Bank reconciliation help, please

[Tom Young]

Hi all:

I've used Quicken for 20 years and currently am using Quicken Deluxe
2002. (Got it for $7 on eBay, so I figured "what the hell, I'll
finally step-up to a ‘Deluxe' version!")

Today I went to reconcile my main bank account and saw something I've
never seen before. Upon clicking on the "reconcile" link a window
popped up that read:

------------------------------------

"Reconciliation Notice. The total of the previously cleared items in
your register no longer matches with the ending balance of your prior
statements. This may indicate that a register entry that was
previously reconciled was deleted or modified.

Click ‘Resolve' and Quicken will list all of the statements recorded
for this account."

------------------------------------

Clicking on ‘Resolve' brought up a new window with columns for
Statement Ending Date, Statement Ending Balance, Register Ending
Balance, Cumulative Discrepancy and Discrepancy This Statement. This
window listed 4 "Statement Ending Dates" with discrepancies. Here's
the dates and amounts of discrepancy for each:

1/31/02 -$311.00
2/28/02 0
3/31/02 0
4/30/02 0
5/30/02 0
6/30/02 0
7/28/02 0
11/20/02 49.08 <<<<<
9/30/02 0
10/30/02 -$1500.00
11/29/02 0
12/31/02 -$1969.73

 

[John Pollard]

Hi all:

I've used Quicken for 20 years and currently am using Quicken
Deluxe 2002. (Got it for $7 on eBay, so I figured "what the
hell, I'll finally step-up to a 'Deluxe' version!")

Today I went to reconcile my main bank account and saw
something I've never seen before. Upon clicking on the
"reconcile" link a window popped up that read:

------------------------------------

"Reconciliation Notice. The total of the previously cleared
items in your register no longer matches with the ending
balance of your prior statements. This may indicate that a
register entry that was previously reconciled was deleted or
modified.

Click 'Resolve' and Quicken will list all of the statements
recorded for this account."

------------------------------------

Clicking on 'Resolve' brought up a new window with columns for
Statement Ending Date, Statement Ending Balance, Register Ending
Balance, Cumulative Discrepancy and Discrepancy This Statement.
This window listed 4 "Statement Ending Dates" with
discrepancies. Here's the dates and amounts of discrepancy for
each:

1/31/02 -$311.00
2/28/02 0
3/31/02 0
4/30/02 0
5/30/02 0
6/30/02 0
7/28/02 0
11/20/02 49.08 <<<<<
9/30/02 0
10/30/02 -$1500.00
11/29/02 0
12/31/02 -$1969.73
.
.
.
(All dates after 12/31/02 were month-ends to June 2004, with no
additional discrepancies.)

That "odd" date of 11/20/02 (my bank's statements are typically
right at month-end) wedged in between July '02 and September
'02 raised my suspicions that Quicken had somehow screwed up.
Going back and looking at the paper statement I could see that
Quicken was really looking at the August month-end statement.

I then compared Quicken's display of "Statement Ending Balance"
to the paper statement, with the following results:

Date Quicken Paper Diff
1/31/02 63,110.60 4,560.64 58,549.96
2/28/02 10,297.72 10,297.72 0
3/31/02 7,799.85 7,799.85 0
4/30/02 3,845.23 3,845.23 0
5/30/02 12,090.31 12,090.31 0
6/30/02 2,660.58 2,660.58 0
7/28/02 547.51 547.51 0
11/20/02 1,965.92 1,965.92 0
9/30/02 166.60 215.68 -49.08
10/30/02 766.59 766.59 0
11/29/02 2704.42 1,204.72 1,499.70
12/31/02 2,556.10 2,556.10 0
.
.
.
(All Quicken/Paper Statement balances agreed after 12/31/02.)

As you can see, except for the $49.08 difference shown for
9/30/02, none of the differences appear to relate to the
discrepancies listed above.

Finally, I went back and MANUALLY reconciled both the 1/31/02
statement and the current (7/31/04) statement (yeah, I still
know how to do a manual reconciliation) and everything was fine.

I'm convinced Quicken is screwed up. Anyone know how to fix
this mess?

The short answer is that this sounds like the know Quicken bug
reported several times here (though I do not recall anyone
mentioning an incorrect statement date). Here is a post
describing a cause and a work around.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W26232FF8

It's possible I did not fully understand your post, but if the
only problem (ignoring the statement dates) is that Quicken now
mistakenly reports a couple of ending balances; I would think
you could elect to just re-reconcile the statements with the
incorrect Quicken ending balances: when you start the
re-reconcile, you can supply a new, correct, ending balance.

 

[Tom Young]

The short answer is that this sounds like the know Quicken bug
reported several times here (though I do not recall anyone
mentioning an incorrect statement date). Here is a post
describing a cause and a work around.

http://makeashorterlink.com/?W26232FF8

It's possible I did not fully understand your post, but if the
only problem (ignoring the statement dates) is that Quicken now
mistakenly reports a couple of ending balances; I would think
you could elect to just re-reconcile the statements with the
incorrect Quicken ending balances: when you start the
re-reconcile, you can supply a new, correct, ending balance.

Thanks. Since I've found Quicken's website help information to be
woefully poor I've pretty much given up ever looking for an answer
over there. However, since the discussion you mentioned referenced
Quicken's website I went over there and looked around. Miracle of
miracles, I found not one but two articles that focused on exactly the
error message I was seeing! (Be still my heart!!) Each article has a
different method of resolution, so I selected the simple one; I
entered a zero dollar "test" entry in my bank account and manually
switched the Clr column to "R". That deactivates the Smart Reconcile
feature, eliminating the error message when I went to reconcile the
account.

Of course, I never would have done this if I wasn't convinced that the
ledger balance was actually correct. Too, I have no idea what's going
on behind the curtain when it comes to Quicken's reconcile feature. I
guess that's why I keep the paper records for so long.

The KB ID#'s of the articles are 572122 and 7010.

Tom Young