My online balance and quicken account balances not in agreement.

Question

Using Quicken Classic (7.3.2 for Mac OS 12.7)  My online balance and quicken account balances not in agreement. They differ by a factor of negative one. i.e.  if I multiply one balance by -1 it will agree with the other balance. The online balance for my checking account is showing as a negative number similar to a credit card balance but should be positive

all other accounts seem to work properly, it's just this one account that I'm having problems with.

Glenn Dawe · Answer

I set it up as a checking account (which it is). BMO asks for the credit card you log on to the bank with. I don’t have their credit card but use my debit card for all transactions there. Even though I set it up as a checking account, it automatically changes to CC. Quicken tech tried to correct but said the bank was doing something wrong.

if I simply download the transactions and  import, everything is fine. I wanted to switch to “Quicken Connect” (for Mac) to automate the download process. I think I’ll have to stick with the manual download/import method as BMO has no desire or smarts to think they might actually have a problem one of their customers discovered.

jacobs · Answer

Is the problem that the Online Balance when you reconcile is wrong, or that all your transactions are opposite of the proper sign and the running balance is the opposite sign of what it should be?

If the transactions are downloading with the wrong sign — e.g deposits in a bank account are negative instead of positive — then that's a problem with the bank and there's nothing Quicken can do.

I'm unclear if the account you're having trouble with is a bank account or a credit card account. You mentioned debit card, so is it a checking account? In Quicken, in the Settings for the account does it sho the correct account type, or is it showing Credit Card when it's actually checking? That could account for the reversed signs. Does Quicken allow you to change the account type to Checking?

On the other hand, when you refer to the Online Balance being wrong, if you're talking about on the Reconcile screen, there might be a simpler solution: don't reconcile to the online balance, and instead reconcile to a statement balance you enter manually.

Glenn Dawe · Answer

thanks Jacobs . I was able to confirm with Quicken after sharing screens that it is most definitely a problem at BMO (Bank of Montreal). They won’t listen even after asking to speak to their CIO and continue to claim it’s not their problem. I’ll need to continue to download and update transactions manually.