Is there a step-by-step guide for reconciling bank accounts from a csv file download?
NO, because you'd first need to import that csv into Q … and Q, by itself, doesn't accept csv as a data format … although there are third party options for converting a csv into something that Q can use. Search this forum for more info.
Once the data is imported, it doesn't matter to the reconciliation process how the data got into Q
@djschultz78 - Quicken does have the ability to import CSV files. Go to File→File Import. Then you will see two options for CSV file imports, Banking Transactions or Investment Transactions.
From those two menu options, you will see that you can download a template for both Banking or Investment transactions.
Here is a link to Quicken Help that gives more details -
Import transactions from .CSV file | Quicken Help
If you are asking about the reconciliation process, you can take the downloaded CSV file and open it in Excel and use it to reconcile your accounts on Quicken. You cannot upload a CSV file to Quicken for reconciliation purposes
.In addition, the reconciliation process would also depend on if you have an offline account or if you have an online connection to your bank.
If you can provide more information on what you are trying to do, we would be able to more appropriately provide some help for you.
The big issue I see with the native Quicken .CSV file import is that you have to rearrange the columns if your financial institution doesn't provide them in the Quicken required order.
I would look into ImportQIF (https://github.com/qpwSoftware/ImportQIF) and convert the .CSV file to a .QIF file for import. ImportQIF does a great job. Subscription Quicken greatly reduced how .QIF files are handled, no Matching, no Renaming, no anti-Dupping and they are automatically entered into the register, so no one-by-one acceptance on import. ImportQIF will do Renaming and Category assignment like would happen with Memorized Payee and it will do anti-Dupping against those transactions that having been handled through it previously.
ImportQIF is free and the author of it does a great job of supporting it thru the github website.
Besides the things mentioned above, I have a few more things to add about the CSV import built in to Quicken.
Since this account wouldn't be connected to an online account, neither the Downloaded Transaction tab or the "status Review process of the automatic transaction entry mode" can be used. They are both bypassed. The import will also not change the "Clr" status (it will be blank). So, if one didn't manually change each transaction's "Clr" status to "c" when reconciling this is what one would see:
So, one would probably select "Mark all" which the same as changing all the transactions to "Clr"/c status:
Like this:
You will also note all the repeated transactions, that is because I imported the same CSV multiple times. The CSV import has nothing to block duplicate transactions. It also doesn't process renaming rules or use memorized payees or match existing transactions that you have manually entered. So, these have to be put in the CSV file before importing as needed or fixed after the import (and there is no workaround for pre-entered transactions with CSV).
I will also add something even though it doesn't apply to this use case, even if you were importing into and an account that was connect to an online account, all of this still applies, it will bypass the normal processing.
And just for completeness all of the above applies to QIF imports with the exception of the "Clr" status. With a QIF import the Clr status is set to "c".
And in reference to ImportQIF and duplicates, renaming payees, and categories and such, that is done in ImportQIF and put into the resulting QIF file that is imported into Quicken. And the "no duplicate" when turned on is done by saving a hash that allows it to know that you have run a given transaction through ImportQIF conversion.
