The balance on my quicken account does not match my bank account. How can it be cleared up?

Question

I have a MAC.  I haven't been keeping up-to-date and today was updating my account.  The transactions are crazy.  The BALANCE is totally incorrect.  I know that it was correct in February. I need you to look at the account.  You will see transactions that are on my credit accounts and repeated in the Quicken account.  Deductions taken 2 or 3 times for same amount.

Are you open on Saturday?  What are your hours?  I do not know when these errors began. The entire account needs to be checked.

Barbara Berman. (personal information deleted - Jon)

jacobs · Answer

@Barbara Berman To add further to @Jon's post: this site is a Quicken Community Forum, not Quicken Support. The Community Forum is primarily composed of fellow Quicken users who pose questions and try to help each other, along with a handful of Quicken moderators who keep the posts organized and help answer some questions. If you want someone to look at your Quicken, then you definitely need to reach out to Quicken Support. I think you should wait until after the weekend so you can call them; a Quicken representative can connect with your Quicken so you can show them what you're seeing and try to help you. Quicken Support is free, as long as you have a current subscription. (But in no case can you expect them to call you; you have to call them at a time their phone support is open and that you have some time to wrk with them.)

Aside from that, let me see if I can offer some steps for troubleshooting your problems. I'm not sure what you mean when you say the "transactions are crazy." Are there missing transactions? Transactions with wrong amounts? Transactions in Quicken which aren't on your bank statements? Transactions with wrong Payee names or incorrect categories? Whatever the issue, the approach for dealing with it is to calmly and methodically sift through the data to find/correct whatever is wrong.

It sounds like you are dealing with just one account? Presumably a checking account? And you say it was correct in February. That's good, as it means there's only 4 months or so of transactions since things we good. Do you reconcile in Quicken to insure it matches your monthly bank statement? Here's the approach I would take if you had reconciled in Quicken as of the end of January or February:

* Go back to the last month you reconciled with you bank statement. This might be February, or you might need to go back to January. Pull out your bank statement and open Accounts > Reconciliation History to see if your last reconciliation shows 0 discrepancies. That would mean your past transaction history is solid, and you only have to resolve moving forward from this date.
* Go to the next month you haven't reconciled in Quicken, click Reconcile, and enter the bank statement ending balance for that month. then go through the transactions in the Reconcile window to check off the ones you see on your bank statement (and uncheck any which are not on the bank statement). If there are any transactions on the bank statement which are not present in Quicken, then enter them as manual transactions. When you're done with this, and the reconciliation window shows a green $0 Difference, click Finish to complete that month's reconciliation.
* Continue to the next month and repeat the same process, adding any missing transactions until you can successfully Finish the reconciliation with no discrepancy. Repeat this through the remaining months up through your latest bank statement. At that point, you know Quicken matches the real world up until your last bank statement date. Finally, you can look at the transactions since the end of the prior month on your bank's website and compare them to Quicken to spot any discrepancies.

If you have used "Reconcile to Online Balance" in the past, or haven't reconciled in the past, I can offer some variations on the above approach to get you to the same end point, but I don't want to make this post longer without understanding what issues you're dealing with.

P.S. For clarity, I'm a fellow Quicken user, not a Quicken Support representative or Quicken employee. 😀

Jon · Answer

They aren't going to call you, you have to call them. Chat support is available 5am-5pm Pacific time every day, phone support is the same hours but M-F only.

https://www.quicken.com/support/search-opt

Barbara Berman · Answer

What are you hours?  My account is completely screwed up.  Go over the account.  CALL ME ASAP.