Infrequently (but enough to be a painful fix) I find that an account won't reconcile with the statement because the starting balance has changed. In my case I have always found that to be a previously reconciled transaction that was inadvertently (and unknowingly) changed or deleted (the Quicken UI can be a bit finicky). The fix for me has been to backup then export the entire register, restore a month-old backup (to the last time I successfully reconciled), export that register, then restore the previous backup to get back to where I was…then compare the two exported files in Excel to find the altered/missing transaction. I'm very proficient in excel so this last part is trivial, but the backup/export/restore/export/restore process is painfully slow.
Is there a way for Quicken to automate this process? All the user should have to do is select the backup to which the current file will be compared, select the problem account and voila, Quicken produces a list of differences. If that list is restricted to reconciled transactions that resulting list should be very short, most likely (in cases such as mine) just one transaction. Then one could click on "Fix the current file" and…done.
Thoughts?
