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From: XS11E on 10 Jun 2010 11:16
At the beginning of May I received my April statement and reconciled
w/o any problem. When I received my May statement (early June) I
attempted to reconcile the account but the beginning balance was about
$4,000 too high!

What could possibly cause this?

I KNOW the opening balance and closing balance in April were correct,
how could the opening balance for May be anything other than the
closing balance for April?

HELP, please?


--
XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/
From: Jim H on 10 Jun 2010 12:31
XS11E wrote:
> At the beginning of May I received my April statement and reconciled
> w/o any problem. When I received my May statement (early June) I
> attempted to reconcile the account but the beginning balance was about
> $4,000 too high!
>
> What could possibly cause this?
>
> I KNOW the opening balance and closing balance in April were correct,
> how could the opening balance for May be anything other than the
> closing balance for April?
>
> HELP, please?
>
>
When I've had this, it has been because a reconciled transaction was
modified or deleted.
From: R. C. White on 10 Jun 2010 14:15
Hi, XS11E.

If the ending balance reconciles, then the opening balance is of only
academic interest.

If the ending balance does NOT reconcile, then you need to identify the
non-reconciling item, even if it occurred in some earlier period.

Quite often, a check or deposit that is outstanding on April 30 will clear
in May. Note that a reconciliation is not really for "a month" or other
PERIOD of time, but AS OF a particular POINT in time, usually the close
business on the last day of a month.

Quicken's reconciliation screens sometimes confuse me. The lists of
Payments and Checks and of Deposits are usually all or mostly shown as BOLD.
To make it easier on myself, I click Mark All - and then Mark All a second
time - to UNbold them all. And then I click each one as I compare the
cleared items from my checkbook (yes, I still also keep a manual checkbook)
or Quicken check register to the statement. If the "Difference" is not zero
when I finish this exercise, then I have more tracking and comparing to do.

If I forgot to reconcile last month, then the screen that opens when I click
Reconcile might show an "Opening Balance" that was actually from the last
time that I did reconcile - maybe a few months ago. That doesn't matter, so
long as all the reconciling items match the statements I've received since
then. Only the ENDING balance matters.

If all else fails, go back and reconcile LAST month-end again.

I know all this is too elementary for you, XS11E - but we all have to go
through these steps - again - sometimes. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc(a)grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Using Quicken Deluxe 2010 and Windows Live Mail in Win7 x64)

"XS11E" <xs11eNO(a)SPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9D93543B0D700xs11eyahoocom(a)127.0.0.1...
> At the beginning of May I received my April statement and reconciled
> w/o any problem. When I received my May statement (early June) I
> attempted to reconcile the account but the beginning balance was about
> $4,000 too high!
>
> What could possibly cause this?
>
> I KNOW the opening balance and closing balance in April were correct,
> how could the opening balance for May be anything other than the
> closing balance for April?
>
> HELP, please?
>
>
> --
> XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups

From: Andrew on 11 Jun 2010 07:52
Jim H wrote:
> XS11E wrote:
>> At the beginning of May I received my April statement and reconciled
>> w/o any problem. When I received my May statement (early June) I
>> attempted to reconcile the account but the beginning balance was
>> about $4,000 too high!
>>
>> What could possibly cause this?
>>
>> I KNOW the opening balance and closing balance in April were correct,
>> how could the opening balance for May be anything other than the
>> closing balance for April?
>>
>> HELP, please?
>>
>>
> When I've had this, it has been because a reconciled transaction was
> modified or deleted.

Absolutely - start looking! This has happened to me multiple times over the
past decade of using Q. Obviously, I don't TRY to do this on purpose, so I
am not sure how it happens, but I think it is do to sometimes copying and
pasting (or cut and pasting!) transactions that have already been marked as
reconciled.

(This is not meant to start a 'me too' thread; it's just that this is very
very likely the cause of your problem.)

--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Regards -

- Andrew


From: John Pollard on 11 Jun 2010 09:05
XS11E wrote:
> At the beginning of May I received my April statement and reconciled
> w/o any problem. When I received my May statement (early June) I
> attempted to reconcile the account but the beginning balance was about
> $4,000 too high!
>
> What could possibly cause this?
>
> I KNOW the opening balance and closing balance in April were correct,


> how could the opening balance for May be anything other than
> the closing balance for April?

The opening balance is the net amount of all transactions in the account
with a cleared status ("Clr") of "R" - at the time you initiate the
reconcile. Anything that changes that net amount will change your opening
balance.

--

John Pollard
news://<YOUR-NNTP-NEWSERVER-HERE>/alt.comp.software.financial.quicken
Your source of user-to-user Quicken help


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