After viewing prior year budget, current year budget values change

Hickory 1199

We looked back into 2024 and 2023 for budget information, and when we came back to 2025, the budget values have changed. We restored the data file from a known good source, and all was well. Again, we checked back into budget year 2024, and when we came back to budget year 2025, the values were changed again. All we did was look - no changes were made in the earlier years.`

Any thoughts?

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Hickory 1199,

Thank you for letting us know you're encountering this issue! To help troubleshoot this, please provide more information. Which values are changing? Is this happening in the Annual View or the Graph View? Are you looking at Details, Balance only, Budget only, or Actuals only? If you have more than one budget set up in Quicken, is this happening with all of your budgets, or just one?

I look forward to your reply!

Hickory 1199

Which values are changing? Balance on some categories, not all.

Annual View or Graph View? Annual View.

Are you looking at Details, Balance only, Budget only, or Actuals only? Details for current month, Budget only for future months.

If you have more than one budget set up in Quicken, is this happening with all of your budgets or just one? We have just one budget with multiple years of history.

Thank you!

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

I tried to replicate this in my Quicken, but wasn't able to. Which specific categories is this happening with? Are those categories part of a category group? If they are, do you see the same behavior when you remove them from the group? For information on removing a category from a category group, please see this article:

https://info.quicken.com/win/how-do-i-work-with-category-groups

Thank you!

Hickory 1199

Which specific categories is this happening with? It varies - sometimes it's one category, another time it is a different category.

Are those categories part of a category group? Yes.

…do you see the same behavior when you remove them from the group? I'm not going to do that. In order to fix the problem we have to go back to a known accurate data file and restore that file.

However, we did find an issue that has happened before: the opening balance of an account gets changed. The credit card account was opened with a zero balance, and the balance between the bank and quicken becomes wrong. A review of the account transactions reveals the opening balance ($0) was changed to a positive number.

The problem with scrolling through past budgets continues to create changes in the budget that we have not made.

Just as an aside, we've been using Quicken since the MS-DOS days - yes, that was back when you typed the executable file name on the command line. We are not newbies.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

You mentioned a credit card account's opening balance changed. Which financial institution is that credit card with? Is it connected via Express Web Connect +? You can check the connection method by going to Tools>Account List, and looking in the Transaction Download column to the right of the problem account's name.

You mentioned that the issue with changes you didn't make is still persisting. To clarify, since you mentioned "to fix the problem we have to go back to a known accurate data file and restore that file", is this issue persisting after restoring that file?

Thank you!

Hickory 1199

Which financial institution is that credit card with? Chase

Is it connected via Express Web Connect +? Yes - The account was opened with a zero balance on 3/07/2022, and has had zero problems. It was just in the past several weeks that the issue occurred.

…is this issue (the budget changes) persisting after restoring that file? Yes. All I have to do is open past budgets, then return to the current budget year and some category 'Balance' values have changed.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

While it is uncommon, there is a known issue with Express Web Connect + accounts having their opening balance change. See this article for more information:

https://www.quicken.com/support/why-did-my-opening-balance-change-after-changing-ewc-quicken-windows/

Have you tried restoring a backup from a bit further in the past, just in case the problem still existed in the one you restored? How far into the past is the backup you're restoring?

Thank you!

Hickory 1199

Have you tried restoring a backup from a bit further in the past… We restored a backup from last August investigating the changed opening balance. We did not check if the budget issue still existed that far back. We did not continue to use the restored file from August, as there are way too many transactions and account variations to bring that aged file back to current value.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

Since the budget issue you're seeing may be due to a file specific issue, I suggest that you try validating your data file.  Please save a backup file prior to performing these steps. 

Validate: 

1. File
2. Validate and Repair File...
3. Validate File
4. Click OK
5. Close the Data Log
6. Close Quicken (leave it closed for at least 5 secs)
7. Reopen Quicken and see if the issue persists.

Please let me know how it goes!

Hickory 1199

Done that. We even Super validated the file. And yes, the issue still persists.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for your reply,

If restoring a backup from before the problem started isn't a viable option, then the next step is creating a copy of your data file, which will rebuild all of the internal lists and database tables. If successful, you would then move forward with the copied file. To create a copy, please navigate to 

File > Copy or Backup File... > Create a copy or template (see examples below) which will also allow you to select a date range to move forward with.

If you wish to move forward with your entire data file, please check the full date range of your entire data file before copying so you can enter the correct date range if you do not wish to "shrink" your file by eliminating certain dates. Note: You would not need to "shrink" your file unless you believe that older data may be causing the issue you're seeing.

It's important to know that all online services will be disconnected in the copied file, and you will need to sign back in with your Quicken ID and reconnect all of your online accounts, online billers, Quicken Bill Manager services, etc if you plan to use that copied file going forward. The reason for this is that the new copy also creates a new and separate dataset ID. I recommend testing to make sure the issue is resolved in the copied file prior to reconnecting your accounts.

If the issue is not resolved in the copied file either, then feel free to switch back to your original file.

Thank you!

Hickory 1199

Okay, we tried copying the file as you instructed and the issue still existed.

We are done with the problem. Since it only manifested itself in the budget screen when we paged back through prior year budgets, we created a new budget and deleted the old budget with all the historical budget data. I considered that option the 'nulclear' option, as it didn't really fix any issues with the data file or bugs that may exist in the software - all it did was delete the problem.

So, while the problem hasn't been fixed, it has been deleted.

Quicken Kristina

Thank you for the follow-up,

I'm glad to hear you found a resolution to the issue.

If you need further assistance, please feel free to reach out!