I recently disconnected and reconnected an account. Q (On Win10) downloaded a slew of duplicate transactions as sometimes occurs which is normal.
But it also MODIFIED the opening balance of that account, so that the ending balance was incorrect and to force it to be what is should, I entered the offered balance adjustment. When I forced the opening balance to be what it was before (noting that value from a backup) and deleted the balance adjustment, then all seems fine and the online balance is correct.
But why should Q be doing that in the first place? EXPRESS WEB CONNECT is the method.
I don't think "why" is a legitimate question. Bugs are accidents that occur because there are no perfect people - but why other human's imperfections cause the specific problems we experience is, in my opinion, imponderable.
I don't know "why" we humans are imperfect, and I don't think humans are on any path to become perfect: so I'm inclined to believe we should not ask why we are imperfect, or "why" our imperfections create specific problems.
In the meantime, I think it's possible that your specific problem may have to do with syncing to the Quicken cloud. You could test that theory by turning off "Sync" and observing the effects of multiple subsequent downloads.
I also suggest noting whether you are using the Quicken option to "auto add [downloaded transactions] to your account(s). You could test that theory as noted above.
and you'll see an entry titled "Duplicate Transactions"that states:
"If you deactivated the account in order to change the Connection Method (example: from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect), Reactivating for the new connection method may result in a re-download of the most recent 90 days of transactions (depending on the financial institution).
These duplicate transactions should Match to those that already exist in the account register, but you should review the data after the reactivation to ensure you're not seeing duplicates in your account register."
(In my particular case however,and I don't think this makes a difference, I wasn't changing the connection method; it was both EXPRESS WEB CONNECT before and after)
Since I don't auto accept transactions, it's a relatively easy step to just review reconciled transactions already in the register to the ones that are in the list to accept...so I just need to delete them after verification they already exist.
But the problem you complained about had nothing to do with "duplicate transactions": it was about the account "opening balance" amount being changed. The account "opening balance" is not a downloaded transaction, so no downloaded transaction should ever match the account opening balance transaction, or ever affect the account opening balance.
Are you saying that Quicken created a false Match between one of the duplicate downloaded transactions, and your Quicken account opening balance transaction ... and that you manually Accepted that match?
Otherwise I can't see how the download that follows a reactivation could directly modify your Quicken account opening balance transaction.
Well one reason for seeing already downloaded transactions appear again (BUT, as New transactions) after switching between Direct Connect (or Web Connect) and Express Web Connect is that the Transaction ID (that is intended to be unique for a given transaction in a specific account) is not guaranteed to be unique when making the aforementioned connection method switch. In one case (Direct Connect and Web Connect) the Transaction ID is created by the financial institution; while in the other case (Express Web Connect), the Transaction ID is usually created by Intuit (or Quicken) with no respect for (or apparently any knowledge of) that previously created Transaction ID. When a downloaded transaction has a Transaction ID that Quicken has never seen before, it is a "New" transaction to Quicken.
[The creation of a New Transaction ID for a previously downloaded transaction IS a bug; but not in Quicken on your pc ... it happens upstream where the downloaded transactions are created.]
Do you have old linked transactions from another account? Example: The account with the changed balance is your checking account that has linked transactions from a brokerage account. This is common for me. At the end of the year I do a year-end copy, which creates an archive of my existing checking account leaving only transactions for the current year and non-reconciled prior transactions, PLUS all prior linked investment transactions.
When one does a year-end copy there are options, depending on which file to use from tis point forward. I don't want a data file that continues to grow and grow until it becomes unwieldy, so I only choose to use the file with checking transactions from that point forward. Result: Because all the prior checking activity is gone, but the investment transactions are retained, the old account balances are meaningless. I can reopen those archived files should I need to to view something from before.
It is possible that some other event triggered such a situation (a linked transaction being deleted from the other account).
From a Quicken support article:
"The Year-End Copy may result in transactions outside the date range you specify remaining in your file. Any unreconciled transactions will remain in your file so you can accurately reconcile your accounts. In addition, investment transactions will be retained, regardless of date range, so Quicken can accurately calculate performance and return numbers for your investments. Quicken recommends retaining unreconciled and investment transactions in your data file."
John, Ken had said "Can't really help, but never had duplicate transactions.". That's what I was replying to Ken about.
Your're correct, my "issue" was indeed simply the opening balance discrepancy as you said. I am fine dealing with the downloading transactions that might have already existed in the register.
I have never seen any verifiable evidence that retain all transactions makes a Quicken file "unwieldy". I know of many users - myself included - who would never consider removing valid transactions from their Quicken files.
That's not really the case.
When Year End Copy works correctly, it enters an adjustment in each account from which transactions were removed, to insure that the account balance remains accurate.
What you lose is the ability to search for and report on those deleted transactions in your Year End Copy file.
And as time passes, you can easily lose the ability to effectively "reopen those archived files": especially so for archive files created prior to Quicken's implementation of the subscription model. In order to insure accessibility to older Quicken files, one should make sure each old file is "converted" to the QDF file format for the user's current version/release of Quicken.
Al has already said that deleting linked files was not the cause of his problem. The rest of your arguments seem to be more a lack of understanding, on your part, of how some Quicken features work. But I will address those anyway.
I have eighteen years of Quicken archives; to the best of my knowledge, I have never lost an archived transaction. One hasn't removed any valid transactions. They are still there in the archived file for the relevant year. Your argument is like telling a CPA that he is wasting his time with his whole year-end accounting process.
What isn't?
Only reconciled transactions are not carried forward to the new year. The ending balance from the old year becomes the beginning balance for the new year.
You can still do that in whichever annual archive that is relevant.
I suppose, theoretically, this may be true, but why would Quicken ever do that? One can even still import Microsoft Money files into Quicken, for Christ's sake. I think that the furthest back I have ever needed to go was about 6-7 years, and that was just to bring up the name of a roofing company that had done some work for me previously.
I have a good understanding of how Quicken features work.
But you didn't.
I have 40 years of transactions (mostly concentrated in the last 20+ years) in one file - I have never had a problem caused by not archiving ... nor have I ever seen it proven that a Quicken problem was caused by not archiving (at least since we stopped using things like floppy disks for backup).
Which does not address what I said: valid transactions most definitely have been removed from the "current file". Having to hunt through multiple archive files for information is much more work than having it all in one (the current) file. I've lost track of the number of users who have come begging someone to tell them how to retrieve the data from their archived Quicken files - and by retrieve, I mean they want/need to get that data back where it started ... so they can access all their Quicken data in one file.
Not even close.
The old "CPA" year-end process served two primary purposes: reduce income/expense account balances to zero to begin a new year, and keep the current ledgers (originally often maintained on reel-to-reel tapes) from getting too large.
Neither of those reasons apply to Quicken: Quicken income and expenses are not held in "accounts", so there are no true income/expense "balances" in Quicken. Quicken income and expenses are maintained in "categories". When you run an Income/Expense (or a Profit and Loss) report in Quicken, you just tell Quicken what period the report is for, and Quicken will only use transactions for that period.
And modern backups are light-years faster than the old mainframe reel-to-reel (or even disk-file to disk-file) process. Also no one need be standing by to mount tapes during the modern Quicken backup process.
Really? After I explained (below) that the "old account balances" are not "meaningless", because they do not change.
Nowhere did I say otherwise. I suggest you read my sentence again.
Does not address what I said (and is only true if you archive as of year-end - which is not mandatory)
In my previous post I stated what happens to the account balances when you archive - since you seem to have failed to grasp it, I'll say it again.
The new account ending balance remains exactly the same as the account ending balance before you removed transactions. When the Quicken Year End process removes transactions from an account, Quicken will modify the account opening balance to insure that the account ending balance does not change.
So your comment that the account balances after a Year End Copy are "meaningless" is false.
I never said otherwise - your comment again does not address what I actually said.
What part of "What you lose is the ability to search for and report on those deleted transactions IN YOUR YEAR END COPY FILE" don't you understand.
Why would Quicken do what?
The format of Quicken data used to change with virtually every new Quicken yearly release (not so much with the subscription releases). Over the years, Quicken has made multiple changes to the product; many of those changes have required the modification of the Quicken data file format.
Intuit logically wanted users to purchase the newer versions of Quicken - that brought financial benefit to Intuit. Spending money to allow Quicken to be able to read all its old file formats would have done the opposite: increased costs and reduced revenue.
Only from a single year version (M2008) of M.S. Money - and you can't "import" M2008 Money files into an existing Quicken file - you can only "convert" Money (M2008) files into a New (empty) Quicken file. [There has always been QIF File export/import; but that is an extremely cumbersome process that many users have a lot of trouble with - I understand QIF files well, and I still would not count on them except in dire situations.]
Allowing Money users to convert to Quicken is a potential financial benefit to Quicken - allowing Quicken users to access old Quicken files is a financial cost to Quicken. Still you can do it ... if you're able to get intermediate year versions of Quicken to do the conversions of an old file format to a newer file format - Quicken even offers the free use of a couple of intermediate Quicken versions to use in the process. But it's a very user-UNfriendly way to search and report on old data.
Given the fact that there is no good reason to remove any "valid" transactions from a Quicken file; I fail to see why anyone would want to go through the cumbersome process of using an ever increasing number of Quicken data files to find what they're looking for. Or to lose the ability to see - in one easily creatable report/graph - how their financial situation has evolved (and being able to easily see the underlying activity that comprised that financial evolution).
I have seen this on Express Web Connect though not with updating or resetting but with deactivating and reactivating an account. Yes, it's not obvious when the initial balance is changed. My guess is that it's a side effect of only downloading a subset of transactions when activating older accounts, however nobody should be adjusting that field IMHO.
I recently disconnected and reconnected an account. Q (On Win10) downloaded a slew of duplicate transactions as sometimes occurs which is normal.
But it also MODIFIED the opening balance of that account, so that the ending balance was incorrect and to force it to be what is should, I entered the offered balance adjustment. When I forced the opening balance to be what it was before (noting that value from a backup) and deleted the balance adjustment, then all seems fine and the online balance is correct.
But why should Q be doing that in the first place? EXPRESS WEB CONNECT is the method.
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