Reconciliation adjustment *every month*?
I enter transactions manually, and reconcile when I get my bank statements. Every year, the balance in YNAB is lower than my bank balance, and every month I can't figure out where the discrepancy is coming from. I am meticulous, and make sure that the transactions in YNAB match the ones on my statement. I always end up entering an account reconciliation of $100 to $300. But this year, the discrepancy is over $2,000! YNAB thinks I have over $2,000 more money than my bank statement indicates. Any idea what is going on here?
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Reconcile more often. Many do it weekly.
Make sure the value from the bank excludes pending transactions (as they often change throwing the agreement off again).
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The bank balance definitely doesn't include pending transactions, because it's the balance on the statement. That only uses items that have actually cleared in the calculation.
I know reconciling more often would be helpful, but since I didn't - what kinds of things could cause this to happen??
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Descriptor Noun A reconciliation adjustment is either the result of a missing transaction or a mistake in a previous reconciliation.
Occasionally, some banks will back-date transactions in their web register (I'm looking at you, Chase...), but that's obviously not possible on a monthly statement.
Make sure you systematically go down your statement looking for matches in YNAB. Some people go down the YNAB list looking for matches in their statement, which is incorrect.
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dakinemaui
dakinemaui said:
A reconciliation adjustment is either the result of a missing transaction or a mistake in a previous reconciliation.Or an incorrectly entered transaction. Wrong amount, inflow/outflow reversed. These can often go unnoticed if they are subtle enough.
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nolesrule These shouldn't be cleared. And if they are cleared by mistake, isn't that's a mistake in reconciliation? 🙂
This is one area where importing can be invaluable. It will never, for example, clear an inflow when the real transaction is an outflow. (File-based import should be an option for everyone.)
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dakinemaui Sure, it could be. But your two possibilities were "missing transaction" and "mistake in a previous reconciliation". I was covering potential errors in a current reconciliation attempt because the account balance should be correct after a previous reconciliation adjustment. 😉
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nolesrule Fair enough. 😛 Happy Monday!
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Is this in reference to a credit card account or your checking account? Is it possible that you weren't really off at all and that it is the adjustments that are causing the problem? Is it possible that you have reconciled against the working balance of the account rather than the cleared balance?
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It's a checking account. I reconciled against the cleared balance, not working balance. I also thought that maybe the adjustments themselves were causing problems - but then at some point there would be a negative adjustment, right? To correct for the previous positive adjustments? Instead, the adjustments are always positive.
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(just to see, I went and deleted all the reconciliations. It made it worse!)
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If you are taking cash out of an ATM or doing transfers frequently, the auto importer is not smart enough to know that that amount went to the account. I find that if I forget to categorize things correctly I see my balances don't match up, even if the transactions do.
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It may be good to start fresh as of today. Get the current amounts of your balances and start from there. I think what's throwing it off is that the transfers are not being counted. You should not have to reconcile since you are moving things manually.
You can always go back to this budget in your backups.
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UGH! So much for being "meticulous." I marked a transaction as cleared which was not... in the amount of $2,190. Sorry everyone - this is the second time tonight I've posted a question because I was making a dopey mistake. I'm going to bed!
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Descriptor Noun glad you found it 😊
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