Missing Transaction(s) in Bank of America

Question

When I tried to reconcile my most recent statement from BOA, my statement showed my account balance was $35.49 higher than shown in Quicken.  I went back to the balance for the last 3 statements, which had been previously reconciled, and again off by $35.49.  I then went back to my year-end balance for the last 3 years and again off by $35.49.  How could one or more transactions older than 3 years be missing in my Quicken data?

P.S.  I spent 2 days several months ago tracking down missing transactions in my Schwab accounts for 20205.

NotACPA · Answer

Have you recently reset this BofA account, or changed the download method into it?

A longstanding,  and not fully understood, bug in Q can  sometimes change the  Opening Balance in an account, which could explain what you're seeing.

SO, restore an older Q backup (to a different name so as to not overwrite your current file) and see what the Opening Balance there is.

It's also suggested that, for this reason, you store the correct Opening Balance for any account that you download in that OB transaction in the account.  Thus, if this happens again, you can quickly determine the correct OB and correct it.

Another possible explanation would be if your changed the amount, in the other account, of any transfer OR deleted, in the other account, a transfer.  That would also change/delete the transaction in this account.

You can also review your month-end balances from 6 months ago, or a year ago, until you identify the approximate date of the error and then proceed to narrow down from there.

Quicken Alyssa · Answer

Hello @PeachyPete,

Thank you for posing this question.

It is hard to say how this could have happened. We do have an Open Alert for missing transactions with Bank of America, but if this goes back years for you, then it would not be the same issue.

Do you regularly reconcile this account? If so, one thing you can check is the opening balance on the account. Sometimes the opening balance can change, but this happens when accounts are disconnected and reconnected. Another option is restoring a backup from the last time you were in Quicken before this issue was present. For instance, if you reconciled this account last month with 0 discrepancies, you could restore a backup from that day.

Restore Quicken data

* Go to File > View/Restore Backups....

* Browse the Local and Online Backups tabs to find the backup file you want to restore. The Quicken backup file has the extension .QDF-Backup.
* Select the file to restore and click Restore Backup.
* Next, you will be given the option to overwrite the file you have open or to create a copy of the backup you're restoring.* If you Create a copy, you will need to select a location to save the copy to and you will also need to give the copy a unique file name. After naming the file and selecting the location, click Save, then click Yes to open the restored file.
* What does it mean to overwrite a file?: Restoring a backup file replaces your current data with the data stored on the backup. Be aware that you'll lose any changes you made since the backup was created. If you want to preserve the current file, you must rename the current file or the file you are restoring. We recommend to avoid overwriting files.

Let us know how it goes!