Archive - I'm trying to reconcile my account, but the Beginning Statement Balance is incorrect. What do I do?

This is an archived document. Please refer to the more recent knowledge base articles on this page

The "Beginning Statement Balance" on the reconcile window is a calculated value, which is

Initial Balance of the Account + Cleared Deposits - Cleared Payments

To change the Beginning Statement Balance, you'll need to adjust one of these variables. To change the Initial Balance of the account, open the account register and go to Account->Edit Account. You can enter mathematical equations in the Initial balance field in the credit card account to calculate the amount it should be. For example if your current credit card balance is 1476.62, and the balance shown in Moneydance is 27.65, then enter 1476.62-27.65 (use the minus sign) in the Initial Balance field and hit enter. Moneydance will automatically calculate the proper Initial Balance.

If you reconciled your account last month and this month you came to reconcile and the beginning statement balance this month does not match the ending statement balance from last month there are a limited number of possible causes.

• You modified the amount of a transaction that was already marked as cleared.
• You deleted a transaction that was already marked as cleared.
• You manually cleared a transaction in the intervening time.
• You deleted a category that contained cleared transactions. Deleting a category deletes all transaction that use that category.
• You deleted an account that had transfers to or from the account you are reconciling. Deleting an account will delete all transfers that use that account.
  
• You changed the "Initial balance" on the account under Account->Edit Account...
• You manually marked a cleared transaction as uncleared.
• You had the option under File -> Preferences -> Network "Mark transactions as cleared when confirmed" checked and then performed a download and confirmed transactions, automatically clearing those transactions

If you have done any of these things it can be quite tricky to track down the cause of the change in cleared balance, although clicking the "Uncleared" filter may make it easier to see if you've accidentally uncleared an old transaction. The only way to fix such a problem is to go over the register and your old back statements and 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 clear that transaction.

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