|
Posted by John Pollard on December 2, 2006, 5:24 pm
Please log in for more thread options
> One penny might not seem like much, but take a minute and read
> on. My bank is USAA Federal Savings Bank. Here's the
> problem. The Quicken Direct Connect balance is one penny off
> when compared to my paper statement balance and the balance
> shown at the USAA.com web site. Here's what it looks like in
> my Quicken account:
> Online Balance 123.17 Ending Balance 123.16
> USAA Website 123.16
> Paper Statement 123.16
>
> Here's what we've done to correct the problem. A new Quicken
> file was created and then all account information was
> downloaded from USAA into the new Quicken account. Here's
> what the new account says:
> Online Balance 123.17 Ending Balance 123.17
> USAA Website 123.16
> Paper Statement 123.16
>
> USAA Quicken Support and Bank Officials say they cannot
> explain the difference and referred me to Quicken Support.
> You can see where this is going. The bank says the numbers
> come directly from the USAA web site and they cannot explain
> the difference. My suspicion is that this has to do with how
> numbers are converted from decimal to binary. If the software
> doesn't maintain enough precision, small changes in the value
> can occur. But you would think Intuit would have this one
> covered. Has anyone else experienced this kind of problem?
I don't think it is a precision issue. I don't what the problem
is, so what follows are just some thoughts on the subject that
may help you.
The Online Balance is not maintained (computed) by Quicken; it's
downloaded as a single amount from the financial institution ...
in display, not binary, format. And as far as I know, it only
has Quicken significance if you reconcile to an online balance.
There are three possible balances for a Quicken non-investment
account register: Current, Ending, and Online. Quicken
maintains the first two, and just displays what the fi downloads
for the Online Balance (which is only as "correct" as the last
download). All three balances *may* be different and still be
correct. (If the Current and Ending balances are equal, Quicken
doesn't display the Current balance).
It is also possible to see different balances at the fi's web
site than what gets downloaded, as some fi's will "pend"
transactions. They may not download the pended transactions but
download an online balance that includes the pended
transactions.
The only balance you listed that is computed by Quicken is the
"Ending Balance". Have you run a Quicken Cash Flow Transaction
report, with a date range of "Include all dates", to see if it
agrees with the register Ending Balance? Have you manually
totaled the register transactions to see if they total to the
Ending Balance?
Depending on your Quicken version, I believe you can verify the
what USAA sent as the Online Balance in your download (depending
on how long ago you did it, and how many other downloads
occurred at the same time, or after, the USAA download. In Help
> Product and Customer Support is a "link" to "OFXlog" which,
just following a download, should contain the data that was
downloaded. You can Save that OFXlog file and look at it in any
word processor. I use Word because I can easily modify the file
to start each tag on a new line (something that many fi's don't
do, and USAA is one of them.)
Right near the end of the downloaded data for the particular
USAA account in question should be a tag called "<BALAMT>". I
believe the amount that follows that tag is the "Online
Balance".
| 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap