Bank Balance in Quickbooks does not match actual bank balance or reconciled balance

Hello there, kpturner. 

Yes, you're right to clear off the bank balance we can create a Journal Entry. We can also create a deposit affecting the Opening Balance Equity account. 

Let's create the account first. Here's how:

1. Go to the Accounting menu and select Chart of Accounts.
2. Click New at the upper-right. 
3. Select Equity > Opening Balance Equity > enter a name. 
4. Click Save and Close. 

To create a deposit, just click the +New button and select Bank deposit. Enter the bank account and date. From the Received From field, select the Opening Balance Equity account. Fill out the rest of the details. Click Save and close. 

For more details, you can check out these articles: What to do if you didn't enter an opening balance in QuickBooks Online. 

Let me know if you need more help. Take care!

Thank you for you reply.  I tried this but it didn't seem to make any difference at all.

Just to make sure we are on the same page, my balance in QBO is correct and matches my "actual" bank account balance if I look at my Santander online account.  The figure that is wrong is the figure you see in the Banking option where it shows your account (x'd out) - That says "£21,457.37 Bank Balance Updated moments ago" and *that* is the wrong amount. There is a pencil button to edit account info, and on that popup the balance is correct.  I have attached a screenshot.  The £21,463.13 balance in Quickbooks is correct. I just ran an update from my bank feed and it retrieved two more transactions but the £21,457.37 figure did not change. The only thing that changes was the QBO balance which, once I added the transactions, is still correct.

Moving on to your proposed solution, it turns out I did have an Opening Balance Equity account but it was called "Retained profit balance forward account".  When I created a deposit as described you didn't say what the value should be so, as I want the account to start at zero (it does anyway) I entered zero.  The data I entered was the date the account was opened - 5th Nov 2017.

This makes no difference to the incorrect bank balance figure.   Even if I enter an arbitrary amount (i.e. £10) the only balance that it alters is the Quickbooks Balance.  I don't want to alter that because it is correct.

So my original question remains - where does £21,457.37 come from and how does one correct it?  Getting updates from my bank makes no difference at all.  Adding an opening balance of zero makes no difference either.

Aha - I think I have worked it out.     The "incorrect" figure seems to be coming from my Santander feed. 

There are two balances: 
1) The current bank balance - this is the one I expect to see and this is the one that Xero displays 
2) Balance including pending: This is your balance including any payments due to come out of your account. 

Xero displays balance 1) which is good.
QBO displays Balance 2) which is not good. 

That means the bank balance will never (or hardly ever) match the QBO reconciled balance

Yeah I fathomed that out - but it does bother me that Xero shows the actual balance and QBO does not.  I don't want QBO to show the balance including pending transactions.  It means I will rarely be able to tell that the reconciled QBO balance is correct without actually logging in to my Santander account and doing a visual check on the actual balance.