First time reconciling after many months of recording transactions

Question

I have been using Quicken Classic for Windows for a long time. I'm finally getting around to reconciling my accounts. However, I am not in a position to reconcile all of the past statement periods. I want to start with the most recent statement. I do not want to split this into a different account and lose all my history. I just want to specify a starting date to begin the reconciliation process along with a starting balance.

Is there a way to do this in Quicken?

Thanks.

Chris_QPW · Answer

I just want to specify a starting date to begin the reconciliation process along with a starting balance.

You can't do this.  Quicken always reconciles the whole account up to the ending date put in (if manual reconcile is being used, or the Online Balance date if that is being used).

You can run a reconcile select all the transactions and ignore that it doesn't reconcile by ending the reconcile with it not balancing and Quicken will put in an adjustment for whatever the difference is.

This may or may not bite you in the future.  As an example of how it might bite a person is say you just marked a transaction reconcile which hasn't cleared the financial institution yet.  Well, when the transaction does come in, your future reconcile won't balance.

NotACPA · Answer

But what about  any errors  prior to your selected date?

The best way is, really to go back and reconcile from the date of the last reconciliation.  Trying to reconcile with a later starting date is error-prone and extremely difficult to find errors.  You end  up with having to plug in an adjusting value …. which isn't a reconciliation at all.