When I go to reconcile my account the beginning balance is different then what it is suppoesed to be

Laura'sbooks

My reconcile beginning balance is different then it is supposed to be.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Laura'sbooks,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and telling us about this issue.  I'm sorry to hear you're running into this problem. Do you reconcile against the online balance or against the statement balance? Have you checked for any duplicate transactions, missing transactions, or adjustments that may have altered that balance? Is this happening with just one account or multiple accounts? When did the issue start? Which version of Quicken are you using (to see that, go to Help>About Quicken)? Did anything happen with the account(s) recently that may have caused any changes (such as deactivating and reconnecting the account(s))?

Thank you.

Tom Young

The beginning balance in a reconciliation is a calculated amount. It's the sum of all the transactions in the Register with an "R" in the Clr column, so clearly something has changed with one or more of these transactions. A transaction with an R in the Clr column could have a changed amount, could have been deleted, or a new transaction with an R in the Clr column could have been inserted erroneously.

One problem that seems to come and go with Quicken is that sometimes the Opening Balance of the Register, the very first transaction when you created the Account, gets changed. Changes of this sort are frequently associated with a download and not noticed until you go to reconcile the Account. Accordingly, that's the first place I'd go to look to see if that's the case.

Of course a reconciliation opening balance problem can also result from user error. Some erroneous keystrokes or hurried click on the Enter key affecting a prior period "R" transaction can change that opening balance, and the best protection from that is to password protect your transactions on a monthly basis.

Keeping a lot of backups (hard drive space is cheap) is your best way of dealing with opening balance issues created either by user error or by Quicken as you can open a file from a time shortly after the last time you reconciled the Account start searching for what's changed.