Why doesn't my QuickBooks beginning balance match my statement?

Your bank's beginning balance is the total amount your bank has for all the transactions in your account at the beginning of the statement period.

Your QuickBooks beginning balance is the total amount of all reconciled transactions in your account's register.

When you begin a reconciliation, QuickBooks gets its beginning balance from one of two places:

• For accounts that have been reconciled before, QuickBooks uses the total amount of all reconciled transactions, regardless of date.
• For new accounts (or ones that have never been reconciled), QuickBooks uses the account's opening balance.

When your QuickBooks beginning balance doesn't match the bank statement's, it's called a beginning balance discrepancy.

To reconcile an account accurately, the beginning balance in QuickBooks needs to match the statement. Learn more about why reconciliation is so important for your business.

The most common causes for a beginning balance discrepancy are:

• Somebody changed the amount or account of a previously reconciled transaction.
• Somebody deleted a previously reconciled transaction.
• Somebody deleted or changed the amount or account of a transaction that was connected to a previously reconciled transaction. (This one's tricky. Here's an example.)
  • You reconcile your credit card statement including last month's payment from your checking account.
  • In your checking account, you accidentally delete the payment to your credit card.
  • The next time you reconcile your credit card, your beginning balance will be off by the payment amount.
• In the register, somebody unreconciled a previously reconciled transaction by changing the reconciliation status from reconciled (R) to cleared (C) or neither (blank).
• In the register, somebody reconciled a transaction by changing the reconciliation status to reconciled (R).
• The account's opening balance is incorrect.

If your QuickBooks beginning balance doesn't match its statement, the first question to ask is whether this account has been reconciled before. If you're not sure, follow these steps to find out. If you do know, go to step 10.

1. Click the Gear icon > Reconcile.

2. Select the account you want to reconcile.
3. To find out whether this account has been reconciled before, look under the Ending date field for a blue link that tells you the last statement ending date. If there isn't one, this account hasn't been reconciled before.
4. If this account hasn't been reconciled before, go to Fix the beginning balance for a new account (or an account that has never been reconciled).
5. If this account has been reconciled before, look at the top of the reconciliation page, to see if there's an alert about a beginning balance discrepancy.
   1. If there's no alert, go to Fix the beginning balance for a previously reconciled account when there's no alert.
   2. If there is an alert, go to Fix the beginning balance for a previously reconciled account when there's an alert.