Why are my past credit card account transactions changing on their own?

Question

Some time between 7/20 and 7/24/25 I noticed that some of my credit card accounts have a positive balance instead of zero or a negative balance.  I had a report from

7/20/25 to list the balances of all accounts.  When I compare this to the same report run today 7/27, There are differences, which I have determined are due to changes to transactions involving credit card accounts with split transactions where one of the categories is Sales Tax.  The split becomes out of balance by the amount of the sales tax.  The transaction amount is reduced by the amount of the sales tax.  If I click the ADJUST button, it corrects itself.  It is not every split involving Sales Tax - just some of them.

CathyFriend · Answer

No, I did not delete any accounts recently and I don't remember deleting any categories, but I might have.  The categories are still there on these transactions, it's just that the sales tax entry is there once correctly, and then there again as not having a category and showing as a negative amount.  If I hover over the split (on the transaction list) I see the category as "Uncategorized", but when I open the transaction, the category is blank.  Clicking the adjust button fixes it by removing the negative amount.  I am wondering if it is because the only category used, other than sales tax, is not really a category (it's an account).  I have hundreds of other splits that include at least one real category and they are fine.  These messed up transactions have a reconciled status and most are not even from 2025.

RalphC · Answer

Did you delete an account or category "Some time between 7/20 and 7/24/25"?  But, the easy fix is to restore a known-good backup from before Some time between 7/20 and 7/24/25 and re-enter subsequent transactions.

CathyFriend · Answer

Some of the transactions are from last year or from 2023.   It is looking like they have this in common - they have only one category other than Sales Tax, and that category is really an account rather than a category.