Can't close checking account

John_M

I recently closed a checking account with Bank of America. Quicken will not allow me to close the account, giving me the message "You cannot close an account while it has any scheduled, future-dated, or pending payment transactions."

I checked the register to show reminders for the "Next One Due" and there are none. I also went into the Bills & Income tab and confirmed that there are none for the account.

In the Bill Pay tab of Account Settings, neither Quick Pay nor Check Pay is enabled and it states that "Bank Bill Pay is unavailable for this account."

Any idea what's going on? Am I doomed to have this account open forever in Quicken?

RickO

I really don't think it has anything to do with the bank closing the account. Clearly Quicken thinks there's a scheduled, future dated or pending payment in the account. This could be a database glitch. I assume you've checked that there are no active filters in the account and that you've sorted by date so you can see this transaction if it exists. Other than that, I'm at a loss to explain why such transaction would not be visible.

Here's a possible workaround: Create a new account of the same type (not connected). Select all transactions in the problem account, then drag and drop them to the new account in the sidebar to move them. When you select the transactions, first set the register date filter to the first date up to yesterday to avoid capturing any future transactions that may not be showing. Check that the new account looks good then attempt to mark it as closed. Once that's done, you can delete the old account and rename the new one to the old account's name.

Before starting this, make sure you have a back (or work in a copy of the file) in case anything goes amiss.

RickO

I've seen this issue before. Try this: manually disconnect the account in its settings. Then try to close.

If that still doesn't work, sort the register by the Check# field and look at the beginning and end of the list for any entries other than blank or a number (such as "send"). If you find any, that's likely the problem. In that case, try to clear the check number field. If you can't duplicate the transaction, then delete the original.

If none of that works, then you can disconnect it (which you already did), make sure the balance is zero, and hide it. This is all the things that closing it does. It just won't be marked as closed, but I don't think that really matters.

John_M

Thanks Rick for the response. I had already disconnected the account and there were no entries that were not blank or numeric when I sorted the CHECK # field. Guess I'll live with it as an open hidden account.

I'm wondering if the reason is that the bank closed the account before I was able to disconnect it and close it in Quicken. Anyway, it's not a huge deal. Thanks again.

RickO

I really don't think it has anything to do with the bank closing the account. Clearly Quicken thinks there's a scheduled, future dated or pending payment in the account. This could be a database glitch. I assume you've checked that there are no active filters in the account and that you've sorted by date so you can see this transaction if it exists. Other than that, I'm at a loss to explain why such transaction would not be visible.

Here's a possible workaround: Create a new account of the same type (not connected). Select all transactions in the problem account, then drag and drop them to the new account in the sidebar to move them. When you select the transactions, first set the register date filter to the first date up to yesterday to avoid capturing any future transactions that may not be showing. Check that the new account looks good then attempt to mark it as closed. Once that's done, you can delete the old account and rename the new one to the old account's name.

Before starting this, make sure you have a back (or work in a copy of the file) in case anything goes amiss.

John_M

I tried dragging and dropping the transactions and found the following that were not able to be moved:

1. Some of the transactions were split deposits from a paycheck (most of the paycheck was put in another account; this was the secondary account). So there was the familiar "This transaction is locked and cannot be edited" message. I would have to go into the original transactions and change the account manually to the new never-connected account.
2. There were a number of transactions that used this BofA checking account to pay a BofA credit card. When I set up the payment online, it evidently was using a special way of paying the bill. The error message I received when trying to move these transactions was "You cannot move past payments or printed checks to other accounts." When I went into the transaction, I saw the attached message. Evidently, it thinks that the transaction was sent, but never processed. Weird. So it looks like the only way around this is to manually change all these transactions too.
3. Screenshot 2024-12-09 at 10.29.10 AM.png

John_M

Success!

When I examined all of the credit card payments that I was not allowed to move, I found that only two of them had the message stating they still hadn't been processed. I figured that I could delete them and then manually reenter them. However, when I went to delete them, I got this message:

Screenshot 2024-12-09 at 11.14.13 AM.png

So rather than deleting them, I just set them to manual. Once that was done, I was able to close the account without issue.

Thanks again for your time on this!

Quicken Jasmine

Hello @John_M,

Thank you for coming to update us! We are happy to hear that @RickO was able to help you resolve this issue!

Please don't hesitate to reach out with any further questions or concerns!

RickO

Glad you got it sorted and that I was able to help. Sometimes those bill pay transactions are just strange.