@bwojtek
@MirriamM's response of "The QuickBooks balance is affected by all your transactions in the register and the ones you haven't reviewed yet. While the bank balance is solely determined based on the transactions on the register." is wrong. It's shocking that QB employees don't even know what makes up the balances.
"I know the Reconciliation affects the bank register because it changes."
The reconciliation doesn't affect the bank register. For a transaction to be reconciled, it has to be in the register and it affects the register balance regardless of whether it's reconciled or not. The QB balance is affected only by transactions in your bank register, not transactions that are sitting in 'Bank transactions' waiting to be reviewed unless there is a matching transaction in the register. The Bank Balance includes transactions sitting in 'Bank transactions' waiting to be reviewed but not any transactions that haven't cleared the bank. If you have $40K difference between your register (QB balance) and your bank balance, you should be able to see the transactions that make up the difference by looking at your bank register and those transactions will not have either a "C" (cleared bank) or an "R" (reconciled) in the checkmark column. You can organize the column to group the transactions by clicking on the checkmark.
