Random double entries showing up thruout my checking account ledger

Question

I reconcile w my bank every few weeks with no issues. Last balance was seriously off—upon investigation I found random double entries populating my checking register in Quicken—and it appears to be random payees on random dates—all exact double entries. My checking goes back 20 years, and I'm finding these errors everywhere—this problem did not exist two weeks ago. I'm using Quicken Windows Subscription service.

Here is only one of many examples:

Tom Young · Answer

How often do you backup, either "automatically" or "manually?"  (Free advice: having automatic backs each time you close Quicken makes it much easier to run down "when did this problem start occurring?", particularly if you use Quicken daily.)

If you have a good array of recent backups the first thing you might do is see if you can spot the day that this duplication of transactions started.  If you can find the start date, did that coincide with something, like a Quicken update, a power brown out or anything else you might think could be a fault?

If you have a fairly recent backup that doesn't have the problem and that's less than 2 weeks old, then restoring that file and catching up to "today" might be easier than finding all your duplicates and eliminating them.

Do you use Mobile and/or have "sync" turned on?  Those have been known to cause data issues.  (It seems that these data issues caused by Mobile and sync are not as frequent as they used to be, but I'd guess virtually every SuperUser in here doesn't use these "features" due to their danger.)

In that Register you might click the gearwheel in the upper right hand corner, select "Register column…" and add the "Downloaded posting date."  I'd guess all the dates will be the same, but if not, it might provide a clue.

RalphC · Answer

Probably once every three or four years, I'll catch a financial institution sending me duplicates.  It's the bank's (probably, one time) error.  I do not use auto add or auto reconcile for this very reason.  They're always recent transactions and I recognize and delete them immediately.

Anyway, you need to delete the duplicates.