Reauthorizing AMEX

Question

Three times I have "successfully" reauthorized AMEX to my Quicken account, then when updating my one account the balance is incorrect.  A couple of times the categories I put in are deleted completely.  Today, my third try, I ended up with my categories correct, but the credit card balance was off by over $1,600. All three times I have had to restore to my backup, which wipes out the success of my reauthorization.  I don't know how to fix this?

Mrs. S · Answer

Everything appears to go smoothly, up to the point where I have to update my account using Quicken.  That does not involve the cloud account - right?  Doesn't the update go directly to AMEX, or are you saying the update goes to the cloud and then to Quicken?

Tom Young · Answer

I wonder if some aspect of “syncing” - the enemy of accurate accounting - is in play here?

If you have mobile and web synching enabled then turn that off.  Create a new, empty, data file and using that file delete the “cloud” account associated with your live file.  Then find the backup that you want to open and copy it using Windows File Explorer, and make the copy into a QDF file by removing the “-backup” that's to the right of the period in backup's file name.

Try again.  Quicken will want to “sync” this file to the cloud so don't close until that's done.