Reconciliation Opening Balance Discrepancy

Question

I use the Quicken Classic Starter Edition.  Have reconciled every month for many years and never experienced any problems until December 2023.   I use the manual function and reconcile to a paper statement, none of my accounts are linked to external sources.  Reconciled November and balanced. However, when I went to reconcile December, the opening balance in Quicken did not correspond to paper statement.  After research, the error is in Quicken so I made the ~$1,500 adjustment so I could run register reports for tax prep.  However, when I went in to reconcile January, the opening balance is again different than the actual paper statement even with the adjustment recorded.  I could open a new account in Quicken but I am not confident in the product now.  I consistently do updates and accept Quicken recommended changes.  I had assumed it was a user (me) error but not so sure anymore.  Need to fix this before it gets out of control.

Any insight would be appreciated.  I read comments in Deex4 thread of Feb 5 and 6

NotACPA · Accepted Answer

The Opening Balance in a reconciliation is the sum of all of the transactions in the account that have an R in the clr column (including any future dated transactions).

SO, did you manually change any value in that column in any transaction?

Did you delete any transaction with an R.

Did you manually input any transaction and have an R in it?  Including deleting the other side of any transfer that had an R in this account.

And, my recommendation is to delete that adjustment (it will haunt you forevermore) and figure out what happened to cause that Opening to change.    You might have to go back in your register until you find the Q amount and statement mount that agree … and re-reconcile from there.