Monday, May 24, 2010

Bank Reconciliation Problem


Q:

Subject:  Quicken Reconcile Question

Hi! Wondering if you can help?

Use QuickBooks for business, Quicken for Personal for many years.

Just entered the WRONG closing bal in a Quicken reconcile, and for the life of me, can't figure out how to fix it. Didn't like their 'fix' of adjusting the balance at end of month.

Have the latest Quicken 2010.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

A:

As I've explained several times, I haven't been using Quicken for several years, as I realized that QuickBooks is a far superior bookkeeping program for everyone's purpose, both personal and business.  In fact, you would probably find things a lot easier to deal with if you only used QB for both your personal and business accounting instead of trying to cope with two different programs.

However, I do recall that the reconciliation function in Quicken was set up the same as in QB; so there are a number of ways to fix the situation you have.

I'm assuming you finalized the previous reconcile, with an adjusting entry put into a discrepancy account.  If you didn't finalize the reconcile, you can just cancel it and start again with the correct bank balance.

In QB, when you pop up the reconcile window, there is a button that allows you to Undo Last Reconciliation.  If you have that, just undo the old one and do a new one with the correct balance.

Another option would be to do a new reconciliation as of the same date as the previous one, using the correct bank balance.  It should end up with an adjustment to the discrepancy account of the same amount in the opposite direction as your earlier adjusting entry.  Those should zero each other out and bring everything into sync with your bank balance.

Good luck.  I hope this helps.

Kerry Kerstetter

 

Follow-Up:

Hi, Kerry!

You are so kind ~ thanks so much!

Didn't know I could 'cancel' the reconcile.

Wish I would've read your note sooner, but I've been doing the personal on Quicken and businesses on QB Pro for many years now.

What I ended up doing was reload the previous backup, so I just lost a month of bookkeeping.

I don't what I can do to help you, but if you ever need a quick graphic (I was an award-winning designer for years), or a poodle skirt, please give me a holler!

 

My Final Word:

You didn't specify why you are using Quicken for your personal data.  If you are under the impression that you are stuck having to stay with Quicken, that isn't the case.  QuickBooks has the capability to import Quicken data so you can convert without losing any of your previously entered data.

You do need to be using a version of QB that is at least as current as the version of Quicken you have.  If you are currently using Quicken 2010, that means you can only import it into QB 2010 or 2011.

Good luck.

Kerry Kerstetter