Simply put it includes it in the current reconcile as long as the posting/transaction date is within the reconcile ending date. If it is marked uncleared then it will not be included in this reconcile, but one would expect it to be included in a future reconcile. Unless this is a check that hasn’t been cashed yet, and will be in the future, this is a wrong assumption.

So, in summary you should be checking against statements/web pages from your financial institution, to be sure that a given transaction should or shouldn’t be there. You can’t look just at what is in Quicken and assume it is correct.

Bob.

Thanks Chris.

I am assuming as its an uncleared tarnsaction for exactly the same amount and it was an adjustment. Too much to explain, but it sticks out as the issue. Many other adjustments just like this

And yes, half a dozen scheduled and not yet sent transactions that match everywhere and amounts are perfect. None reconciled. No math errors there. And no transaction close to $10 or off by $10.

Have always been matched to checkbook. Never checked to statment. And with all that this is pretty close except for this transaction.

So unclear from your comments whether to Clear or not. I tried and got an ending balance short $10.

Must be a way to make this correct for a new ground zero.

So right now I have Online and Ending with the right values and Ending off by $10. If I clear, then Online and Ending are correct and Current off by $10. I prefer to have Online and Ending accurate if I have to make a choice. But must be a way.

I hope I have explained clearly enough.

Chris_QPW

So unclear from your comments whether to Clear or not. I tried and got an ending balance short $10.

In a way clearing it or not is irrelevant. It isn’t going to fix why your transactions don’t add up correctly. And that is the whole point. No one said that real reconciling is easy, if you want easy resign yourself that you will just put in some “adjustment” and hope it doesn’t bite you in the future.

Chris_QPW

Just one more thing. If the $10 is the real problem then you should be able to mark all the transactions in the account as unreconciled, and then reconcile to a balance/date before it. Once that proves to be correct, then you can move forward until you find the problem. If you can't reconcile to that date before that $10 transaction then you know the problem is sooner than you thought.

Bob.

It IS this item. Tried a number of things. It is. But whatever solution I try leaves me with one number incorrect. Do nothing and Current Balance is short. Clear or Reconcile and Adjust and the Ending balance is too high.

What I Have not tried as I do not know if I can reverse it, is to uncheck that transaction in Payments and Checks in the Reconcile dialog. Then it WILL reconcile, but unsure what happens to the Online, Ending and Current.

Chris_QPW

Nothing happens to any of those balances unless you accept a balance adjustment because you didn't reconcile.

The clear status affect one thing the cleared balance in the reconcile dialog. Note that the green check mark in the reconcile dialog is the same thing as putting or removing the c in the Clr field in the register.

Included (c in Clr field):

Excluded (Clr field blank):

Chris_QPW

P.S. Clearly if I select Done, on the second one where it isn't reconciled, then this is what is going to happen, which will affect all the balances except the Online Balance:

Hitting Adjust.

Bob.

“Nothing happens to any of those balances unless you accept a balance adjustment because you didn't reconcile.”

What I was trying to say is IF I uncheck that transacation THEN reconcile there is NO Adjustment. It WILL reconcile. But I have not see what that does to balances.

Now to read all else you posted :)

Your example is what I see, but in the reverse. If I UNCHECK my difference is 0.00. And I am in a Checking Account so a little different than a CC biut for intents and purposes the same.

Next Example. Have not tried that, but yoy have a -10.00. I have a 0.00 so likely will not see that and will not get a message to adjust.

So IF I click Done, and there is no adjustment, then what happens to the 3 balances? Right now Online and Ending are correct and I do not see this reconcile affecting those. I doubt this will adjust the Current to accurate, but it might.

q_lurker

What I often find helpful is to sort the register by the Clr status column. The fully reconciled “R” transactions will be at the top. The balance shown for the last of those would be a reconciled balance. But if by chance you have some future transactions set with 'R" they would be included and that is not logical, unless they are catchall reminders of some sort.

The next group are the cleared “c” transactoins. The last of those ‘should’ have a balance that matches the online balance the bank reports — unless the bank is doing something inconsistent like including pending transactions in their reported online balance value. That cleared balance might or might not also be the current balance.

The last group of transactions are the uncleared transactions which could include transactoins dated long ago (birthday checks to grandkids that they lost?) and upcoming transactions scheduled but not yet paid. and reminders of transactions to be paid(?). That final transaction will have a balance that matches the ending balance.

Bob.

Thanks. Worked through all that.

I can get the final reconcile with no adjustment to match the Online Balance, but not the Current Balance. The Ending Balance is correct regardles of reconcile or not.

Bob.

Funny how confusing this can be for me, but here is latest thinking.

The debit in question is hand entered adjustment I needed to adjust for when Paypal and My Checking needed same to balance. Just trust that for a minute. And realize it will never clear as the bank has not and will never see it.

Now if I were to delete that, then Online and Ending balances would properly match. A reconcile would reconcileLikely a good thing.

BUT, the current balance would be too high by $10.

How can I adjust that without changing the Online or Ending balances? If I can, this will be solved.

Chris_QPW

The fact that you had to enter an adjustment in the past indicates that you never reconciled properly in the past.

Also it is impossible to change the Current balance without affecting the Ending balance. The Online Balance is different, because in fact has nothing to do with the transactions in your account. It came from the financial institution, and is what the online balance was on the date it is for. Put another way. You can delete every transaction in your Quicken register and not affect that online balance. It will only change when your financial institution posts another transaction to your online account.

If one wants to remove/add money to the account without affecting any other account or any category that is what a balance adjustment is all about. The syntax is if you are in “My Account” the “category” is set to [My Account]. The opening balance transaction is an example of this.

Here is an interesting change. In the past if you did a reconcile and it didn't balance and you allowed Quicken to put in a balance adjustment it would use the balance adjustment/[My Account] syntax. I just noticed that somewhere along the lines they changed this to using the category Misc. Seems wrong to me, but then again so does a balance adjustment.

Chris_QPW

And Hope that you are using the right terms because there is a lot of different between the clear balance and the current balance.

Bob.

“The fact that you had to enter an adjustment in the past indicates that you never reconciled properly in the past.”

Not quite true, Chris, which is why I was reticent to mention it.

For a VERY long time, transactions in PayPal that debited my checking account made proper entries in the PayPal register, but never debited the Checking. They ALL had to be done manually for the checking balance to be correct. I have many of them. Only this one is an issue and I later started having Paypal debit a credit card instead of checking and that DID debit the credit card properly with no intervention. Please don;t worry of that does not make sense. Its been a while and that is close to the gist of that problem. Its not quite accurate. Might have been Paypal was getting de=bited twice in some way, Checking once and the end result is that checking needed a mnaul entry for every Paypal transaction to balance both registers. Its true. Too long agoin to remeber properly and the once in question was Oct 2020.

Once again, Online Balance is fine. Current Balance is fine. ONLY Ending Balance is off. I CAN make Online and Ending the same, but then Current is off. And oddly enough, as mentioned, this account has never been reconciled. IF I do not clear that adjustment, I can reconcile perfectly but Ending is off. If I clear that transaction and reconcile, then Quicken will add an adjustment and at least Current will be off - likely ending as well.

No way out of this then, eh?

I now understand what is happeneing, just not how to correct. And sorry to take so much of your time.

Bob.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20342997#Comment_20342997

What is a clear balance?

Chris_QPW

Cleared Balance:

Bob.

I am using correct terms then.

Chris_QPW

OK. Since the Ending Balance is the total of all the transactions in the Current Balance and maybe more, it is impossible to change the Current Balance without affecting the Ending Balance.

Bob.

What if: :)

I delete the adjustment. Now Online and Ending match. Current is $10 high.

I reconcile. It should tell me it needs a $10 adjustment and “should” adjust the current balance without affecting the Online or Ending.

Sound possible?

Can I back out of this if I do try it?

Chris_QPW

Can you post a screenshot of transactions starting from the one for the Current Balance and include up to the ending balance and the bottom of the register that shows the Online Balance?

Note, not interested in the payees, they can be hidden.

Bob.

I could, but I won;t. Too much personal information. And at 3:00 AM my primary credit card number was stolen and used cross the country. Card company alerted me, but… Lots to deal with and change like accounts in Quicken, recurring bill. Phooey.

Suffice to say at the bottom of the register, for example is:

Online Balance 100.00 Current Balance 90.00 Ending Balance 40.00 (and showing a payment for 60.00 not yet cleared in the register).

So those are all correct except the 90.00 which is $10 short.. And the adjustment is the problem.

Thanks Chris….

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Chris_QPW

Well then you are on your own. Good luck.

Bob.

Thanks Chris. I think it may be unfixable. Just tried my thought of deleting the adjustment and matching Online and Ending bu8t then no way to adjust Current. So, its not mission critical. Just irksome. If anyone else has an idea, would be appreciated.

Bob.

OK, I shall let this one go. What I found after exhausting possibilities is that that $10 sdjustment is required to keep checkbook balance accurate. If I do not clear it, I can reconcile and all Online, Ending and Current are correct., But that will leave one uncleared adjustment in the account. Unless there is another way to adjust that account that does not require clearing, I'm stymied.

And a new Wells Fargo issue today I need to run off and post about :(

Bob.

Stare at something long enough….

It makes sense that a manual adjustment will never clear. So clearing it creates a reconcile error. Not clearing it let's all balances match as they should when I reconcile. Has to be.

So, the only unknown, which I am not likey to try is to delete the manual adjustment, reconcile, let it see the $10 error, click Done and Adjust. I do not know what that Adjustment Transaction entry will look like. I 'm betting all balances will be good and the Quicken generated adjustment will be cleared, but do not know for sure. Either way, i think I can now live with the issue. And learned something along the way.