Reconciling

The purpose of reconciling an account is to ensure that neither you nor your bank have made a mistake in recording transactions.

Reconciling accounts in Moneydance is akin to balancing a paper checkbook.

You can also choose to reconcile your account manually, or have all transactions which you have downloaded/imported from your bank automatically marked as cleared.
You can amend this within your Network Preferences. Select the option to “Mark Transactions as Cleared When Confirmed”.

How to Reconcile -

To begin, highlight the account in the left sidebar, then Account --> Reconcile.

You will be shown a non-editable Beginning Statement Balance.
The Beginning Statement Balance on the reconcile window is a calculated value, which is-
Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments

You will be asked to enter an Ending Statement Balance, usually the balance listed on your most recent bank statement, or on your bank’s website.

The "As of" date is only enabled if you download transactions for that account online. If this box is selected, then all transactions that were downloaded/imported on or before the date chosen will be marked as reconciling.

The Reconcile Accounts window lists all transactions in the account which are not cleared. You can change the order of transactions in this window by clicking on any of the column headings - Date, Check#, Description, C (cleared), and Amount.

Payments are listed in the left-hand column and deposits are listed in the right-hand column. Each column shows a Cleared and Uncleared balance, which will change as you click on transactions to toggle them between Reconciling and Uncleared.

The Current Balance displays the effects of your reconciling thus far on the Beginning Balance, and the difference between Current and Target Balance as Difference.

If you have marked all the transactions from your statement as Reconciling and the Current Balance and Target Balance are now the same, you have successfully reconciled your account.

Click Done to exit the reconcile window. The transactions marked as Reconciling will now be displayed as Cleared in the account register.

If you select "Finish Later", transaction which are marked as Reconciling will display this status in the account register.

Select "Unmark All" to mark all transactions as Uncleared and return to the account register.

Balances don't match -

If a transaction in Moneydance does not seem to match with your bank’s records, the error may be in your entry. Click on the appropriate transaction and use the Edit button to change its value in your account’s register.
If you suspect the error is on the bank’s end, you'll need to contact them to change their records.

If you reconciled last month, and this month the beginning statement balance does not match the ending statement balance from last month - there are a limited number of possible causes.

Is it possible that you have actioned any of the following since the last reconcile? -

• Modified the amount of a transaction that was already marked as cleared.
• Deleted a transaction that was already marked as cleared.
• Manually cleared a transaction in the intervening time.
• Deleted a category that contained cleared transactions.
• Deleted an account that had transfers to or from the account you are reconciling.
• Changed the "Initial balance" on the account under Account --> Edit Account.
• Manually marked a cleared transaction as uncleared.

If you have done anything from the list above, it can be quite tricky to track down the cause of the change in the cleared balance.
The only way to fix such a problem is to go over the register and your old bank statements, to see if you can find anything that has changed.

If the discrepancy is relatively small it might be simpler to enter a new transaction (categorize it "reconcile discrepancy") and then clear that transaction.

Some Moneydance customers find it helpful to enter a dummy transaction with a zero amount. Then enter a description stating what the cleared balance was on this date, as a marker they can refer back to later.