Reconciling Loan: Why Does QBO Presume to Know Statement Ending Date & Balance?

I appreciate your input from every angle, @jeffbean.

When reconciling an account in QuickBooks Online (QBO), you'll need to enter statement information. Let's say you'd want to reconcile a bank statement for the month ending January 2021, so that’s what you’ll enter as the end date. Then, check your bank statement ending balance and enter it as an ending balance in the reconciliation window. As the beginning balance field will be auto-populated with the end balance of the previous month. Thus, the ending balance of the prior month should match the beginning balance of the next month. And your QuickBooks Online register balance at the end of the last month should certainly match the same on your bank statement.

As for the reason why the Loan showing on your QuickBooks account when you've not remember entering it in the system, you can use the Audit Log tool feature. This way, you'd able to verify if another user was the one entering the Loan.

To learn more about reconciliation topics, you can browse them through this one-stop hub article: Learn the reconcile workflow in QuickBooks.

Let me know if you have any other questions about this or anything QuickBooks related. The Community has your back and I'm here if you need further assistance. Have a great day.

@MirriamM Thank you for the response. I could have been more clear: there's no question I'm the only one making any changes to our books on QBO. We're a two-person shop. But to be sure, I did check the audit logs, as you suggested, and the only activity is what I I recall, which was to setup the account in the chart of accounts and matching a single banking deposit to it as the first and only transaction appearing in the account.

Back to my question.

QBO wrongly states both the statement ending date and the ending balance in the reconciliation screen. Neither was entered by me (or by anyone else) as is proven by the Audit Log. Both the date and the amount are wrong: there has not been a statement issued by the bank yet for there to be an statement ending date or an ending balance amount. And the ending balance amount does not equal the actual balance as shown by the bank (not that QBO should have any way of knowing, because as I think I noted, QBO fails to link to bank for a long-term liability account). The account has never been reconciled before.

In short, I didn't enter the wrong data and I see no way QBO could have received any data from my bank.

Where did QBO get this data? And why is it wrong?

@MirriamM Thank you for the response.

There are no other transactions. There is only one, the one that is matched to the bank deposit transaction. It is not reconciled.

This time, as I exited the Reconcile screen, and reentering the screen, it did allow me to start the reconciliation again.

So the problem is solved, yet I'm left concerned that QBO got data I had not entered and that was incorrect.