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Will Quicken ever fix Opening Balance issue?

mikek753b

Hi Quicken,

It has been for over 4 years for me, while it isn't fixed.

Is there any ETA for the fix?

This is my old 3 pages thread

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7913618/quicken-changes-opening-balance-for-no-reason-and-without-a-notice

There are many similar threads, while all were closed and there is no fix or any ETA for the fix.

Yes, I inserted 2nd transaction with correct value and the Memo about the opening balance, and keep 1st transaction with 0.00.

The Quicken keeps changing that 1st transaction, even it's set as "R" to wrong value that distorts Ending Balance.
Yes, I had to check for the 1st account transaction is its expected 0.00 every time before start looking for missing real transactions.

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[Deleted User]

@mikek753b I have created a category for opening balances called "Opening Balance". I don't use "self-transfers" for opening balance transactions.

I think using "self-transfer" transactions that Quicken automatically creates might be the issue.

Chris_QPW

I have had good luck with the accounts that start with a zero balance to just delete that opening balance transaction.

As for the rest, not only does Quicken Inc not give estimates on any features/fixes, I believe in this case the reason it isn't fixed is because they can't figure out what is causing it and therefore are incapable of fixing it.

UKR

I just wish they'd finally fix this issue.

When an account is reactivated, the existing Opening Balance transaction is OFF LIMITS and must never be changed.
Only when a new account is created and transactions are download into an otherwise empty register for the first time can and should an Opening Balance transaction be created.

Bob@45

I agree with both Chris_QPW and UKR — 1) Quicken cannot figure out why it's happening. 2) The Opening Balance transaction should never ever ever be updated.

It should not be difficult to find anywhere/everywhere in the code where the Opening Balance record is created or updated, and add a check to see "does this opening balance record already exist?" If it exists. DO NOT CHANGE IT.

This is just one of the reasons I consider Quicken to be a very low quality product. The only reason I continue to use it after 30+ years is that it's the only product that comes close to meeting my needs.

urherken

I had recurring crashes of Quicken during One Step updates (another issue that has not been fixed…).
After each of these crashes, all of my EWC accounts were disconnected and needed to be reconnected. And after each of these reconnections, opening balances were changed. (I spent hours the first time that happened to figure out where the error was…)

I have to agree with others that Quicken has turned into a very unreliable product. And I would love to ditch it. But as others have pointed out, there's really nothing comparable out there. And the Quicken folks know that and behave accordingly.

Until one day there is a competitor and they'll lose 50% of their customers.

mikek753b

Can Quicken just add a Prompt dialog with current opening balance and downloaded opening balance to chose which one to use?

Many have 3 years old accounts and any account connection reset comes with age limited opening balance, that for wrong reason overwrites original , way older opening balance transaction, also behind User back.

Unfortunately, I have to reset one or another account connectivity from time to time, due to quicken crashes or etc.

I have tried the suggested zero opening balance by @Chris_QPW mentioned above, which was also suggested by another superuser years ago, with no difference in my case. If I ever deactivate/reconnect my EWC/+ accounts, I am guaranteed to have the opening balance altered with a few of them. Be it in my main file or test file. I have experienced this anomaly since about 2015 and I do not believe Quicken can ever fix it.

Given that the workaround is very simple (to have the correct amount added in the memo field), I view this as a very minor inconvenience for me and I have accepted it as what it is. I only wish that Quicken would warn new and unaware users of this to take proper action. Unfortunately that would never happen either.

Quicken has been a very reliable program for me since I know to avoid its weaknesses. I may encounter an issue once a year or so which I know how resolve - thanks to what I've learned from the experts on this community.

nmestanas

So I had the opening balance change on my USAA Checking account this morning. OSU ended with a CC-506 error on USAA. Rather than just jump into reset, I ran OSU again with the same results (yes insanity). Decided to log on to USAA to check if any issues there. Login OK. The online balances match the Q registers (no new trans actions to download). So I went through the reset steps and reconnected. Once OSU completed, it reported no new transactions downloaded.

I have one uncleared transaction entered by Bill Reminder with auto enter on so this appears as my last register entry for $14. It currently shows as "Pending" on USAA site. When I checked the account balance now, it was off by $14. Scrolled up to the first transaction, opening balance should be zero but was changed to $14. I do have the memo field stating the actual opening balance in case this happens (it has happened quite a few time before). I have pending transactions currently set to OFF. Used to be ON, but was having other issues in addition to the opening balance change so I turned it OFF to see if that would address it.

If I attempt to reconcile the account, the dialog lists the $14 uncleared transaction but shows the cleared and statement ending balances different by $14. I would have to clear the transaction to zero the difference. If I did this, then tomorrow I'd get the Pending transaction. Since the entry is reconciled, it will not match. Often it won't show the line even if I manually match, so I just delete the downloaded transaction.

As BK says, overall Q has been working well for me, despite the errors and other "bad behavior". Most are simple enough to fix/workaround albeit still a bit frustrating that we have to go through it.

Bob@45

@nmestanas - You didn't state clearly in your report: Did you zero the Opening transaction? Every time this has happened for me, zeroing the opening transaction fixed the problem.

Then the statement ending balance is corrected and matches the cleared total, with the still-pending payment ignored during the reconciliation process (listed, but unchecked).

[Deleted User]

@Bob@45 @nmestanas simply deleting the beginning balance transaction that was automatically created, will work also.

nmestanas

Ah, my oversight. yes I zeroed the opening balance. Since this is a recurring issue, I thought I'd post the conditions and steps that generated the issue. Don't know if the pending transaction, bill reminder, and connection error are related somehow, or just a random coincidence. I didn't pay that much attention when it happened previously.

I opened my USAA account after I started using Quicken so the opening balance is zero (and noted in the memo field). I have other accounts that I opened before Quicken so they have a non-zero opening balance. Their actual balance is also in the memo field so I can "reset" it when this happens in those accounts.

mikek753b

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20492735#Comment_20492735

no, this doesn't work for me, as I have many accounts over 5 years old, some are over 10 years old.
I run truncate accounts from time to time to reduce the size of my Quicken data file.

I don't need credit card transactions over 3 years old. While I keep all for my investment accounts.

As result the 1st transaction as opening balance can't be $0.00

Regardless of the workaround this issue is annoying and time consuming that impacts any of my accounts at any update time.

Whenever Quicken gets data with an account opening balance, regardless of the date, even 30 days old for the account of 5 years old, the quicken just blindly applies this downloaded opening balance value to the 1st Date in the account, and without any notice.

How do I know which one account went wrong with bad opening balance out of 10+ updated accounts?

I can find the issue when I reconcile one account after another manually, or looking at an account balance vs online balance. Sure, when I see those balances are not the same then I scroll to the 1st transaction for the check.

Without fixing this issue manually my Billing forecast and reports are impacted and as result very wrong.

The R transaction should not be changed, it must be immutable.

mshiggins

I think it would be possible to create a transaction report that only has the opening balance transaction for all accounts. The report could then be run when you have a balance issue to quickly find the problem account(s).

An alternative is to use the All Transactions register. Assuming all opening balance transactions have the text “opening balance”, just enter that text into the All Transactions search field and you’ll have the list of opening balance transactions. You can find the all Transactions register via the link at the top of the Account Bar.

Bob@45

As result the 1st transaction as opening balance can't be $0.00

I would suggest you generate a record "my starting balance" with the correct amount, and have an "opening balance" dated a day or two earlier of zero. Then whenever Quicken fouls up the opening balance, your own starting balance is secure and you can zero the bad amount with no problem.