Account Discrepancies

[rustyfender04]

Hi all,

On my Money (2004) checking account register, what would cause Today's Balance and the Ending Balance to be off by 250.00? I balanced the account on 9-7-21, and everything seems to match the paper statement.

I first noticed this yesterday, and I thought the issue might fix itself after midnight, but to no avail.

[Ameridan (microsoftmoneyoffline.wordpress.com)]

Go into account settings, and check the starting balance.

[Bob Smiley]

Did you delete a transfer in another account for $250 which was tied to the account that is showing the discrepancy? When you delete a transfer, both sides are deleted.

Bob

[Harry Walden]

The obvious answer is that there is one or more transactions that have changed or you have missed, or you made a mistake when entering the figures when starting the balance process. You could search on the value to see if one transaction has accidentally been marked reconciled or unreconciled after the balancing, but if it is a combination of two or more transactions it is almost impossible to find. That said, over my many years of using Money I have occasionally noticed anomalies and glitches in the program that cause this kind of thing. Bizarrely, in balancing a following period it sometimes throws up the exact opposite matching difference, and you can just delete the matching pair. Irrespective, if you are sure that there is no actual monetary issues in your banking accounts, I have found that it is best to create an adjusting transaction in Money and just move on.

[Cal Learner]

I would go to the register, and  change the View settings to Unreconciled.

Do you see a $250 transaction or any that predate the time of your last balancing (reconciling)?

Don't forget to change the View back to All when done.

Also, you might try a simple safe

File->RepairMoneyFile->QuickFileRepair

On Saturday, September 18, 2021 at 9:52:56 AM UTC-5 rustyfender04 wrote:

[rustyfender04]

Thanks for the many replies, but I am back to square one.

Cal, I tried the file repair option, but that didn't help either. I have been entertaining thoughts of archiving everything before 2010 (some old accounts before then are not used anymore), creating a new file, and importing the five current accounts I am using now.

[rustyfender04]

Followup...

I noticed one anomaly in the Bills & Deposits page. Most of my bills and deposits are on a monthly basis, but some are yearly, and when I highlight (click) one of the yearly expenses,  the current balance (listed at the bottom of the page) matches the ending bank balance on the bank account page. Highlighting *monthly* expenses (on the bills & deposits page) give me a false ending bank balance (at the bottom of the page).

Weird.

[Cal Learner]

I think you are saying that when you sort View by AllTransactionsCoveringAllDates,SortedByDate(Increasing), that the last number in the Balance column of a bank or cash account register does not match the "Ending Balance" number shown in the lower right. Is that correct?

It is usually best to avoid archiving.

You have not even tried the standard file repairs yet.

[Cal Learner]

...  Or regarding your symptom, does Money 2004 have an entry that says "Today's Balance", perhaps above the Balance column of the register? Newer versions of Money have a "Bank Balance""Bank Balance" number there. If so, that number only reflects what balance was downloaded from the bank last. Sometimes an entry would not have cleared the bank yet, or banks stop providing that number in downloads. There is a way to make that field go away until the next time you download a statement with a balance amount.

Michael Gorden posted a process to clear the downloaded balance from the Bank Balance column of the Account List. 

When you delete a statement from the Account List, Money clears the downloaded balance amounts from the associated account. Here is a 5-step way to do that: 

1.Open a new Notepad file, and paste the following six lines between the delimiter lines below into the file. Save the file as "ClearBalance.QIF". 

============begin ClearBalance.QIF==========================

!Type:Bank

D09/21/2021

T-1.00

PRemove Balance

MUsed to remove the balance

^

============end ClearBalance.QIF==========================

2. Change the date on the line that starts with 'D' to a date later than the reported last download in the register. Today's date should work. The date format depends on your Windows regional settings. 

3. Save the File->SaveAs the file "ClearBalance.QIF" in the same folder as your *.mny file. 

4. Open Money, and File->Import->Downloaded Statement. Select ClearBalance.QIF and click Import. Money will ask which account (or to make a new account). Select the account you wish to clear the Downloaded Date from, and click Next, then OK. 

5.Do not process the statement as you would a regular statement. Instead go to the Account List and right-click where it says "Transactions to read:1" for the account that you imported into. Choose DeleteStatement. 

You can re-use the ClearBalance.QIF file on all the accounts you wish to clear. 

[rustyfender04]

Cal, I'm lost after line five of the instructions...

• 5.Do not process the statement as you would a regular statement. Instead go to the Account List and right-click where it says "Transactions to read:1" for the account that you imported into. Choose DeleteStatement.
  

There is no Delete Statement option in Money 2004 that I can see. All I could do was to delete the Clear Balance transaction from the bottom of bank register page. Do I do it right?

[rustyfender04]

Followup...

Excuse me, Cal, but I finally found the delete option under the account list the third time I tried this, but the account balance remains unchanged.

[Cal Learner]

It has been a long time since I used Money 2004. To be clear, where is "Today's Balance" shown?

[rustyfender04]

Here you go. This is a snip from the bottom of the bank checking register page in Money. This error shows up on the Bills & Deposits page too (except for yearly bills).

[Cal Learner]

Ah... do you have one or more future-dated transactions?  When you sort the register by Date, there is a darker line separating future transactions.

[rustyfender04]

I usually sort by order of entry, but when I tried your suggestion, this is what I saw...


Come to think of it, last winter, my credit card company had a glitch in there late December downloads, and the transaction dates were off by one year. Looks like I did not correct the date of 12/28/21 transfer.

Would correcting that date fix my problem without screwing up the registry?

[rustyfender04]

I corrected the date of the transfer, and all seems well. Can't imagine why this error showed up like it did all of a sudden, or either i missed it altogether early on.

Thanks, Cal, and to of the other posters on this thread! I learned a few things.

[Cal Learner]

I almost always sort by date.

I wish I had picked up on that sooner, but it has been 17 years since I used Money 2004

[rusty fender]

I tried Money Sunset on Windows 7, but I had some issues with it, so I decided to stay with the '04 version instead.

Thanks, I'll give Money Dance a try.

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[Cal Learner]

What is inadequate in Money 2004 for you? If that is an OFX particular financial institution, that could perhaps be processed with a scrubber.