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Occasional Balance Adjustment Reconciling Checking Account

gksmith5

I am using Windows Quicken Home and Business. I faithfully reconcile myy checking accounts and other accounts. However occasionally the Quicken opening balance of my checking account (and sometimes other accounts) does not agree with the statement. However, I am positive everything was proper the previous month. What can cause this deviation?

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Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20472433#Comment_20472433

The ramification is the same as if you put in a balance adjustment. You have papered over a problem, and it may or may not come back to bite you.

Note that "problem" might be in something you did, or something Quicken did (like change the opening balance in your account), or even in the downloaded transaction information.

If you can find what caused the problem, then at least you might be able to guard against it in the future. That isn't to say that it won't happen again, because the cause might be out of your control, but at least you might get a better handle on finding/fixing it.

I would start with looking at a backup from when it did reconcile and see if the running balance has changed in the newer copy.

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q_lurker

Quicken computes that Prior balance on the fly each time you start a reconciliation. It is the sum of all ‘R’ transactions in the account, before and after the date of the reconciliation. So if is different than your last reconciliation result, some transaction with an ‘R’ Clr status is different. Possibilities include:

An amount of an R transaction changed
An R transaction was deleted or added
A status of a transaction was changed from R or to R

I have copied, pasted, and edited a prior transaction to create a new transaction that brought along the prior R status and caused that type of problem.

Tom Young

Another possible source of the error could be that the Account's Opening Balance - typically the first transaction in the Register - is getting changed from time to time. This has been known to happen and seems to be associated with "downloading." One way of handling that problem is to enter the CORRECT opening balance dollar amount in that transactions Memo field.

gksmith5

Thank you for the responses. The cause is what I suspected, but I have never been able to find an amount in the register that corresponds. And probably this might be due to two items being changed.

Would I have bad ramifications if I eliminated the balance adjustment by adjusting the opening balance by an equivalent amount?

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20472433#Comment_20472433

The ramification is the same as if you put in a balance adjustment. You have papered over a problem, and it may or may not come back to bite you.

Note that "problem" might be in something you did, or something Quicken did (like change the opening balance in your account), or even in the downloaded transaction information.

gksmith5

Thank you for the responses and suggestions! I now understand the possible causes.

Tom Young

"The cause is what I suspected, but I have never been able to find an amount in the register that corresponds. And probably this might be due to two items being changed."

If the problem arises because an entered and reconciled transaction was completely deleted, then you'll never find that "corresponding" amount in the register.

You do need to work backwards through backups and old statements - if you have them - to find "disappearing transactions" problems. You can take big steps backwards to narrow down the event. So, for example, you might open a backup from a year ago, see that the balance is at that time is correct, then jump forwards 6 months, see that the balance is wrong, and now you've narrowed down the event to some month in between.

q_lurker

While you are trying to identify the causes, you might consider printing or saving the reconciliation report each time. I am not a big fan of the report; I do not produce it each time, but I am not having your problem.