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Don't modify Opening Balance without warning when linking or re-linking accounts

Jim_Harman

Recently users have been required to frequently re-link their EWC and EWC+ accounts as part of recovering from CC-800 errors. Currently Quicken will often modify the Opening Balance of an account when it is re-linked, causing a lot of confusion. These Opening Balance transactions are generally the first transaction in the register, dating in my case back to 1999.

This is a very common and annoying issue and has been ongoing since at least May 2022. If I search the Community for "Opening Balance changed" - with the quotes so it is looking for that exact phrase - I get 179 matching conversations.

I think the objective of changing the Opening Balance is to force the account's current balance in Quicken to match the Online Balance reported by the FI. When re-linking, any difference in the balance is generally due to recent missing or duplicate transactions, not issues from years ago.

Thus I think that the current process should be changed to one of the following:

Record any balance adjustment as a new transaction on the date the accounts were linked, with a clear Memo including the old and new balances
If for some reason the adjustment must be made to the original Opening Balance, provide a clear message before making any changes indicating the old and proposed new values, with an option for the user to reject the change.

I am sure there are other ways this problem might be resolved. If so, please add a comment with your ideas.

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Comments

[Deleted User]

If you simply delete those opening balance transactions and replace them with a transaction with a category, the issue is permanently resolved. There is no requirement to have opening balance transactions use a "self-transfer" transaction.

I have created a category called "Opening Balance" and replaced all of my opening balance transactions using that category and I have never had an issue since.

Jim_Harman

Good observation, @CaliQkn. I don't get these adjustments often, but I will try your solution and see what happens. I got one just two days ago while recovering from CC-800 errors.

[Deleted User]

@Jim_Harman one other important thing. The transaction needs to be deleted and replace by a new one. Not just changed.

Boatnmaniac

I see you beat me to the punch on this one, @Jim_Harman! :-) You got my vote.

This has been an ongoing issue for at least the last 1-2 yrs and needs to be fixed. IMO, it is one of the biggest issues/bugs with Quicken because it compromises the integrity of the affected accounts and can take a significant amount of time to manually identify and correct the issue when it occurs.

First, I would like to clarify that this issue with Opening Balances getting changed is not an issue with just CC-800 errors resolutions. It is an issue that sometimes occurs whenever there is a change to an EWC or EWC+ connection method for Spending Accounts (I don't recall seeing it affecting other types of accounts), including:

Resetting an account
Deactivating/Reactivating an account
Reauthorizing an EWC+ connected account.
Changing from an EWC connection to an EWC+ connection.
Changing from a DC or WC connection to an EWC or EWC+ connection.
Doing Add Account or Set Up Now when a connection was for some other error or unknown reason deactivated.
Setting up EWC or EWC+ connections for the first time for an already established manual account.

Second, an alternative option would be for the software to lock the Opening Balance transaction dollar amount when a new account is set up via Add Account or Set Up Now so that Quicken could not change that dollar amount at all and that the only way to change it would be if the user manually did so manually.

If this alternative option were to be implemented then existing accounts at the time the change is implemented should also have the Opening Balance transactions dollar amount locked so they do not continue being affected by this issue.

Jim_Harman

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20495339#Comment_20495339

Really? Did you confirm that by testing? Did you also change the Payee to something other then Opening Balance?

That would mean that they are pointing to a particular transaction to modify, not the first transaction in the register or a self-transfer with a Payee of Opening Balance or something

Boatnmaniac

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20495329#Comment_20495329

Interesting. I'll have to give that a try.

[Deleted User]

@Jim_Harman I once had to restore an account, so I just downloaded from the FI and it created an opening balance that I just simply changed to a transfer transaction, and then restored the rest of the historical transactions. Then I had a issue that changed the amount of that transaction. I don't remember exactly what happened. It could be just coincidence but ever since then I always make sure to delete then replace.

The Payee was/and is "Opening Balance". The Category and Memo are also "Opening Balance".

Jim_Harman

— start of rant —

I accept that there may be workarounds for this longstanding and confusing problem. Nonetheless, we should not have to play tricks to get Quicken to stop changing 25 year old opening balances in our accounts without warning.

If we get a warning when we try to modify a reconciled transaction or one that is more than a year old, why can't we at least get a warning when Quicken wants to change it?

— end of rant —

Chris_QPW

I voted for this, but I put it at about 0% chance of happening, or to be more precise they might try to do it but will never succeed.

Not being able to see the code I have no idea exactly what the problem is, but if they haven't fixed it after all this time, clearly, they either don't consider it something that should have priority, or they just can't fix it for some reason.

It isn't like this suggestion hasn't been suggested before. Sure, I don't think this has been suggested as an "Idea", but this is clearly a bug, one that have been brought to their attention numerous times before.