Help with register date problem in Q2003

I've been trying to get my Mother-in-law up on Quicken 2003 Basic so that
she can take over management of the household finances from her husband. He
was an accountant and for 49 years did everything by hand. She had very
little knowledge of budgeting, check balancing etc, but his health no longer
allows him to properly manage the household.

Anyway, she was doing pretty good and had all her accounts in Quicken. She
has set up automatic payments for some utilities etc. and has been using
Quicken since around the first of the year. She also downloads her account
information from her bank.

Recently she began having problems with her Quicken check register.
Although the register contained all her transaction data, the upper left
hand screen said there was no money in the account.

Apparently she spoke with her bank and they solved that, but as she put it
in an e-mail to me

".however, the date on some of it enters at Jan. of 98. The man said that
somehow he thought that Zone Alert could be scrambling things. The time and
the date were all wrong in the computer and he got those straightened out,
but some how, the date for reconciling goes back to Jan. 98. What is you
take on this?"

Anyone have any ideas? My first thought is that somehow. She changed
something in her Preferences, but I can't figure out what. Also, she's
running ZoneAlarm as a firewall. Her bank told her that may be scrambling
things, but I run it with no problem.

She is trying very hard, but I should say this is probably some sort of
operator error. Also, I'm trying to solve her problem from 200 miles via
telephone and email.

Thanks in advance.

Desperate Son-in-law


--
Too many spams have forced me to alter my e-mail return address. If you
wish to contact me via email, please write to pjbphd at cox dot net

"pjbphd" <> wrote in message:
>Also, she's running ZoneAlarm as a firewall. Her bank told her that may be
scrambling
> things, but I run it with no problem.

I, too, run Q2003 and Zone Alarm (ZA) with no problems. ZA either permits
data to pass or does not permit it to pass -- it does not "scramble" it. Is
the date correct on her computer? Has it been correct, or may someone
recently correct it? Windows XP automatically syncs time when online, so is
it possible the data was wrong and is now correct?

Steve B

Hi, Desperate.

How old is her computer? Any chance her clock battery could be weakening?
Does her computer have any other weird date problems? If the problem is
only in Quicken, this is probably not the explanation. Just a thought. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
(Retired - no longer licensed to practice)
San Marcos, TX


"pjbphd" <> wrote in message
news:C6sJa.78470$%42.72767@fed1read06...
> I've been trying to get my Mother-in-law up on Quicken 2003 Basic so that
> she can take over management of the household finances from her husband.
He
> was an accountant and for 49 years did everything by hand. She had very
> little knowledge of budgeting, check balancing etc, but his health no
longer
> allows him to properly manage the household.
>
> Anyway, she was doing pretty good and had all her accounts in Quicken.
She
> has set up automatic payments for some utilities etc. and has been using
> Quicken since around the first of the year. She also downloads her
account
> information from her bank.
>
> Recently she began having problems with her Quicken check register.
> Although the register contained all her transaction data, the upper left
> hand screen said there was no money in the account.
>
> Apparently she spoke with her bank and they solved that, but as she put it
> in an e-mail to me
>
> ".however, the date on some of it enters at Jan. of 98. The man said that
> somehow he thought that Zone Alert could be scrambling things. The time
and
> the date were all wrong in the computer and he got those straightened out,
> but some how, the date for reconciling goes back to Jan. 98. What is you
> take on this?"
>
> Anyone have any ideas? My first thought is that somehow. She changed
> something in her Preferences, but I can't figure out what. Also, she's
> running ZoneAlarm as a firewall. Her bank told her that may be scrambling
> things, but I run it with no problem.
>
> She is trying very hard, but I should say this is probably some sort of
> operator error. Also, I'm trying to solve her problem from 200 miles via
> telephone and email.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Desperate Son-in-law

pjbphd wrote:

> She also downloads her account information from her bank.


What method of downloading are we talking about? Could these be QIF
file downloads?

> Recently she began having problems with her Quicken check register.
> Although the register contained all her transaction data, the upper
> left hand screen said there was no money in the account.
>
> Apparently she spoke with her bank and they solved that, but as she
> put it in an e-mail to me

It could be useful to have a better explanation of this. What did the
bank find wrong and what did they do to "solve" it?

> ".however, the date on some of it enters at Jan. of 98. The man
> said that somehow he thought that Zone Alert could be scrambling
> things. The time and the date were all wrong in the computer and
> he got those straightened out, but some how, the date for
> reconciling goes back to Jan. 98. What is you take on this?"

I do not understand the meaning of "the date on some of it enters at
Jan. of 98". Is a date in a downloaded transaction showing
01/nn/1998? Are the transactions with Jan 98 dates valid in all other
respects, but have an incorrect date? Or are they real transactions
which actually occurred in Jan 1998? If there were transactions added
(imported?) with dates (correct or otherwise) going back to 1998,
wouldn't those transactions naturally come up to be reconciled in the
next reconcile?

If the fi keeps transactions available for download back to 1998 (I
don't think this is common), and the pc date was wrongfully indicating
1998 and and that caused the downloading of all transactions back to
1998; would that explain what M.I.L. is seeing?

(Disclaimer: I do not have Q2003, so if it's a Q2003 issue, I may not
be able to help. 'Course, I may not be able to help anyway. ).

--
John Pollard
j underscore pollard at mindspring dot com