“The balance is wrong after importing”
A balance that disagrees with the bank is the symptom people notice first and diagnose last, because it has several unrelated causes that all look identical from the register. Working through them in order turns an afternoon of scrolling into a few minutes.
Symptoms
The register total differs from the bank by a specific, repeatable amount The difference matches exactly one transaction you can find on the statement Everything looked fine until a particular month, and the gap has carried forward since
What actually causes it
Transactions were silently skipped
Records with a missing or duplicated transaction id are dropped by most importers without any message. The balance then differs by exactly the sum of the skipped entries — which is why the gap so often matches one or two specific transactions rather than being a rounding oddity.
The opening balance was never set
Importing history into an account that starts at zero gives a register that is internally consistent but offset from reality by whatever the account held before the first imported transaction. Every later balance inherits that offset.
Pending transactions counted on one side only
The bank website shows an available balance that includes authorisations not yet posted; the export contains posted transactions only. Comparing one against the other guarantees a difference that resolves itself within a few days.
The same period was imported twice
An overlapping date range with regenerated transaction ids adds a second copy of each entry, doubling the movement for that period while every individual transaction still looks correct.
How to fix it
- Drop the file into the fixer below. It reports missing and duplicate transaction ids and the exact transaction count, which settles the "were any skipped" question immediately.
- Compare that count against the number of lines on your statement for the same period.
- If the counts match, the difference is an opening balance or a pending transaction rather than the file — check the account's starting balance first.
- If the counts differ, repair the ids here, reverse the partial import, and import the repaired file.
Related import problems
Skip the manual edit — fix it automatically
Knowing the file contained exactly N transactions turns a balance hunt into arithmetic instead of a scroll through the register. Free, no signup, no upload.
Open the fixer