The reconciliation process introduced in Quicken 2016 v3.5 is much improved over earlier versions in that it will make your register’s balance match your bank’s balance (after outstanding transactions are removed from the calculation). However, if you are upgrading, you may have some work to do at the time of your first reconcile.
If you have reconciled every month since you created your account in Quicken, you have no extra work and you can simply follow the standard steps for reconciling.
- Note: You may have conscientiously reconciled every period and still find yourself unable to balance and needing an adjustment transaction during your first reconciliation using the new process. The reason this can happen is because the new reconciliation is stricter about what constitutes reconciliation than earlier versions.
If you have not reconciled every month since you created your account in Quicken, you need to decide which of the following is most important to you:
- You want to reconcile with your register balance equaling your bank balance (without counting outstanding transactions) as quickly as possible and you are not interested in fixing every error in your register.
- You want to reconcile with your register balance with your bank balance and you want to fix errors in your register.
Read either Reconciling quickly or Reconciling completely depending on whether you picked the first or second bullets above, respectively.
Reconciling quickly
If using a manual account with your latest statement
- Start the reconcile process.
- Choose Use Statement Balance.
- Pay no attention to the starting balance value.
- Make sure that Ending Date is set to the date from your statement.
- Enter the Ending Balance from your statement.
- Click Next.
- Choose the Start Fresh menu item under the gear icon. This will mark all transactions that are older than two months as reconciled. (Two months is used because it is the amount of time that most banks will honor a check.
- Clear any of the remaining transactions that you know aren’t outstanding. Use your latest statement to know which of the recent transactions have cleared.)
- Click Done (even if Difference is not $0).
- Quicken will end the reconcile session and insert an adjustment if the difference isn’t zero.
Your register balance will now match the bank.
If using a manual account with an online balance:
- Start the reconcile process.
- Choose Use Online Balance.
- Enter the Ending Balance that you got from your bank.
- Make sure that Ending Date is set to a date appropriate for the balance that you set.
- Click Next.
- Choose the Start Fresh menu item under the gear icon. This will mark all transactions that are older than two months as reconciled. (Two months is used because it is the amount of time that most banks will honor a check.)
- Clear any of the remaining transactions that you know aren’t outstanding. Use information on the bank’s website to know which of the recent transactions have cleared.
- Click Done (even if Difference is not $0).
- Quicken will end the reconcile session and insert an adjustment if the difference isn’t zero.
Your register balance will now match the bank.
If using a connected account:
- Start the reconcile process.
- Choose Use Online Balance.
- Click the “Update now” icon if you haven’t downloaded recently.
- Click Next.
- Choose the Start Fresh menu item under the gear icon. This will mark all transactions that are older than two months as reconciled. (Two months is used because it is the amount of time that most banks will honor a check.)
- Clear any of the remaining transactions that you know aren’t outstanding although all your downloaded transactions will already be cleared.
- Click Done (even if Difference is not $0).
- Quicken will end the reconcile session and insert an adjustment if the difference isn’t zero.
Your register balance will now match the bank.
Reconciling completely
You will need your monthly statements for this process.
Check the state of your register. Make sure that the Cleared column is displayed, which can be done by clicking the Columns button in the action bar at the bottom of the window and choosing the Clr column. The Cleared status is one of the following:
- Reconciled - A checkmark in a green circle
- Cleared - A checkmark in a blue square
- Un-cleared - No checkmark
Find the first (oldest) transaction that is not marked as reconciled and note its date. You will need your bank statements for all months back to and including the statement that includes that date.
For instance:
- The first transaction in your registry is dated May 3, 2012.
- The first transaction in your registry that isn’t reconciled is Jan 12, 2016.
- You will need the paper statement for January 2016, or if your statements are mid-month to mid-month, you will need the statement for Dec 15, 2015 to Jan 15, 2016.
Now reconcile each month following the standard reconcile help.
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