Regarding reconciling

Jerry Montgomery

In past versions of Quicken for Mac, I could uncheck transactions to start again. I don't seem to have that capability any more; I have to uncheck them one by one. Am I mistaken? Also, in reconciliation history, I have been trying to understand for hours on end now: While there may be an amount in red, it will say there are now discrepancies. I imagine this is because of some of my action. I never knew that I wasn't reconciling because it seems it just always added an adjustment (or did something) that I didn't know about. So the discrepancies just kept adding up, but now say zero despite Quicken having added an adjustment. Those amounts, as I said, are in red. This is all as clear as mud to me. I'm a fanatic about my checkbook. I don't like hanging amounts. Anything I can do. Some of those go back several years.

Jerry Montgomery

Error fix in my comment/question: "While there may be an amount in red, it will say there are NO discrepancies."

jacobs

I'm not clear if you're describing an issue with a current reconciliation or with multiple prior reconciliations in the Reconciliation History window? Could you post a screenshot to show what you are seeing?

(There is a way to uncheck previously reconciled transactions, but doing so it likely to mess up your saved reconciliations.)

Unfortunately, Quicken doesn't have a way to delete individual monthly reconciliations back to some prior point in time, but it does have a "nuclear" option of deleting all reconciliations for an account — the Clear History button on the Reconciliation History window. Clicking that button will delete all past reconciliations and turn all transactions back to unreconciled, so it's not something you want to do lightly. But it can be helpful if you have multiple, cumulative issues and you just want to start over with an account. After clearing history, you can do a Reconcile as of your last statement date, and Select All transactions (e.g. years of transactions) to reconcile; hopefully, the same of tall the transactions adds up to zero, and you can just press Finish to reconcile all the past transactions, and then go back to reconciling the account monthly going forward. But before you do that, it would help if you could share more about what you're seeing.

Jerry Montgomery

I haven't ever taken a screen shot of my desktop, but if I take it with my phone, how do I send it to you?

Whoops.

Jon

@Jerry Montgomery You have a few built-in options for taking a screen shot on Mac OS. Command-Shift-3 just grabs the entire screen. Command-Shift-4 gives you a crosshair so you can select what part of the screen to grab. Command-Shift-5 is what I typically use - it gives you options to grab a selection, a window, or the entire screen, to record video instead of a still image, and also has some configuration options like where to save the screenshots and whether the mouse cursor should be visible.

Jerry Montgomery

Thank you for that information. I appreciate your help. As for the reconciliation, I know I can't explain what's happening in terms anyone else can understand. I just wish could get rid of all the adjustments and get back to normal. Thank you for your help.

Jon

I had a similar reconciliation problem once where one month showed an error, and when I fixed that month the error moved to the next month, and so on. Never did figure out what was causing it & there didn't seem to be an actual problem with any of the transactions or balances, so I did what @jacobs suggested you do - deleted all the past reconciliations for that account & did one big reconciliation of the entire account history. Haven't had any problems since then.

jacobs

@Jon wrote: I did what @jacobs suggested you do - deleted all the past reconciliations for that account & did one big reconciliation of the entire account history. Haven't had any problems since then.

@Jerry Montgomery If you decide to give this a try, please do a few things:

First, make a backup of your data file! If things go from bad to worse, you can then restore from this current backup.

Then you can click the Clear History button.

Next, if you've been making adjustment transactions along the way to fix discrepancies in your reconciliation, you may want to find and delete those adjustments going back as long as they exist. Then, when you do your big reconcile from the beginning of the account to your last bank statement, you may need to enter one adjustment to fix whatever cumulative problems there have been over time. You can date that adjustment 12/31/24 if you don't want to see it in this year's data.

Actually, I'd recommend doing a reconcile to the last statement of 2024, if you have that handy from your bank. That reconcile will pick up all transactions since the account began, up to 12/31/24 or the closing date of your December bank statement. Click "Mark All as Cleared", to include all the transactions up until this date in the reconciliation, but de-select any recent transactions in December which you know didn't clear the bank until January. If you need to create an adjustment now to make your Quicken balance match your bank balance, do so, and Finish the reconciliation.

Now, move forward to reconcile your January statement as you normally would. You should be able to complete the reconciliation without any adjustment. Repeat again with your February statement. If those two months go smoothly, you should be good moving forward.

jacobs

@Jerry Montgomery @Jon As a side note, I created a new Idea thread (feature request) for Quicken to allow users to delete selected reconciliations working back towards the start of a problem without the need to 'go nuclear' and clear the entire history. I actually thought I or someone had created such a suggestion in the past, but I couldn't find it, so I create a new one.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7960892/allow-deletion-of-one-or-more-account-reconciliations-without-clearing-entire-reconciliation-history

I encourage you to click View Post above to visit this topic and add your vote for the idea (by clicking the dark arrow under the vote counter in the yellow box). Also, please add a comment explaining you've run into reconciliation history discrepancies and why the current all-or-nothing clearing of reconciliation history is less-than-optimal. If and when the developers consider such a feature, users explaining how and why it would be helpful can help them understand the need.