Opening and Closing Balances all wrong after error

Phil Burton
Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

About a week ago, I ran into some kind of problem where I needed to restore from an old backup. Honestly I can't recall all my actions here. (Lots of important legal work can be a real distraction. That's my best explanation/excuse.

In any case, ALL of my 3 Citi accounts will reconcile on the latest statements, except that the opening and sometimes the closing statements are way, way off. It seems that somehow I've lost up to $10K in register entries. That's not chicken feed, and as one consequence, I may understate my tax deductions.

Similar to

Instead of printing out registers from today and from a backup from say Jan 1 (before this massive screwup), and doing detailed compares, is there any way I can export transactions from the old backup and somehow transfer them to the current account?

This is totally my fault. Normally when my reconcile doesn't result in a 0.00 difference, I work at it until the issues (mistakes, etc.) are totally resolved. But this situation is different.

Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

Comments

  • RalphC
    RalphC Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭

    Are you syncing to Mobile & Web?

  • NotACPA
    NotACPA Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    The Opening Balance in a reconciliation is the SUM of all transactions in the account (including future dated) that have an R in the CLR field.

    SO, if you've manually changed that field, added or deleted an R transaction, or deleted the other side of a R transaction that's a transfer then the OB will change. It has nothing to do with your prior closing balance.

    Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
    Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
    Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP

  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    Understood, but the issue is that some transactions have been lost, and I'm trying to get an easy way to recover them from a different backup file.

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭

    Do you know exactly what transactions you need to export/import?

    If you just export/import a given range of transactions, you are going to get duplicates if they overlap what is in your current data file.

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  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    @Chris_QPW

    I don't know yet which transactions I need to export/import. What do you think of this approach?

    I "un-reconcile" the past 4-5 months of transactions in each account. Then I "reconcile" the account with monthly statements, oldest to newest. The statement will help me identify the specific transactions that are missing. Then I can export/import from an old backup, or simply add those transactions back in manually. Finally I re-"reconcile" the account again and repeat this process until I have "balanced" the account for that statement.

    After I finish with the oldest monthly statement, I repeat the entire process for the next statement. Eventually I hope I can truly reconcile the newest statements for each account. I believe that this approach will result in fewer errors than comparing printouts of each account register. I will be sure to have a bottle of aspirin handy when I'm doing this.😁

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭

    The approach you are taking with un-reconciling and then working forward is exactly what I would recommend if you don't know what transactions have been changed.

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  • Chris_QPW
    Chris_QPW Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭✭

    One thought extra thought would be to export the transactions from the backup to Excel, and then use that to refer to when trying to fill in the gaps while reconciling.

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  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    Good idea. Thanks. For various reasons I probably can't start this process until next week. But at least I now have a feasible plan. That's a big relief in itself.

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    This process did not work. Going as far back as Dec 2022, I ran into descrepancies when "reconciling" the monthly statements. I need to try a different approach.

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

  • Phil Burton
    Phil Burton Quicken Windows Subscription Member, Windows Beta Beta

    I got delayed in starting the account recovery but I'm working on it now.

    Been using Quicken (and TurboTax) since DOS days in 1990s. Now using Quicken subscription on Windows.

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