Reconciliation error

SMS2022

I'm using Windows 11 Home ver: R60.15 build: 27.1.60.15. I've used Quicken for 20+ years and I'm extremely familiar with it. I download and reconcile accounts every day. A few days ago a checking account did not reconcile. It reconciled the day before and only two new transactions were downloaded. The balance was now off exactly $500.00. My assumption was that somehow a $500 expense was deleted or a $500 deposit duplicated. I looked back as far as available bank statements, which was Nov 2017, and Quicken now shows my balance off $500 in Nov 2017. So the $500 error occurs before Nov 2017. Does anyone have any ideas on how/why this type of error might happen?

Jim_Harman

Sometimes Quicken will change the Opening Balance of an account without warning. If you don't have a record of the correct opening balance, you may need to open a backup from before this issue started and see what it should be.

It is a good idea to record the correct opening balance for each of your accounts in the Memo field of the Opening Balance transaction so you can correct this problem later if necessary.

Please let us know if this is what happened to you.

SMS2022

The date of the opening balance on this account was Aug 2000. I do not have bank statements or anyway to confirm exactly what the bank shows for that opening balance.

Why would Quicken make an unrequested change on its own to an opening account balance? It has never done that before on any account I use in Quicken. This was the first and only time it has happened in 20+ years.

NotACPA

" I do not have bank statements or anyway to confirm exactly what the bank shows for that opening balance."

So restore a backup that was created before this happened, as @Jim_Harman suggested. Just restore to a different file name so as to not overwrite your existing file.

And, this bug happens when any of multiple situations happen. The precise cause hasn't yet been identified, which is why it's still being worked on.

Jim_Harman

Changes to account opening balances appear to have something to do with downloads being reauthorized by your bank or other financial institution.

See this discussion and dozens of others:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7957794/quicken-changing-opening-account-balances-nov-2024

SMS2022

I looked at the opening balance on a backup copy of my file. It shows the same amount for an opening balance. So Quicken did not change the opening balance on its own. The $500 error appears to be something other than an opening balance change.

Jim_Harman

Thanks for the update. So it appears that a transaction of $500 from prior to Nov 2017 was deleted or duplicated.

One way you could track this down would be to go to the good backup and click on the gear at the top right, then pick More reports and Register report. This will take a while to open if you have a lot of transactions in the account.

Click on the gear at the top right of the report and on the Advanced tab, set the amount to Equal to and 500. This will show all the $500 transactions in the account. Hopefully there are not too many. Print this report.

Back in your working file, print the same report and compare to find where they are different, then correct the bad transaction.

To help prevent mistakenly changing old transactions, you can go to Edit > Preferences > Notify and make sure the When entering out of date transactions and When changing reconciled transactions boxes are checked. You can also go to File > Set password to modify transactions and set a transaction password and date.

It would sure be nice if these safeguards also applied changes that Quicken makes to your file.