Unreliable Balance Adjustment

Harlan

In the last couple months when reconciling my bank account, I seem to always get a Balance Adjustment for some reason. It has gotten to the point that I don't trust it anymore. WHY? What update did this? I want to go back to a previous version.

Chris_QPW

You should never trust/accept a balance adjustment; it literally means that your Quicken account isn't reconciled with the financial institution. When a balance adjustment is suggested, one must reconcile and find the problem. And reconciling is the process of finding the inconsistency between your Quicken account and the financial institution's. It isn't an easy process, but if one wants to have accurate records it is necessary one.

Boatnmaniac

@Harlan - If one simply accepts a balance adjustment without identifying and addressing the cause of the imbalance, then it can often lead to a vicious cycle of balance adjustment after balance adjustment after balance adjustment during future reconciliations. Why? Because the first balance adjustment should perhaps not have been done to begin with.

There are no recent version updates that I am aware of that have caused account balance issues but maybe someone else has a different recollection and will enlighten me.

There can be a lot of other things that can cause account balance issues, perhaps most commonly occurring when the connection method of the account has been changed or when deactivating/reactivating downloading or doing Reset Account. Doing these things can do things like enter duplicate transactions into the account or sometimes change the account's Opening Balance transaction dollar amount or entering a 2nd Opening Balance transaction. It can also be caused by the financial institution downloads having downloaded data for Online Balance and transactions that are out of sync with each other.

Some things you might want to consider doing that might help to bring your account(s) back into balance.:

If you have been entering Balance Adjustment transactions since this issue began, you might want to back up your data file and then delete all of those Balance Adjustment transactions. Is your account then in balance or not?

If not, scroll through your account register looking for duplicate transactions. You said this issue started a couple of months ago so you might need to review the register for the last 5 months or so. If you find any duplicate transactions, delete one of each while retaining the other.

If the account is still out of balance: Is the Opening Balance transaction dollar amount accurate? You might need to restore an old backup file from before when this issue started. Or you might need to review your bank statement(s) to find that info. (FYI: For the future, when you know what the correct Opening Balance transaction dollar amount is, also enter and save that amount into the Memo field of the Opening Balance transaction. Then you will always know if/when the Opening Balance has changed and can easily correct it.)

If the account is still out of balance: Look for a 2nd Opening Balance transaction and, if found, verify which one is the correct one and delete the other.

If this issue still exists it might very well be caused by the financial institution downloading transactions and Online Balances that are out of sync with each other. This can be because the financial institution is downloading pending transactions instead of just posted transactions. It can also be caused by a timing issue where the financial institution downloads an Online Balance that does not correctly encompass the most recent transactions. In both cases, the issue will often self resolve when running OSU or Update Now, again, 12-24 hrs later.

Did any of these things help to resolve the issue you are seeing?