Reconcile issue

@Quicken Anja - Yes, as you noted and as I stated earlier, first it needs to be determined if the Opening Balance transactions dollar amount has been changed. And if so, that needs to be fixed by entering the correct dollar amount.

Also, I think it needs to be confirmed whether or not there are any duplicate transactions in the register (they will usually show up within the 90-days prior to the last connection change/modification). Delete any duplicates that are found.

Both of these things are well known issues that can sometimes happen, especially with EWC and EWC+ connections.

However, I think thread is about a different issue that has been posted about in this forum many times over the last several years but which I can't recall Quicken ever acknowledging. Simply:

• When the aggregator downloads data from the FI it appears that perhaps the FI is downloading an Online Balance that includes pending transaction dollar amounts.
• Or, sometimes, the downloaded Online Balance includes the amounts of new newly posted transactions that have not yet been downloaded.
• Either way, reconciling to the Online Balance cannot be completed because of this.

Here is a picture of a current situation that happened when I ran OSU yesterday.

In the past I've often called it a "timing issue" because that is how it was described to me. In this thread I've called it a "sync issue". Either way, the issue generally self-resolves with another OSU done 12-24 hrs later. The exception to this is when the next OSU includes partial data from another new transaction so the reconciliation is then delayed until the next OSU. This becomes a significant issue for those who have have transactions downloading on most days because it means reconciling to the online balance cannot be completed for possibly many days.

I've experienced this with every one of my EWC and EWC+ accounts at one time or another. With some it happens more frequently than with others. And it does not happen all the time. It all makes me think that data that is being downloaded at night is sometimes being pulled from the FI server before the FI has completed their nightly server updates so what is posted and the online balance are not completely in sync with each other. It's just a guess but it seems logical.

It has only happened with 2 of my 6 DC connected accounts (like is shown in the picture posted above). These 2 DC accounts generally download data from the night before (like what happens with EWC and EWC+ accounts) instead of real-time data downloads. This never happens with the real-time download DC accounts.

This also happens in all of my unique data files, including new test files that I sometimes set up.

I want to emphasize that this is not a new issue. It is something that has been happening for at least the last 3-4 years. There has been a lot posted about this in this forum over the years and many have said they reported it in the past. But maybe like me many have simply become complacent about it knowing that it generally self-resolves within 24 hours.

I just noticed something that might be causing or contributing to this issue where the downloaded online balance includes the value of pending transactions:

When Pending Transactions functionality was introduced there was a drop-down just to the left of the Online Balance below the register that would allow us to address and fix issues like this. And it would also send a message back to the FI to not include Pending Transactions in the Online Balance. That often would resolve or greatly reduced the occurrence of this issue. This drop-down is no longer available. Maybe this is what is causing at least an increase in the frequency of this issue occurring?

Why would this function be removed? Would putting it back in place allow us to resolve the issue?

Putting it back in place might address the issue with EWC and EWC+ connected accounts but how would it affect DC connected accounts since DC connected accounts do not permit downloading of Pending Transactions?

You can create a Sanitized file yourself (File > Contact Quicken > Sanitize Data File Copy) to see what the data in the file looks like. That will save a ZIP file with the sanitized data file in it. Copy that sanitized data file to a folder outside of the ZIP folder or extract that file from the ZIP folder. Then double click on it and it will open in Quicken.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised to see how "sanitized" the data in that file is. Here are a few pictures of a sanitized data file that I created a while ago. Every view and location in this file that I looked at had similar information shown with absolutely no confidential information observed. One of my biggest concerns in the past regarded the Note field on the General tab of Account Details because I tend to put some very confidential information in there but as you can see below that whole field is wiped, as well. I hope this makes you feel more comfortable about submitting Sanitized files when reporting a problem.:

For quick reference, here is my 7/2 post regarding a change possibly contributing to this issue:

Another thing I have noticed but I don't know enough to know if there is a direct correlation:

In my account registers there are two date columns: 1) The default column that can be used to show the Transaction date when manually entering the transactions and 2) the optional downloaded Posting Date column.

Lately I've been noticing that the downloaded Posting Date is often the same as the manually entered Transaction date. That is really odd because it usually takes financial institutions 1-3 days to post transactions after they have been transacted and that 1-3 days is the time period where the transactions are in Pending status.

Could this be why financial institutions sometimes include the pending transactions in the downloaded Online Balance? I mean, if they are coded at the FI as "posted" while they are really "Pending" could that be a contributing cause?

That was the 1st thing I checked and it wasn't checked when I first noticed this a few days ago. I didn't post about it until now because I wanted to confirm that this issue really is occurring and that it wasn't just something that I was imagining. So, for the last few days I carefully tracked all pending transactions to see what date was being downloaded. In many cases, not all, the pending transactions showed the transaction date but when the posted transaction downloads is still has the transaction date, not the actual posted date.

Also it is my understanding that having this Preference checked will change a manually entered transaction date to the posted date when the transaction gets downloaded. But what I'm seeing is that the posted date is not always downloading. Instead it is the transaction date that is downloading and that is being entered as the posted date which is wrong.