Reconcile error after cleanup

Posted by MrTom on August 12, 2007, 1:16 am

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Quicken 2001 Deluxe, Windows ME

My Quicken file has about 12 years of data. I reconcile accounts
monthly. A few days ago I did lots of cleanup--used Find/Replace to
recategorize many entries, deleted resulting unused categories, deleted
never to be used again memorized transactions, and corrected many
misspellings in memorized transactions and in the entered data.

I compared account totals both before and after and all looked fine.
But today I tried to reconcile an account and up popped the
Reconciliation Notice. I clicked Resolve and the earliest statement
ending date appearing is 1/4/01 (but should be from 1995) and shows a
Register Ending Balance of -$17,885.89. Of course the register has
never had a negative balance and is in the $4000 range. Reconciliations
for 2/1/01 and 3/1/01 also show discrepancies but no statements after
that show discrepancies. None of the account entries appear unusual.

I tried Validate and Super Validate and no error showed.

Any ideas?

I could revert to the backup I made just before the cleanup and do a
cleanup again. But, are there any gotchas in cleaning up as I have
described?

Tom

Posted by John Pollard on August 12, 2007, 8:54 am

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"MrTom"wrote

> Quicken 2001 Deluxe, Windows ME

> My Quicken file has about 12 years of data. I reconcile

> accounts monthly. A few days ago I did lots of cleanup--used

> Find/Replace to recategorize many entries, deleted resulting

> unused categories, deleted never to be used again memorized

> transactions, and corrected many misspellings in memorized

> transactions and in the entered data.

> I compared account totals both before and after and all looked

> fine. But today I tried to reconcile an account and up popped

> the Reconciliation Notice. I clicked Resolve and the earliest

> statement ending date appearing is 1/4/01 (but should be from

> 1995) and shows a Register Ending Balance of -$17,885.89. Of

> course the register has never had a negative balance and is in

> the $4000 range. Reconciliations for 2/1/01 and 3/1/01 also

> show discrepancies but no statements after that show

> discrepancies. None of the account entries appear unusual.

> I tried Validate and Super Validate and no error showed.

> Any ideas?

> I could revert to the backup I made just before the cleanup

> and do a cleanup again. But, are there any gotchas in cleaning

> up as I have described?

There was a bug, which I believe was present in Q2001, which
caused reconciles to get out of whack when the category of a
reconciled transaction was modified. I don't recall if it
happened to every reconciled transaction that had its category
changed, but it happened to some at least.

I believe the bug existed up through Q2003 (possibly Q2004); it
is not present in Q2005. (But neither is "smart reconcile"
which is the feature that offers the capability to "resolve"
reconcile problems.)

Reverting to a backup sounds like it would be simpler than
re-reconciling ... though you do not have to do one reconcile
per paper statement, you could re-reconcile all the transactions
in one reconcile.

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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Posted by MrTom on August 14, 2007, 1:28 am

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John Pollard wrote:

> "MrTom"wrote

>> Quicken 2001 Deluxe, Windows ME

>> My Quicken file has about 12 years of data. I reconcile

>> accounts monthly. A few days ago I did lots of cleanup--used

>> Find/Replace to recategorize many entries, deleted resulting

>> unused categories, deleted never to be used again memorized

>> transactions, and corrected many misspellings in memorized

>> transactions and in the entered data.

>> I compared account totals both before and after and all looked

>> fine. But today I tried to reconcile an account and up popped

>> the Reconciliation Notice. I clicked Resolve and the earliest

>> statement ending date appearing is 1/4/01 (but should be from

>> 1995) and shows a Register Ending Balance of -$17,885.89. Of

>> course the register has never had a negative balance and is in

>> the $4000 range. Reconciliations for 2/1/01 and 3/1/01 also

>> show discrepancies but no statements after that show

>> discrepancies. None of the account entries appear unusual.

>> I tried Validate and Super Validate and no error showed.

>> Any ideas?

>> I could revert to the backup I made just before the cleanup

>> and do a cleanup again. But, are there any gotchas in cleaning

>> up as I have described?

> There was a bug, which I believe was present in Q2001, which

> caused reconciles to get out of whack when the category of a

> reconciled transaction was modified. I don't recall if it

> happened to every reconciled transaction that had its category

> changed, but it happened to some at least.

> I believe the bug existed up through Q2003 (possibly Q2004); it

> is not present in Q2005. (But neither is "smart reconcile"

> which is the feature that offers the capability to "resolve"

> reconcile problems.)

> Reverting to a backup sounds like it would be simpler than

> re-reconciling ... though you do not have to do one reconcile

> per paper statement, you could re-reconcile all the transactions

> in one reconcile.

John,

Thanks for your response. I will go back to my backup and go through
the exercise again, this time making and checking periodic backups along
the way. Re-reconciling appears hopeless since I noted that some of the
earlier register entries for the account in question had the first
couple of characters of the payee missing, something I would not have done.

Tom J.