Quicken keeps changing my account balances - help!

Question

Hello,

I am a lifelong user of Microsoft Money and then Quicken Home and Business and I'm so very close to cancelling the subscription and moving to another product.

Until October of 2024, I would manually download an OFX file for my month of transactions from my Citibank credit card and then I'd manually categorize and accept the transactions.  That process broke in October, and continues to give me an OL-221A error.  Fine - I'll do it another way.

So, now I use the Direct Connect method to import transactions from my Citibank Credit Card.  That works, but as soon as it finishes the process, it dramatically changes account totals on accounts not even with Citibank.  My checking account total changed by almost $20,000 and I can't figure out why.  It did not change my opening balance.  I know Quicken is notorious about that, but that wasn't what it did.

It also changed another account balance.  That account is an offline savings that has a lot of transfers in and out of my checking account.  So, these two accounts seem to have lost many of those transfers when Quicken updated by Citibank transactions.

Does anyone know what might be happening?  I have automatic entry off and I plan to manually categorize every imported Citibank transaction.  But, why does quicken screw up account balances on accounts that have nothing to do with Citibank when it imports the Citibank transactions?

I don't want to change platforms or software, but this is ridiculous. Just so ridiculous.

seansds · Answer

Just a few responses:

I did not allow Quicken to automatically accept transactions.  I review them all manually.  I also can't find any duplicates in my Citibank register, but I do have duplicates in my offline savings, which is not even connected in any way to Citibank.  I can't figure that out.  Why did downloading citibank transactions affect other accounts?

My opening balance was already recorded in my memo line and remains unchanged.  I'll keep hunting for duplicates.

UKR · Answer

The first DC download may have downloaded more transactions than just the recent ones, possibly as much as 90 days' worth of transactions.

Did you download transactions and allow Quicken to automatically accept them, unreviewed?

Have you reviewed each of the downloaded transactions? You now may have a whole bunch of duplicate transactions in your register. If any of these new transactions were accepted as transfers between your checking account and the credit card account, this would explain the problems.

Review your credit card register, eliminate any duplicate transactions, verify that payment transfers are not duplicated or incorrectly assigned to a wrong transfer account, make corrections to all new transactions with respect to payee names and categories.

Also review the Opening Balance transaction in your credit card account register. It may have been incorrectly altered and its amount needs to be reset to what it originally was.

We recommend you note the correct balance in the Memo field of the OB transaction … if it gets messed up again, it'll be easy to fix.

Future DC downloads will only download new transactions, arrived since the last download. So this problem should not occur again until / unless you have to deactivate / reactivate.

seansds · Answer

One of the "accounts" that it messes with is an offline savings, where I transfer a specific amount twice a month after I get paid.  This transfer originates from my checking account inside of Quicken to an offline savings account (just designated funds within the checking account).  When I update Citibank, it duplicated my twice a month transfers from checking to savings, even though all I have with Citibank is a credit card.  Citibank shouldn't be touching those other accounts and yet the direct connect download adds duplicate transfers within those other accounts not associated with Citibank.  I don't get it.