Why did Quicken change PNC Credit Card starting balance from 2019?

TreborNagrom

Today, as I was struggling with changes to other PNC accounts due to the conversion from Direct to EWC+, my PNC credit card balance was off by $471.60. My PNC credit card was already on EWC+, so there should have been no change. Why would my Quicken account suddenly show a positive balance of $471.60 when I opened the account in 2019? As a workaround, I had to do an offsetting adjustment.

Boatnmaniac

@TreborNagrom - OK. You did not have EWC+ for your credit card before and just today it changed to EWC+. That makes sense. And the transition to EWC+ changed your Opening Balance transaction. You did not do that. As I mentioned earlier, that is one of the bugs that sometimes happens when a connection method is changed and your connection method was just changed from EWC to EWC+.

So, did you restore your backup file to see what the Opening Balance transaction dollar amount in your credit card account should be? And did you enter that dollar amount into your main data file for the Opening Balance transaction?

If so, did that resolve the credit card account balance issue?

Regarding your checking account: Quicken added a new account for EWC+? During the reauthorization process you should have been given the option to Link it to your existing account in Quicken. If you did not select "Link to existing…" Quicken would have added the download as a new account which is what it sounds like it did

Do no delete the transactions in your old EWC account since they have all be categorized. If you do, you will lose most of your account history and you do not want to do that.

You can delete all of the overlapping duplicate transactions in your EWC+ account. It should be fast and easy to do.

1. Click on the 1st transaction in the register.
2. Scroll down the register. Hold down the Shift key and left click on the last transaction in the register that is also included in your old account. That will shade all those transactions.
3. Right click anywhere on the shaded transactions, click on Delete and then click on Yes. This will delete all of the shaded transactions so there should no longer be any overlapping duplicate transactions.

Once you have done that you can merge the old account transactions into the new account. In the old account:

1. Click on the 1st transaction in the register.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the register. Hold down the Shift key and left click on the very last transaction in the register. That will shade all transaction in the register.
3. Right click anywhere on the shaded transactions, click on Move Transactions, select the new EWC+ account from the drop down menu and then click on OK. This will move all transactions in the old account to the new account. If there were any transfer transactions those transfers will be properly updated in the other applicable accounts.

Once your are confident that all of the old account transactions have been transferred to the new account and the new account is in balance, you can delete the old account.

Questions?

Boatnmaniac

So previously in the last few days you had already reauthorized your PNC credit card from EWC to EWC+ and you found no credit card balance issue in Quicken until today? (Prior to the last few days, PNC's credit card would download with EWC, not EWC+.)

Sometimes when the connection method is changed, a few issues could occur. Back up your file before proceeding.:

1. OPENING BALANCE TRANSACTION: Sometimes the dollar amount gets changed. If you have a backup file from before reauthorizing to EWC+, you could restore that backup file and make note of what the Opening Balance transaction dollar amount is. Then reopen your main data file and compare that to what is shown for that transaction there. If it is different, correct the dollar amount to match what you saw in the restored backup file. (Note: You might want to also enter and save the correct Opening Balance transaction dollar amount into the Memo field of that transaction. Then in the future, if this happens again you will not need to restore a backup file to see what the dollar amount should be.)
2. DUPLICATE TRANSACTIONS: In the Account Register, scroll backward from the most recent date looking for duplicate transactions. If you find any, manually delete one of each of the duplicates. If there are any duplicates they will most likely occur somewhere within the most recent 90 days or so.
3. 2ND OPENING BALANCE TRANSACTION: If your credit card account is still out of balance, look through the register for a 2nd OPENING BALANCE transaction with a more recent date than the original one. If you find one, manually delete it.

Did this resolve your credit card account balance issue?

TreborNagrom

No, I haven't logged on for a couple of weeks. When I did so today, I got the message saying that several of my accounts were being switched to EWC+. The credit card was specifically excluded. After approving the switch, Quicken showed duplicates for the other accounts, but not the credit card account. When I opened the credit card account to reconcile the recent transactions, my account balance was off by $471.60, which made no sense. I went back thru the history, matching transactions for several months against my cc statement, and found nothing. So I went back thru the ending balances on the account in Quicken, all the way back to the beginning in 2019, and found that it showed a starting balance of…drum roll please…$471.60. I did nothing to the account to cause this, and I know it wasn't like that before.

I also have a serious issue with my checking account. The new EWC+ account begins with a balance on 2/23/2023. My old account goes back to the early 2000s. The new account has the same transactions since 2/23 that I already processed in my old account, so when I accept them in the new account, they duplicate the expenditures and credits in my budget. I would have expected the accounts to have been merged, or at least have a cutoff to eliminate duplication. As it stands now, it appears that I will lose my entire account history before 2/23/2023, and I'll have to do some workaround to eliminate the duplicates in the budget. It's a mess.

Boatnmaniac

@TreborNagrom - OK. You did not have EWC+ for your credit card before and just today it changed to EWC+. That makes sense. And the transition to EWC+ changed your Opening Balance transaction. You did not do that. As I mentioned earlier, that is one of the bugs that sometimes happens when a connection method is changed and your connection method was just changed from EWC to EWC+.

So, did you restore your backup file to see what the Opening Balance transaction dollar amount in your credit card account should be? And did you enter that dollar amount into your main data file for the Opening Balance transaction?

If so, did that resolve the credit card account balance issue?

Regarding your checking account: Quicken added a new account for EWC+? During the reauthorization process you should have been given the option to Link it to your existing account in Quicken. If you did not select "Link to existing…" Quicken would have added the download as a new account which is what it sounds like it did

Do no delete the transactions in your old EWC account since they have all be categorized. If you do, you will lose most of your account history and you do not want to do that.

You can delete all of the overlapping duplicate transactions in your EWC+ account. It should be fast and easy to do.

1. Click on the 1st transaction in the register.
2. Scroll down the register. Hold down the Shift key and left click on the last transaction in the register that is also included in your old account. That will shade all those transactions.
3. Right click anywhere on the shaded transactions, click on Delete and then click on Yes. This will delete all of the shaded transactions so there should no longer be any overlapping duplicate transactions.

Once you have done that you can merge the old account transactions into the new account. In the old account:

1. Click on the 1st transaction in the register.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the register. Hold down the Shift key and left click on the very last transaction in the register. That will shade all transaction in the register.
3. Right click anywhere on the shaded transactions, click on Move Transactions, select the new EWC+ account from the drop down menu and then click on OK. This will move all transactions in the old account to the new account. If there were any transfer transactions those transfers will be properly updated in the other applicable accounts.

Once your are confident that all of the old account transactions have been transferred to the new account and the new account is in balance, you can delete the old account.

Questions?

TreborNagrom

Thanks so much for your detailed and thoughtful replies! Unfortunately, I think I didn't pay enough attention as I was authorizing the conversion, and that may have led to the second problem I cited. I also didn't back up the data before I started. Shame on me.

The first problem I cited, with the credit card, is still puzzling. The account was brand new when I started tracking it, so there was zero balance. What it shows now is a positive $471.60 starting balance. I have no idea where that number came from or why it would mysteriously appear now. What I did to work around it, without deleting it, was to put a $471.60 debit placeholder in, using the same date. That balanced things out, and my balance now agrees with reality, but I've lost confidence in the integrity of the rest of the data. Not a big deal with this account, but I have a ton of operating and retirement accounts that I track, so this is disturbing.

With regard to the second problem, I didn't see an option to "Link to Existing." It's quite possible that I overlooked it, much to my detriment. Quicken did add the new account (and several other simpler ones), as you suggest. I was able to follow your instructions (I paid close attention this time!), and although there were a bunch of additional steps that appeared, as well several crashes of the program, your advice was was very helpful! Unfortunately, it would only move the data about a month at a time (over 20 year's worth) regardless of how much I tried to move in one swell foop. I have now completed the updates and my accounts all seem to be correct (except for the odd starting balance in the credit card account).

I have to say, for an expensive subscription service, I find Quicken to be almost more trouble than it's worth. Thanks again for your help.