How do I clear out an incorrect balance?

Hello there, @SRogers69. 

Welcome and thank you for posting here in the Community. I can help you fix this beginning balance. 

You can correct this bank balance by recreating the deleted, voided, or changed the amount of a previously cleared transaction that caused the discrepancy. 

To help you find these transactions, run the Reconcile Discrepancy report and Previous Reconciliation report. 

Run the Reconcile Discrepancy report:

1. Go to the Reports menu and the Banking and select Reconciliation Discrepancy.
2. Choose the account and click OK.
3. Use this list of transactions to identify the transaction(s) causing the problem.
4. If you find a discrepancy, take note of the date when the transaction occurred and the entered/last modified date when the change occurred.

This report provides a list of transaction changes since the last reconciliation.

Run a Previous Reconciliation report:

1. Go to the Reports menu and the Banking and select Previous Reconciliation.
2. Select the account, set the statement ending date, and click Display.
3. Compare this report to past bank statements from your financial institution and look for differences.

Additionally, I recommend the following resource contains information to help a user fix the ending balance, as well as resolving data damage:

• Fix issues when you're reconciling in QuickBooks Desktop
• Fix data damage on your QuickBooks Desktop company file

Let us know if there's anything that you need. We're always here to help you in reconciling your account. 

HI,

Thank you but this doesn't help in this situation. These are accounts that haven't been reconcilled and it would take I don't know how long to go through all those. Someone posted one time about changing the date on a posted item thats wrong and then changing the date back. Im looking for something like that.

Also its quick books Pro and you can't look up previous reconciliation reports in that version.

Thanks for following up with the Community, SRogers69.
 

Since you haven't reconciled your accounts yet, I'd recommend correcting their opening balances.
 

Here's how:

1. Sign in to the bank's website and obtain copies of your bank statements.
2. In the top menu bar for QuickBooks Desktop, go to Lists, then choose Chart of Accounts.
3. Right-click on an account you want to edit, then pick Edit Account.
4. Use your Change Opening Balance button.
5. What you enter as the opening balance depends on how you want to handle past transactions.
   • If you don't plan to enter older transactions that come before your opening balance date, you'll need to enter the ending balance and date from your most recent statement, then hit OK. This summarizes all of the accounts past transactions moving forward.
   • In the event you'd like to enter your past transactions in detail, you'll initially have to decide how far back you want to go. Be sure to pick a date that's older than the oldest transaction you want to track. Your opening balance summarizes everything before the date you specify. Enter the date you've decided upon in your Ending date field. Next, enter its Ending balance as the real-life account's current ending balance as of the date you specified, then click OK. This method prevents you from counting past transactions twice.
6. Select Save & Close.

You can repeat these steps for other accounts that haven't been reconciled yet, but have invalid balances. This way, they'll have accurate balances on file.
 

I've also included a couple detailed resources about working with your Chart of Accounts which may come in handy moving forward:

• Add, edit, or delete accounts
• Enter opening balances for accounts

Please don't hesitate to send a reply if there's any questions. The Community's always here to help. Have a wonderful day!