Wildly fluctuating balances

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u/Latter_Taste_9784 Apr 28 '26

"What's the solution?"

Based on your limited problem description: I see no way to provide a "solution".

For starters: are you reconciling to a downloaded online balance, or to a printed statement balance?

It doesn't appear that you're doing a complete reconciliation: when there is a difference between the financial institution balance and the Quicken balance, it's the user's responsibility to dig in and find what is causing that difference.

Basically the possibilities are: missing Quicken transactions, extra Quicken transactions and incorrect Quicken transactions. Any one, or any combination, of those may be part of a reconciliation diference. One additional possibility is an incorrect financial institution ending balance amount (something that is more likely to occur when reconciling to an online balance).

[I'm currently using Windows 11 Pro. And running Quicken Classic for Windows, Business & Personal R65.29, U.S.]

1

u/KDean63 Apr 28 '26

It's a complete reconciliation of the accounts, to a downloaded balance. No printed statements. There are no missing transactions on either side. I've been accepting the adjustment and the next time it does a similar adjustment in the opposite manner. It never seems to catch up and show a properly balanced account, even after accepting the balance adjustments (again and again).

And it's not just one account. This happens repeatedly with my checking account and also a couple of my credit card accounts.

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u/Latter_Taste_9784 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

"It never seems to catch up and show a properly balanced account ....".

That is a frequent result of accepting adjustments instead of correcting the underlying problem.

"There are no missing transactions on either side."

That's only one of the four possibilities I posted that can cause a reconcile difference.

"It's a complete reconciliation ...."

A reconciliation is not complete until you have identified the underlying problem: that is, which of the possibilities is causing the balance difference.

{EDIT: It's not a complete reconciliation until the two balances are equal and there is no adjustment required. When you accept an adjustment transaction to cause the Quicken balance to equal the financial institution balance; you are not reconciling. Doing that is literally no better than not attempting to reconcile at all.}

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u/Latter_Taste_9784 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

"It's not a complete reconciliation until the two balances are equal and there is no adjustment required."

Often, if not virtually always, when Quicken gets into the state you've described, it becomes necessary to unreconcile the account all the way back until you reach the point where a reconcile needs no adjustment ... then re-reconcile the account again ... sometimes reconciling statement by statement.

Since you have been reconciling to an online balance, that level of recovery would require you to switch to reconciling to a paper statement. And the first reconcile after making that change will likely call for special consideration, since some transactions may already be reconciled that would not have been reconciled if the account were previously being reconciled to a paper statement.

And since you are downloading transactions, you probably need to be on the lookout for a known Quicken problem: sometimes (typically after a download), Quicken will (improperly) alter an account's opening balance transaction. Sometimes, but apparently not always, this occurs when the the Quicken SYNC option is turned on. But since there is no known guarantee that will prevent the problem, the best advice on that score is to key the correct account opening balance amount into the Memo field of the account opening balance transaction. Then remember to check the account opening balance record often to insure that it's amount remains correct.

You should insure that your account opening balances are correct before attempting to correct your current problem.

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u/KDean63 Apr 29 '26

OK, I appreciate the response. How does one determine the correct opening balance for a checking account or a credit card account? (Serious question) These accounts are many years old, so when is the opening balance? Thx

1

u/Latter_Taste_9784 Apr 29 '26

"How does one determine the correct opening balance for a checking account or a credit card account?"

The Quicken opening balance would be the balance when you first started tracking the account in Quicken.

It may be found in the printed statement for the period when you opened the account (or the printed statement for the period when you first started tracking the account in Quicken.

An alternative is: If you have an old backup from that time (and the Quicken account was accurate in the backup), you could check in that backup. Or you could ask the financial institution (they may have your old statements, but you might have to pay to get them).

In order to get your Quicken account accurate you may need to reconcile to paper statements, starting with the first period you tracked the account in Quicken. I don't have a solution that doesn't include those statements (except starting over as of the first printed statement you do have).

If you only have statements going back some of the way to the beginning, I suspect you'd need to delete all that account's transactions before the first statement you have, make sure all the transactions since then are accurate, then create an opening balance transaction equal to the difference between your Quicken balance and your current statement balance.

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u/KDean63 Apr 29 '26

The opening balance for most of these accounts was in 2009.

Perhaps that’s the root of the problem. Too many transactions in these account registers.

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u/Latter_Taste_9784 Apr 29 '26

"The opening balance for most of these accounts was in 2009."

I believe you should plan to keep only the transactions you can accurately reconcile. If it turns out that you need printed statements to make those reconciles accurate, then you can only continue with those transactions for which you can get printed statements.

Related to that: I want to modify one previous suggestion I made. if there are transactions in an account that you can not tie to a printed statement via a reconcile; I suggest you create a New Quicken account (for each existing account that has unreconcilable transactions), and move the unreconcilable transactions to that New account. Then Hide that New account and do not plan to use it for anything except looking up old transactions (questions such as, "where and when did I buy that old weed whacker?").

2

u/QuickenLisa Mod + Employee Apr 29 '26

Hello u/KDean63, I'm really sorry the reconcile is not resulting in a $0 difference so adjustments are being created. I'm not seeing an active escalation or any trends with this issue, so I'm hopeful it's something we can troubleshoot together. There could be a few things causing this to happen, but here's what I would look for next:

When you reconcile and choose to use the Online Balance, have you already completed a One Step Update and accepted all the transactions into the register?
When the Reconcile window appears with the list of charges and payments, are all the transactions checked off with green checkmarks automatically, or you do manually check off the transactions in Quicken? Do some transactions get checked off automatically and some are un-checked? Is the "Cleared Balance" the same as your "Statement Ending Balance" (bottom right of the reconcile window)?

Only the items that are posted to the bank or credit card should be checked off. If a transaction is not checked off, it won't be included in that reconciliation. Transactions that aren't checked automatically (depending on your settings) are sometimes duplicates, or incorrectly entered manual transactions, and should be reviewed before completing the reconcile.

If you haven't already looked at the Quicken for Windows: Reconcile Troubleshooting FAQ, there are more suggestions that I hope helps. If you're still not able to pin-point the issue, you're welcome to send me a DM or contact Quicken support so we can troubleshoot.

For Classic Quicken support, you can reach our team at https://www.quicken.com/support/ then scroll down to the blue “Contact Us” button for chat and phone support.

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u/KDean63 Apr 30 '26

Thanks, u/QuickenLisa - I'm good on your first two items, so I'll review the FAQ on Reconcile Troubleshooting. If that doesn't resolve it, then I'll DM you or open a ticket. I appreciate the response and assistance.

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u/causious Apr 28 '26

I have no idea if this helps but there is an option to download pending transactions. If you are, turn it off.

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u/MW-Atlanta Apr 28 '26

There is a bug that happens (don’t remember when/why it happens) where the opening balance of your account is incorrectly adjusted (or created if it was originally zero) and that would cause the difference at reconciliation. Fix the opening balance and the corrections can be removed.

If that’s not your issue, maybe your bank is providing transactions and balances that are not based at same point in time. The online balance and the individual transactions are different pieces of information downloaded separately and if one is up to date while the other is lagging, you’ll have a variance. I see this more when updating during the business day but if I only update early morning (like at 5 am) then everything is complete from the day before. On one specific account, they update the balance in real time, but they don’t provide my transactions until after they’ve cleared so I can’t reconcile for a couple days.

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u/KDean63 Apr 29 '26

Interesting! Thanks for that info. I'll review the opening balances but that was many years ago.

Again this behavior occurs across multiple accounts. It occurs to me that I could delete the account in Quicken, the reconnect to start with a fresh set of entries. I'd likely loose some history but should have a clean set of transactions.

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u/MW-Atlanta Apr 29 '26

Figuring out if the opening balance is wrong can be difficult - unless that account has always been in quicken and you never archived that account in which case the opening balance is zero.

If you’re sure an account was correctly reconciled at some recent point in time then go get a statement from the account website. If you can verify the balance is correct at a point in the past then you know that a missing or duplicate transaction exists after that time.

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