Reconciliation Question

My current theory is that it's a bug in a section of code for which Quicken has lost their only copy of the code. They're not able to fix the bug because they have nothing to look at, and they can't rewrite their code because they have no documentation about what it's supposed to do. People have been complaining about it for at least 5 years to my knowledge.

I've developed the habit: whenver there's ANY reconciliation discrepancy, I scroll to the top of the register and look at the opening balance before I look at anything else.

I have had this issue with Quicken changing the starting balance on multiple accounts. It got so aggravating that I changed my starting balance to 0 and set the opening date to the previous year. I then made another entry for the correct date and amount, made it a lot easier to see what was happening.

The worst part was that it was happening for multiple accounts. I had decided a couple of years ago to start with a completely blank data file for the first of the year, so I had to manually calculate my "opening" balances for the first, since the majority of my accounts do not reset on the first of the month.

Two years later, I'm still wondering if it was worth it. Quicken just has so many quirks and troubles, but there isn't anything else out there for desktop usage that handles both personal and business accounts.

I still miss Microsoft Money.

Westley

I’ve had quicken several times now remove transactions from my bank account. This started occurring about two years ago in a bank account I have used for over 20 years in Quicken. For this account I can NOT stand to use “adjust balance” as I want to know what is going on. I’ve had to do it so many times now that I’ve built a spreadsheet of ending balances by statement period (from the bank statements) so I can then quickly review ending balance in the register to identify which month is the problem first occurs. However if this problem ever occurs further back than the bank will provide statements for (currently about two years), I’m out of luck. Though for taxs purposes, I suppose I could live with only two years of correct transactions. Sigh…

Based on being a ~30 year Quicken user and having had your issue too many times, all of the responses above are excellent and helpful. The beginning balance was the issue for my troublesome credit card account. Some additional things to consider in the future:

1. Validate your data from time to time (after backing up, File>Validate and Repair…>Validate File). I especially thought of this given you comment about losing two months of transactions. The data file does catch partially corrupted from time to time.
2. Make a local backup file (NOT a cloud file) every day so you can restore to the prior state easily, especially useful when ‘yesterday was OK but today is screwed up.’
3. Create a report so you can easily, and on an ongoing basis, answer the question “does your online balance equal your reconciled and cleared balance in Quicken?” For this I have a custom report for my particularly troublesome credit card account with the starting point being running the register report. I customized the register report by choosing only the account(s) I am focused on, use “sub-total by account,” sort by “account/date” and “include all dates”, and on the advanced tab, unselect the “not cleared” box (leave “newly cleared” and “reconciled” checked). I saved this )"My Saved Reports) as a custom report so I can easily run this once a week, usually it is fine, but sometimes I find user errors or card issuer errors.
4. Some or all the blame may not be Quicken, but (using your case) the card issuer. I have a similar problem in an investment account for which the investment firm will provide me with the same interest payment from a bond two times but two days apart which is easy to miss and therefore messes up the monthly cash reconciliation (i.e., Quicken worked perfectly, the investment firm did not).
5. Check posted date versus date you entered. Not sure but sometimes I think Quicken uses the “downloaded posting date” instead of the “date” I entered for reconciling. Downloaded posting date is a column you can add to your register under “Setttings>Register Columns.” For “Settings” is the gear symbol above and to the right of your account register. In those cases where this is causing the error I have had to do things like change the statement date in the reconcile dialogue to pick up transactions, or ‘unclear’ certain items to get them out of the reconciliation totals (make sure you ‘clear’ them again once you have reconciled). I get rid of this column after I have identified this as a potential problem.

Good luck.

Here's what I do to find the problem. Some of my credit cards go back to 2010 and I've always found and corrected the problem transaction.

1. In the opening balance, I enter the date and amount in the Memo field. For example, "2/18/2010 Opening Bal = $366.96." As others have said, Quicken will sometimes change the amount.
2. Periodically, I print the whole register (opening balance date to today's date) and Export as a CSV file. I do this for all of my accounts roughly each year. (You can start with your latest backup Quicken file that is correctly reconciled.) I save each with the account name and current date. I keep all of them. When the account won't reconcile, I compare the current file's running balance to the latest CSV's balance side-by-side in Excel. Start in the middle. If the balances match, the error is in the newer half. If they don't match, it's in the older half. Look midway in the half with the error. Repeat. This binary search is relatively fast.

Pending transactions seem to be a problem

I have my Quicken folder automatically backed up every morning. Your method is easier. As the reconciliation issue is within a month of the previous "good" reconciliation, you can find it by comparing a recent backup to the current. Be careful when restoring a backup to change the name so you don't overwrite the current file. I've always found that either Quicken changed the opening balance or I erroneously edited a transaction.