old unreconciled transactions

Thank you for reaching the Community, EileenLight.

Making some adjustments and clearing those unreconciled transaction can affect your closed books. If you start reconciling previous years transactions, the entire current reconciliation statement will be inaccurate. 

Before you begin the process of reconciling past transactions, I recommend consulting with your accountant. They can provide suggestions on how to properly handle those entries. You may also need to determine whether or not these transactions are valid. It is best to cross-reference these transactions with previous bank statements.

I've included the following articles for your reference:

• Fix issues for accounts you've reconciled in the past in QuickBooks Online
• Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks

I'll be here  if you still need more help with this. Have a great day!

Dear Archie_B

Thank you for your reply.  I appreciate your input.  The reply didn't quite answer my question.  I'll try to rephrase below with a little more information.

We have recently taken on a new cash-based accounting system client whose QBO books were closed through 2017.  We cleaned up, reconciled and closed 2018.  We are getting ready to close 2019.  Before closing 2019 we would like to cleanup and clear old unreconciled transactions.

There are 96 unreconciled transactions from 2015-2017 which show up when I am in the reconciliation module.  I have reviewed many of the unreconciled transactions and realize they are “unmatched” duplicates of reconciled transactions (2015-2017).  (The business owner had been doing the bookkeeping and did not know how to “match” manually entered and bank downloaded transactions.)  Based on those transactions I reviewed, in additional to all the matching I assume that most, or all, of them are duplicates of reconciled transactions.  If I were to go back and match the duplicate transactions it would change the Balance Sheet and P&L.  Yes, in their favor, but…this is a startup business and the dollar amount involved is not significant.  The cost for me to go back and match those duplicate transactions is not worth it to the business.

The business owner and we would like to clear those unreconciled transactions in the current year (2019).  I saw one answer to a similar post that recommended a "off-cycle" reconciliation and adjusting entry to clear those sorts of uncleared transactions.  Can you expand on that concept?  I'd like to leave a clear and clean audit trail.

Thank you in advance for your answer.  I am new to the Community and appreciate all it has to offer.

Hello there, EileenLight.

I can help you clear unreconciled transactions from the year 2019.

If the transactions is a duplicate of the Reconciled (R) one, you'll need to delete the Cleared (C) transaction from the register. Deleting the Cleared (C) transaction will avoid changes to the beginning balance. 

Here's how to do it:

1. Click Accounting on the left menu and select the Chart of Accounts tab.
2. Look for the bank account and click View register.
3. Select the Cleared (C) transfer transaction.
4. Click Delete and choose Yes to confirm the action.

I'd also recommend seeking professional advice from your accountant about this. They'll be able to provide an option that suits your company setup.

You can read through this article for more details in troubleshooting reconciliations: 

• How to adjust a reconciliation
• How to unreconcile a transaction or undo a reconciliation
• Reconcile hub

The Community is always open if you have further questions while clearing old transactions. I'll be here to continue helping. Have a good one.

Dear Charies_M,

Thank you for your reply.  It is clear I’m not doing a very good job at asking my question, or, possibly, there is no easy answer, or both.  I’m hoping for “3rd time’s a charm”.

Short story - At this point there are 96 uncleared and unreconciled transactions dated from 2015-2017.  These show up each time I open the reconciliation module in QBO to reconcile a new month.  Most, or all, of them are “unmatched” duplicates of previously reconciled transactions.  All of these transactions affected the business’ Balance Sheet or P&L for the year they were entered.  Meaning the business  overstated their liabilities, income and expenses for the years 2015, 2016 and 2017.

That said, they are a startup business and the dollar amounts are not significant.  As such, it does not make sense for us (accounting office) to go back and match all those items and, potentially, redo their taxes for those years.   The business owner and we agree we just want to get rid of those uncleared, unreconciled transactions that show up in the reconciliation module in QBO.  Is there a clean way to do that in the current year (2019)?  Or is the only recourse to delete the uncleared, unreconciled transactions, knowing it will change the Balance Sheet and P&L for each of the years 2015-2017?  

Thank you again for your assistance.  I truly appreciate it.

Dear RoseJillB,

Thank you for your answer.  All of the answers helped to increase my knowledge and ability to clean up some messy QBO accounts.  I really appreciate what the community has to offer.

Have a good day.

You are always welcome, EileenLight.

I'm happy to hear that the answers above have helped you succeed in doing your task in QuickBooks.

Please know that you can always come back to the Community anytime if you have other questions.

Hi,

Not sure if you already found your best solution.

But from what I understand, you wanted to clear all old unreconciled transactions without having to delete any old transactions, even if these are duplicates, as to avoid any adjustments in your FS balances in previous years.

What I do with other platforms, is I create an adjusting journal entry to reverse all the effects of these old unreconciled transactions, but of course not to the point that balances goes beyond normal acceptable credits or debits. If it does, I chose other GL accounts that can absorb that reversal effect.

After recording that adjusting journal entry, I redo or create a new reconciliation and include the old unreconciled transactions in that bank reconciliation as well as the adjusting journal entry.

In effect, the total deposits and payments will not match but the ending balances should match.

Moving forward, the old unreconciled transactions will not appear in the succeeding bank reconciliations.

Hope this solution helps. And any corrections to my method are very much welcome.

I have a similar situation, and I know what you're trying to do.  I want my online banking account balances to be in-sync, all the time.  
We have some expenses from similar time periods that appear to be duplicate recording of the expense.
Some, I can't tell because we were using Desktop version during those years.

In an effort to not have to amend our tax returns for those years, I believe the only proper way to handle this is to make an adjusting journal entry to either 2022 or 2023 and re-capture those prior expenses as income. 

Your question about a mid-cycle reconciliation is easy to do if it's a credit card, for example.  Grab your online balance as of Today's Date, and create a reconciliation for the account with the balance you believe to be current with the date of your reconciliation - which isn't the actual statement.  

The AJE you made earlier will allow you to reconcile all of those old transactions with a Net Zero (If you did your math correctly).

Hi! 
We migrated from QBD to QBO end of Dec 2022 and now we are in the process of closing Dec accounts. We have some duplicate credits in our credit card account from 2021 and it has been showing up as uncleared transaction in all reconciliation of the past when we were using QBD. This time will be our first reconciliation in QBO and we want to get rid of those unreconciled credit transactions in our credit card account. But we are not sure what is the best and cleanest way so with no impact on our previous financial statements and accounts. I searched a lot to find a solution for this and I came across adjusted journal entry most of the time, but all of them were almost in respect to expenses, I couldn’t find any solid answer for how to take care of duplicate old unreconciled credit transaction in a credit card account. 
I will really appreciate an answer that solves  this particular issue of a credit card reconciliation. Please help me out to get it resolved. Thanks

! 

I know a way on how to manage duplicate transactions in QuickBooks Online, VM15.

The best way in handling duplicate transactions in QuickBooks Online is by excluding them in the program.

Before we exclude them, we should compare the two transactions to ensure that they're duplicates. Following verification, follow the steps below to complete the excluding process. 

1. In the left navigation tab, click on Transactions and choose Banking.
2. Locate the credit card account.
3. From the For Review tab, select the duplicate transactions.
4. Hit on the Exclude button.
5. If you need to delete them in the program, just go to the Excluded tab, select the duplicate transactions.
6. Hit the Delete button.

To learn more about this process, read this article: Exclude expenses from downloaded bank transactions.

Additionally, you might be interested in the following articles below. These will give us advice and step-by-step instructions on how to manage bank transactions, as well as reconciling an account in QuickBooks:

Tips for Working with QuickBooks Online's Bank Feeds: Matching Transactions.

How to Reconcile in QuickBooks Online.

Let me know if there's anything else you need help with reconciling credit cards in QuickBooks Online. I'll be right here to assist you anytime. Have a nice day, VM15.

Scott this sounds like a good solution to me! I'm going to try what you recommend. thanks!

I have the same issue. When I open my qbo and go to the "accounting" tab then "reconcile" tab and open the bank account to reconcile there are old transactions both deposits and withdrawals. Most are duplicates. I see in the "bank register" that there is no "r" next to them, but either a "c" or nothing. 

This is not in the banking, then for review tab. I do not need to exclude. This is in the actual reconciliation window.  I was told NOT to delete these transactions even if they are duplicates because it will mess up everything in the books, however these duplicate transactions are messing up the books by keeping them because the statement ending balance and the register balance for each month of the reconciliations report is off by these old duplicate transactions. 

QBO is showing some as manually added and then added by quickbooks. 

What is an easy fix? 

It's nice to see you joining this thread. I'm here to lend a hand in handling those duplicate transactions on the reconciliation window. 

We can delete those transactions or hide them using the Filters to get around this issue. Thus, I'd agree with what you've mentioned that doing the process can mess up your accounts since it's on the actual window.

To help you with the best process, I recommend seeking help from your accountant to ensure the accuracy of your books. If you're not affiliated with one, you can utilize our Find an Accountant tool to look for one in your area.

For additional resources fixing reconciliation issues, here are some articles you can refer to for more details: 

• Fix issues at the end of a reconciliation in QuickBooks Online
• How to view details for missing reconciliation reports or reconciled transactions

Drop by this thread again if you have future concerns about reconciliations or organizing your transactions. I'm here to help.

@9130 3525 3968 4316 

"I was told NOT to delete these transactions even if they are duplicates because it will mess up everything in the books, however these duplicate transactions are messing up the books by keeping them because the statement ending balance and the register balance for each month of the reconciliations report is off by these old duplicate transactions."

You're correct that you do not want to delete them.  Every entry that you see in the reconciliation window has a corresponding and equal entry to an offsetting account.  So, for example, if you have a check for $500 that is listed in the reconciliation window, there is an offsetting $500 entry to an expense, asset, or liability account.  Those entries were all used to report the previous year's tax returns.  If they are duplicates (errors), that means those errors were reported on those tax returns.  Therefore, you need to reverse those entries in 2023 (offset deposits with checks assigned to the same account as the duplicate deposit and checks with deposits assigned to the same account as the duplicate checks) and clear them against each other.