Incorrect "Prior blance" when trying to reconcile

MarlonF

I've used Quicken for over 20 years - never this problem. I do not download banking data, but rather enter and reconcile manually each month and ensure everything balances. I reconcile Q with my bank statment each month and send the transaction report to my bookkeeper so she can reconcile my business accounts in Quickbooks. So I'm diligent about balancing.

In early August I disovered a $6,097 error somewhere. Since each month prior, including the July statement was balanced, I figured my error had to be in August. However, when I matched all the debits and deposits for August to date, everything was accounted for as well. I decided to re-reconcile July, so I unreconciled July by manually clearing all the "R"s, and went to reconcile July again.

When I enter the ending balance from the bank statement for July and match all the transactions in Q, the total cleared matches the totals of debits and deposits on the bank statement. However, there was still $6,097 un-reconciled? When I "finish later", then go to reconle again, the "Prior balance" that I had entered from the bank statement is now changed, adding the $6,097??

I then decided to un-reconcile June, yet everything happened just like for July. I entered the ending balance from the bank statement, matched all the transactions, the totals in Q matched the totals of debits and deposits on the bank statment. Then is still $6,097 unreconcilled. When I "finish later" and then go back to reconcille, the "prior balance" does not match the bank statement, instead is $6,097 off.

So now I can figure out how to reconcile June and July again. Should I just enter the bank statement amounts, match the transaction, and let quicken create an adjustment? I'd still have the problem of the $6,097, however June and July would be reconciled again. Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thank you.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @MarlonF,

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. Was there anything unusual that happened just before this issue started, such as a power surge, power outage, update, unexpected program or computer shutdown, etc? Have you checked that account register for any transactions that don't belong? Are there any adjustments, incorrect transfers, duplicate transactions, etc that could account for the incorrect amount?

Thank you.

Chris_QPW

It sounds like some past reconciled transaction(s) got changed.

The first thing I would caution you about is that Quicken includes reconciled transactions in the balance total even if they are past the ending date you put in. That means you can't reconcile say June if July transactions are still set to reconcile.

If you were downloading transactions the first thing I would suggest is checking the opening balance (first transaction in the register) to make sure it is correct, because Quicken has been known to change it (bug). It is not likely to be without downloading of transactions, but you should check it.

If you have a backup that you did after last month's reconcile and find that the problem isn't there one possibility would be to export the latest transactions from the newest copy in QIF format and import that into a copy of the backup and see if that gets you closer to reconciling. If you either find that you don't have such a backup or it doesn't work out for you, or maybe that the follow process might be easier.

Next instead of reconciling I would suggest that just check the balance on the dates you know you reconciled to make sure they are correct. And instead of going back one month at a time I suggest you use what is called a binary search. It goes like this, you split the register in half date wise (rounded to a reconcile date). Check at that point. If the balance is correct the problem is in the transactions after that point. If the balance is incorrect the problem is in the transactions before that point. Keep splitting the problem section in half. This will make the search for the problem much faster.