How do I stop Quicken from making erroneous automatic account balance adjustments?

rekwin

Since February, Quicken has been adding plug adjustment amounts into my account balance whenever I download transactions. This adjustment reconciles the online balance with the account ending balance even if that balance includes scheduled but not completed transactions, Since the online balance does not include these transactions, this creates an error in the account ending balance. This may have something to do with the new pending transaction feature? Should I turn this feature off and, if so, how? I checked with the help function but it suggested I change a setting for the account that doesn't exist. I'm using the Windows Classic Deluxe R57.12 Build 27.1.57.12

rekwin

In response to q_lurker: Yes , it does. Unfortunately the check box to turn that feature on or off is missing. Apparently the feature is turned on by default. Anyway, I have solved the problem by deactivating this accounts online access. I don't really need it and now, when I download transactions for my checking or credit card accounts at the bank, it doesn't automatically reconcile the balance of this account. Problem (for me) solved but not fixed.

NotACPA

I'd suggest turning OFF the "Pending Transactions". There have been multiple issues reported with it.

rekwin

I tried this but it didn't fix the issue. In fact, the account with the problem was the only account where pending transactions were already turned off. I tried turning the feature on for this account but that didn't work either.

HoneyBee

I'm adding to rekwin's comments with what may be more information as someone works to fix this… Oddly, Quicken is changing my opening balances and has been for months. Every time I open the program, I have to go immediately change the opening balance of each account to the right number. I've now got a sticky note on my wall for each account with what the opening balance is supposed to be.

volvogirl

You should just type the opening balance in the memo line so you don't need the sticky note and its always showing on the transaction.

q_lurker

Sounds to me like a problem with choosing to auto-reconcile to the online balance.

rekwin

In response to q_lurker: Yes , it does. Unfortunately the check box to turn that feature on or off is missing. Apparently the feature is turned on by default. Anyway, I have solved the problem by deactivating this accounts online access. I don't really need it and now, when I download transactions for my checking or credit card accounts at the bank, it doesn't automatically reconcile the balance of this account. Problem (for me) solved but not fixed.

Chris_QPW

The setting for this is hard to find and certainly not intuitive. But the default shouldn't be to auto reconcile. When you select to reconcile to the online balance when you first start a reconcile there are selections for reconciling to the online balance and for doing auto reconciling and not to prompt you again. If you did that last one that means this dialogue will not come up and I believe it actually applies to if you select auto reconcile too. The only way to turn this back off is to go to the account details online services tab and deselect the option for reconciling to the online balance. At this point there is no way to deselect auto reconcile without turning off reconciling to the online balance first. Start a new reconcile the prompt comes up and you reselect what you really want.

rekwin

Unfortunately, the choice of turning auto reconciling on or off was missing for this account or I would have turned it off. In fact, until I turned off online access, there was no manual reconcile option either. When I deactivated online access, all of these addition menu choices suddenly appeared for this account including manual reconcile. I have no idea why. The program may have defaulted to auto reconcile to online balance resulting in these unwanted adjustments because manual reconcile was not available. Anyway, Quicken is no longer plugging in these erroneous account balance adjustments.

rekwin

I should point out that the account in question has been open for many years but these unwanted adjustments only started happening in February. So I presume this means some program update at that time caused the problem.