why am I advised not to delete a reconciled record

jda09d

Hi, I sure hope someone can help. Dad turned 85 yesterday and despite having once had an expert logical mind (career programmer for IBM) sharp as a tack, can no longer work simple problems. He uses Quicken; I don't. He managed to copy two records in his checking account and paste them multiple times, creating duplicate records. Unfortunately this seems to be only one thing he did that night, that corrupted his file. One problem this creates is his reluctance to delete the duplicate records on account of "deleting reconciled records is bad" but he can't explain why. (I know Quicken treats reconciled records differently in its calculations, but that's all I know.) It's equally problematic to contemplate duplicating them all a second time, substituting plusses for minuses in an attempt to cancel or void the transactions. Why is it so strenuously cautioned not to delete a reconciled record, and does the purpose of that warning pertain to this situation? We have lost days trying to figure out a way for him to go forward. We tried restoring a backup, but we have to go back several weeks for that and it seems like we'd have to reconstruct every newer entry in every account that way, not just the checking account.

Rocket J Squirrel

You can (and should) safely delete the duplicate transactions. Quicken doesn't realize they're duplicates and is warning you that your reconciliation might be rendered inaccurate if you delete them. Create a backup first (CTRL-B) if you have any worries.

Rocket J Squirrel

By the way, it might be easier to see all the duplicates if you temporarily change the register's sort order to “Order Entered”. This should sort the duplicates to the bottom if they were the most recent transactions created. See the screen shot for how to do this, starting with the gear at the top right of the register.

jda09d

Thank you for the replies and the smile, Rocky. (Bullwinkle is awesome, lol). Being new here, I wonder if I may be forgiven for hoping for a consensus. After all, on this page (https://help.quicken.com/display/WIN/Reconciling+banking+accounts) the advice is pretty unequivocal: "After you reconcile, the transactions marked as cleared (c) become marked as reconciled (R) in the Clr column. Don't delete a reconciled transaction. Also, don't manually insert or delete the R in the Clr column."

NotACPA

The key phrase in your quote is “after you reconcile”. Your Dad's duplicated transactions didn't result from a reconciliation … so its fine to delete these dupes

Bob_L

Creating a backup first should assuage your concerns, which IMO aren't much to worry about in the first place.

splasher

The duplicates are a mistake, so deleting them whether they are “C”, “R” or blank is okay. The warning is there to make the user to stop and think before deleting a valid transaction.

The only problem I see with sorting by Order Entered, if the dates are the same for the duplicates is the same as the original, doing the sort will separate them with the original and make them harder to spot, but it would get the possible candidates together for you to get a list of and then resort by Date (click on the Date column header) and then search for them by date to see if they are indeed a duplicate.

q_lurker

Another consensus vote that in this situation deleting a transaction recorded as reconciled but not actually part of a reconciliation is the correct action.

Tom Young

“Back in the day” when you were keeping track of your checking account with a paper register, what would you do it you accidentally entered a payment twice? Why you'd delete of course, because entering a payment twice would result in an incorrect balance in your checking account register.

Now. back in the day when accounting records were maintained in big paper general ledgers, and every entry was in ink, you couldn't delete a record. If you made a mistake you made a new entry correcting that improper entry, leaving a perfectly clear audit trail of what went on. You dad may be thinking along those lines and, actually, that's not a bad practice and is generally followed by businesses, (not the paper general ledgers written in ink, of course). But modern “personal finance” software makes it much easier to simply delete errors. An “R” or a “c” in a duplicated transaction simply doesn't make that duplicated transaction “correct.”

jda09d

Thank you all so very much! A question for clarification, please. The file has been opened and closed several times in the days since this error was made; Dad seems under the impression that Quicken recalculates everything again, every time the program is opened. Two people have remarked that the "reconcile" command wasn't executed by virtue of pasting the records, and that makes sense, but if Dad's right, then isn't it irrelevant whether a reconciliation is done at the time the duplicate record was entered? I doubt that fact changes the bottom line, though; I'm just curious.

And if Dad is correct that the program finds any transaction with an R in that field and adds it to the calculations when the program is opened, then to my mind it reinforces the idea that it's ok to delete the records. But if that's not all there is to it and Quicken does something else programatically with that field when it opens the file, then hopefully someone can shed some light. (He doesn't get hung up on accounting practices although he's always followed them meticulously; he gets hung up on things that might be happening in the code.)

Rocket J Squirrel

You are diving headfirst into a pool without knowing how deep it is…

Dad has some misconceptions and he is passing them to you. Quicken does not need to recalculate every time it opens. That would take a long time with most of our large data files.

Quicken is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and even the experts don't know how everything works internally. People come up with their own mental models of how it works and they are often mistaken.

Do you plan to learn Quicken and take over? Or at least supervise? If Dad is going to continue to be the Quicken user, it might be wise to “lock” past transactions after every monthly reconcile. Quicken has a feature for this: File > Set password to modify transactions. This allows you to specify that transactions earlier than your chosen date may not be modified without a password. This would not prevent Dad from creating new duplicates, but it would prevent him from accidentally changing history.

jda09d

Thanks again, Rocket. Very useful to know! Actually no, this whole experience with him makes me eager never to lay eyes on Quicken again. But I will look into the lock option.

Rocket J Squirrel

@splasher said

The only problem I see with sorting by Order Entered, if the dates are the same for the duplicates is the same as the original, doing the sort will separate them with the original and make them harder to spot

I'm not sure I'm parsing this correctly, but the transaction dates don't factor in to “Order Entered”. A recent duplicate will sort lower than the earlier original regardless of the transaction dates.

splasher

I agree that the transaction date has no bearing on “Order Entered”, but when sorted by the Transaction Date, dups can be spotted quickly.

“Order Entered” shows you the recently added transactions in a clump regardless of Transaction Date so they are the ones to check out to see if they are duplicates.

What I was trying to convey was that using both sorts will help the OP to find the dups, using one to find the candidates, the other to confirm that a candidate is actually a dup to be deleted.

q_lurker

@Rocket J Squirrel

I took the premise to be that if there are 5 ‘R’ transactions shown at the bottom with various dates when using Order Entered, how clear is it that two are duplicates and three are valid?

Rocket J Squirrel

@q_lurker

I took the premise to be that if there are 5 ‘R’ transactions shown at the bottom with various dates when using Order Entered, how clear is it that two are duplicates and three are valid?

It's not. Presumably the 5 “R” transactions at the bottom of Order Entered are all dups and the originals are higher up in the register.

Rocket J Squirrel

@splasher

What I was trying to convey was that using both sorts will help the OP to find the dups, using one to find the candidates, the other to confirm that a candidate is actually a dup to be deleted.

Got it. As usual, we're both right. 😏