Reconciliation Problems

wa1oui's Avatar

wa1oui

19 Sep, 2023 03:57 PM

I've just tried to reconcile MD with my latest bank statement, and find that my starting balance is $200 less than what MD thinks I should have, and what the bank said I had at the end of the previous statement.

I saved the current .moneydance file on my desktop and used Apple Time Machine to restore an MD db from just after I reconciled last time to try to find missing transactions. However, I discovered since I am synching with Dropbox Folders it immediately restores all the transactions that were missing, and I assume deletes the once that I had accidentally deleted. How can I look at a previous MD db to try to see what has been deleted? Thanks.

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Maddy on 19 Sep, 2023 04:15 PM

    Maddy's Avatar

    Hi,
    Thank you for contacting Moneydance support.

    Generally, you should check the following:

    • Open the register of your account by clicking on it in the left sidebar, and then navigate to Account --> Edit Account from the Moneydance menu bar.

    In the window that appears, one of the fields is for the Initial Balance of the account.
    This should be set as the balance of your account before the earliest transaction within Moneydance, as outlined here.

    Also, you should ensure that the filter at the top of the register should be set to "All".

    • Are you in split register or combined mode?

    The button that toggles between split and combined mode is at the top-right corner of the register, next to New Transaction.
    If this is in split mode then all unconfirmed transactions will be shown in a second register which appears below the regular register. This can sometimes be collapsed, so that all it shows is a bar with a label that says "N unconfirmed transactions". If you see that bar, drag it up vertically and you'll see the unconfirmed transactions in that list.

    Finally, the reconciled balances in Moneydance are a calculated from:

    Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments

    To adjust the reconciled balance, you'll need to adjust one of these variables.

    If your reconciled balance changed, that must mean that one of the following happened:

    1) Your account's starting balance changed
    2) One or more cleared transactions were either deleted, had their amount modified, or added
    3) One or more transactions were marked (or unmarked) as cleared

    Any one of the above would affect the reconciled/cleared balance of an account and could have caused the difference. Moneydance does display an extra confirmation/warning window when you try to do either 1 or 2 in the account's register.

    If you had the Mark transactions as cleared when confirmed enabled, in the Network section of the Preferences window, and you performed a download and confirmed transactions with that setting enabled, then those confirmed transactions would have been marked as cleared, affecting the reconciled balance.

    In order to correct the problem, you'd need to reverse the root cause of the change in the reconciled balance.
    You could also get the reconciled balance back to the correct value by simply entering an adjustment, either to the account's starting balance or by entering an adjustment transaction and marking it as cleared.

    Please keep us posted on your progress, Thank you!

    --
    Maddy, Infinite Kind Support

  2. 2 Posted by wa1oui on 19 Sep, 2023 04:43 PM

    wa1oui's Avatar
    I appreciate your response, but my problem at the moment is trying to restore the database at the beginning of the previous month, where I had reconciled, and look for the missing transactions.
    Unfortunately, dropbox syncing is not letting me do this. I restore with Time Machine, but money dance that immediately syncs up the other dropbox sync. That is the problem I’m trying to get around now.

    On Sep 19, 2023, at 12:15 PM, Maddy <[email blocked]> wrote:

     pre { width: 92%; margin: 10px 2%; padding: 5px 2%; background: rgb(239, 239, 239); border: 1px solid rgb(214, 214, 214); } blockquote { margin-left: 0px; padding-left: 1em; border-left-width: 5px; border-left-style: solid; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); }

    // Please reply above this line
    ==================================================

    From: Maddy (Support staff)

    Hi,
    Thank you for contacting Moneydance support.

    Generally, you should check the following:

    • Open the register of your account by clicking on it in the left sidebar, and then navigate to Account --> Edit Account from the Moneydance menu bar.

    In the window that appears, one of the fields is for the Initial Balance of the account.
    This should be set as the balance of your account before the earliest transaction within Moneydance, as outlined here.

    Also, you should ensure that the filter at the top of the register should be set to "All".

    • Are you in split register or combined mode?

    The button that toggles between split and combined mode is at the top-right corner of the register, next to New Transaction.
    If this is in split mode then all unconfirmed transactions will be shown in a second register which appears below the regular register. This can sometimes be collapsed, so that all it shows is a bar with a label that says "N unconfirmed transactions". If you see that bar, drag it up vertically and you'll see the unconfirmed transactions in that list.

    Finally, the reconciled balances in Moneydance are a calculated from:

    Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments

    To adjust the reconciled balance, you'll need to adjust one of these variables.

    If your reconciled balance changed, that must mean that one of the following happened:

    1) Your account's starting balance changed
    2) One or more cleared transactions were either deleted, had their amount modified, or added
    3) One or more transactions were marked (or unmarked) as cleared

    Any one of the above would affect the reconciled/cleared balance of an account and could have caused the difference. Moneydance does display an extra confirmation/warning window when you try to do either 1 or 2 in the account's register.

    If you had the Mark transactions as cleared when confirmed enabled, in the Network section of the Preferences window, and you performed a download and confirmed transactions with that setting enabled, then those confirmed transactions would have been marked as cleared, affecting the reconciled balance.

    In order to correct the problem, you'd need to reverse the root cause of the change in the reconciled balance.
    You could also get the reconciled balance back to the correct value by simply entering an adjustment, either to the account's starting balance or by entering an adjustment transaction and marking it as cleared.

    Please keep us posted on your progress, Thank you!

    --
    Maddy, Infinite Kind Support

    On Tue, Sep 19 at 08:57 AM PDT, wa1oui wrote:

    I've just tried to reconcile MD with my latest bank statement, and find that my starting balance is $200 less than what MD thinks I should have, and what the bank said I had at the end of the previous statement.

    I saved the current .moneydance file on my desktop and used Apple Time Machine to restore an MD db from just after I reconciled last time to try to find missing transactions. However, I discovered since I am synching with Dropbox Folders it immediately restores all the transactions that were missing, and I assume deletes the once that I had accidentally deleted. How can I look at a previous MD db to try to see what has been deleted? Thanks.

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  3. 3 Posted by derekkent23 on 20 Sep, 2023 07:43 AM

    derekkent23's Avatar

    I am not support staff, just a user.
    Hi wa1oui

    It sounds like you are restoring the Moneydance Data Set yourdatasetname.moneydance from Time Machine. As you have found the Data Set syncs and you are back were you started.

    You should always use the Moneydance menu option FILE – RESTORE FROM BACKUP which as part of the restore process allows you to untick the box “KEEP SYNC SETTINGS FROM ORIGINAL FILE”. This way the Data set wont sync. The moneydance backup file has the naming convention yourdatasetname_date.moneydancearchive

    The Moneydance auto backup is set under FILE – PREFERENCES – BACKUPS

    Hope this helps.

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