How can Quicken help me to match the online balance?

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:be15fe23-4055-4f67-8c81-3c4992249ea9 @s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com:

The way I do it is by marking transactions cleared (little c) when a download from the bank shows that the they have recorded the transaction. Then when a statement comes (either paper or electronic) I use the Quicken reconcile process to mark the relevant transactions R (reconciled). This will give you the chance to chase down discrepancies once a month. Generally, if things don't jibe, there is a missing transaction, a doubled transaction, or a typo. The last s most difficult to find!!!

Yes, it's just a tool you need. Reconciling the account would bring up the new windows where you can choose to match to the paper statement (instead of online balance) at the specific date. Then start with your old paper statements - month by month - until you find the discrepancy. It could be a slow process, but it doesn't have to be finished in one sitting. And this should do essentially same as you wanted to achieve with those blank transactions with amount in memo area.

I've been banking for almost fifty years, and not once has my bank ever made a mistake. Whenever my records have deviated from theirs, mine were wrong.

Just make an adjusting entry to bring things back into balance and from now on use the reconcile function regularly.

One person's opinion, Doug

This has happened to me several times over the past few years. Mysteriously, transactions get dropped from quicken. I have not found any easy way to resolve this. I end up going back several months at a time checking the bank balance against my paper statements until I find the last month that they match. Then I have to check each transaction going forward to find the missing entries.

If the amount is minimal you could also just use the reconcile tool, clear all transactions and let Quicken post an adjustment to force the bank balances to match. That certainly would save you a lot of time and energy if you have not reconciled the account for a while. I do mine each time I download transactions to make sure that the files are still in synch with the bank.

In addition to what the others have said: do not assume that the "Online Balance" should agree with any other balance in Quicken.

The Online Balance is a number supplied by your financial institution during a download, so it is never more accurate than the last time you downloaded.

But even at the instant you download, the Online Balance may not equal your Quicken "current balance" or "ending balance". If your financial institution "pends" some of your transactions (as some fi's do), and does not download those transactions while they are pended, but does subtract their amounts from your Online Balance, your Online Balance will not equal any Quicken computed balance (unless you choose to manually enter those pended transactions).

One more reason not to reconcile to an online balance.

Then you have been lucky. I have had deposits disappear. If I wasn't careful about tracking it, I never would have noticed.

As far as the mismatch, if it were a few cents, I wouldn't worry. If it were more, then I would go through and find out what is wrong.

Doug wrote in news:DuZqj.112109 $U12.61978@trnddc06:

Like JimH, I have found banks make errors. Why, way back at the beginning of ATMs in the late '70s, my bank shorted me $20 when I got cash (or $10 - don't want to be pinned down on it). I did complain, and eventually was credited the amount due to me.

It doesn't happen often, but it does. That $10 or $20 is worth a lot more now.

"John Pollard" wrote in news:fohp1k$i3s$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

EXACTLY!

John made a good point. One of my banks will download a balance that might have not cleared (a paycheck deposit). I really has cleared by the banks standards and I can transact using the funds, but the download (my paycheck) will not be reflected until the end of the day.

What you need to find is a day that you agree with the banks balance and reconcile towards it. You might have to make an adjusting entry to get it in sync (hopefully not too much).

I rec>> I've have automatic download of my bank's transaction for many

"Oilcan" wrote in news:uZbrj.8367$ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi068.nbdc.sbc.com:

I have noticed many times with both Citibank and Chase that there are indeed different balances reported, as Oilcan also explains. I do not "reconcile to online balances". I match what is reported online in 2 ways: downloaded transactions get a "c" for cleared status, as do transactions that might not yet be downloaded, but are reported on the FI's website. The difference is that some transactions get reported on the website, but are not yet "ready" (??) to be downloaded from the Quicken-compatible download server. There may be a day or so delay between them.

I reconcile to statements. Only then do transactions get an "R". This way I have multilevel control, and have a chance to correct mistakes several times. Luckily for me there are not many this way.

HTH

Han wrote in news:Xns9A3F4EE3F9BC6ikkezelf@

I made the painful transition >away< from reconciling to paper statements a couple of years ago. It was difficult to leave my comfort zone of reconciling monthly with paper statements.

I now reconcile online multiple times per month... whenever it suits me. I find that I have fewer errors to track down and the process seems much easier to me. Maybe I have given up some control as Han mentioned above. But it works well for me.

speedlever wrote in news:Xns9A3F5FCF72200speedleveryahoocom@66.250.146.128:

Maybe I was not clear. I check my Quicken entries very frequently against the bank's records, and then mark transactions as cleared. It's just that I only do "official" reconciliation once a month, when I get a statement from each bank/FI. The marking as "cleared" is the in-between "non- reconciliation" to check my records agains the FI's.