Can someone please explain Online Balance and Ending Balance for a manual account?

WolfieH3

So I have a new manual account, Apple Credit Card. I imported ALL statements since the account opened. Opening Balance is $0. But the balance numbers are confusing me.

1. Why does my manual account have an "Online Balance" amount? Is this just an odd naming convention when it comes to manual accounts?
   1. NOTE: I did notice that the "Online Balance" amount matches the balance on my last statement
2. Why does my total transaction amount (Ending Balance) NOT equal the "Online Balance" amount?
   1. Now these amounts do match what Apple has. The balance of my last statement is $3125.32. And the total of all transactions (I downloaded CSVs from Apple and combined them) match what's in Quicken $2,994.20. What I'm confused about is how can my transaction total be different than what's owed? I have never accrued interest in any month. There's no fees at all. Just transactions.
   2. I did look for any transactions that processed since the statement came out yesterday, plus any pending transactions, but none total up to the $131.12 difference.

I'm sure there's just some reasonable explanation in how the credit card calculates these but for the life of me I can't find the answer anywhere online lol

splasher

A "manual" account is you typing in every single thing into the register, no importing of information.

Any account that is setup for import, whether it is Web Connect, Express Web Connect, Express Web Connect+ or Direct Connect, receives an online balance in the information downloaded from the financial institution.

I don't have an Apple Credit Card, so I can't resolve those issues, just your perception of what "manual" implies in Quicken.

The only exception to this are .QIF imports, since they only contain transactional data, no balance information.

Chris_QPW

From what I see The Apple Credit Card is Web Connect only, which is to say downloading and importing a QFX file. (This is still considered "online/connected".)

The QFX file has the online balance in it. What the Online Balance should be (some financial institutions do this wrong) is the balance that matches the balance for the transactions that were downloaded. The downloaded transactions and the online balance shouldn't include the pending transactions. The most common mistake some financial institutions make in this information is to exclude the pending transactions like they should but include the pending transactions in the online balance when they shouldn't.

The Ending Balance in Quicken is the sum of the transactions in your register.

Given that we can't see what is in your register and such, the numbers you gave aren't really going to make much sense to us.

My suggestion would be to reconcile to a known balance first (Quicken "says Statement Balance", but it can be any known balance that you know lines up with the transactions that you have in your register) and ignore the Online Balance that may be incorrect.

If you can properly reconcile then you know the fault is with the Online Balance that the financial institution gave and will have to go with the "statement balance" until the financial institution fixes it (And since they are the ones providing the QFX file, they are the only ones that can fix it.)

WolfieH3

@splasher Thanks for the reply. My perception of what "manual" implies matches yours. That was why I was confused as to why there was an "online balance". Because right now my online balance for the account doesn't match last month's import "online balance" in Quicken, since there have been transactions since then. Seems that they'd use a different naming convention such as "Most Recent Balance", or "Balance as of X date". At least coming from a new user perspective, this UI change would've prevented my confusion anyway.

Still trying to figure out what's going on with this. My statement balance plus my pending transactions don't match up. I'm waiting until the next statement and I'm going to avoid any transactions at the end of the month to take pending transactions completely out of the mix. I also called Apple to find out where they discrepancy is coming from, to see what formula they use to calculate the Balance value. Still waiting to hear back on that ticket. Hoping it's just due to that formula and nothing else is going on. If anything, when I stop using the card, it should be reconciled at the end of this month. Wish their was standardizations with how FI's interpret these values. But it's also why I really wish Quicken would connect to Apple. Using Mint this wasn't a worry as it pulled in live data including pending transactions.

volvogirl

But you said you "imported all statements". How did you do that? Did you actually hand type in each transaction from the statements?

splasher

"Online balance" = balance provided by the financial institution in the downloaded information at that point in time. Quicken is not a "real time" system, it is only as up-to-date as the last import/download, so I'm not sure why you would expect an online balance to be current if it has not been updated.

Chris_QPW

Here are a few things to know.

1. The "Online Balance" also has a date associated with it; it isn't just some balance with no context. Note this is the BALAMT and DTASOF fields in the LEDGERBAL section of the QFX file (you can edit a QFX file with any text editor).
2. Financial institutions don't always get this amount correct. The usual reasons are because they include pending transactions in the balance, but not the transactions, or the other way around. But it is still possible to be some of reason. The bottom line is it shouldn't be used as any kind of absolute proof. When in doubt you should be reconciling to what you see on the financial institution's records.
3. If you can reconcile you Quicken account to the financial institution's official records, you are "done" except for maybe reporting to them that they have the wrong online balance. Given that it comes from them, clearly only they can fix it if it is wrong. And wrong in this case "not consistent with the transactions sent".

WolfieH3

@volvogirl If you go into the Wallet on your iPhone, you can view your statements and from there download them. I saved them to my google drive. Then I opened up my Google Drive on my computer, double clicked the file, and it opened in Quicken for import.

Note that when I tried to do it via File, File Import, I kept getting an error. A moderator helpfully suggested double clicking instead and that worked without a problem.

Hope this helps!!

WolfieH3

@splasher Erm, I'm not expecting the Balance to be updated in real time so not sure where you got that from?

• I imported all of my transactions/statements for Dec 1, 2020 through Nov 30, 2023.
• I opened the account on Dec 1, 2020.
• The Ending Balance is -$2,994.20. for that time period.  
• But the statement on Nov 30, 2023 says that my balance is -$3,125.32.
• All of these numbers are coming from the info in the statements, not online.
• I even put all of the transactions from the statements into excel and the transaction total matches Quicken's Ending Balance, so it's not a transaction issue for what's captured during this time period.
• So there is a -$131.12 difference and so far I cannot find where it's coming from.
• Reconciliation came up to the same difference amount. All transactions match. -$131.12 remaining.
• The opening balance is $0 since I've entered all transactions since the account began.
• None of the transactions/pending transactions in Dec (which have not yet been added) make up the difference either. So it's not that Apple added pending transactions into the statement balance amount.

So I cannot track down where the -$131.12 difference is from yet. As I mentioned, I have a call into Apple to see if they can explain how they calculate their balance on the statement. So we'll see what they say.

splasher

My suggested way of finding the error is to change all of the transactions to C or blank in the CLR column. Then start at the very beginning and do reconciles one month at a time and only proceeding if the reconcile shows the running balance to be correct.

If the Opening Balance of the account is zero, you can automatically make it an R, otherwise confirm what that amount should be and make it an R. Also, enter the Opening Balance into the memo field of that transaction (even if it is zero) for latter reference since Quicken has recently had a bad habit of changing it when a de-activate/re-activate is done on One Step Update.