Differing Register Ending Balance and Online Balance

JimPuerto

I have six accounts with Morgan Stanley which I have on Quick Classic Premier. when I do a One-Step update, five of the six have equal Online and Ending (register) balances. The online balance is correct, I checked my bank account (for that matter, they all are). But Quicken appears to not recognize the variance and does not prompt me to make a Balance Adjustment. How can my account actually be reconciled if the two numbers differ? I do not know why, nor do I know whether this discrepancy will actually cause my year end reports to be in error, and perhaps put me in trouble with the tax authorities.

Has anyone seen this and solved the problem?

JimPuerto

By the way, I have used Quicken since the mid-1990 and I don't recall having this happen. It only just happened recently.

NotACPA

In the misbehaving account, are there any Future dated transactions? Or any transactions, for example Checks, that you've recorded in Q but haven't yet cleared the bank?

The Online Balance is a downloaded, not calculated, figure and only represents what the bank knows … and they wouldn't know about uncleared checks or future transactions.

JimPuerto

Nice to hear from you! I started using Quicken on Win 3.1! We are both long in the tooth! There are no future transactions entered either by me or my bank. every entry in my Quicken accounts is driven soley by the One Step Update process. I learned long ago that the only thing that matters is my real-time bank balance….actual CASH! :). Entering anticipated spending is a no-no.

I primarily use Quicken for tax returns and secondly for budgeting.

By the way, since i just noticed the discrepancy, I opened a backup from two years ago and guess what? There was a difference back then as well, but it was different than today's. Hmm.

Check this out: One other important bit of knowledge for new users: i have learned never to update during a work day at a bank. that led to missed downloaded transactions which later required balance adjustments. Last year i went through every transaction for each month on Quicken and subsequently found exact missing downloads which matched the balance adjustment amounts. That was useful in order to properly track expenses, especially tax deductible ones. That's a great bit of knowledge, especially if it happens to you. usually the balance adjustment is just one missing transaction which you can see online at your bank, sometimes it is the sum of two or more. but the data is findable.

Thanks for responding