Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Checkbook overdraft... three questions

About two weeks ago I had two checks bounce. I went straight to the bank and asked what happened because my records seemed perfect. The "personal banker" guy sat down and went over it with me, and even refunded the overdraft charges without me even asking.

Then he and I sat and matched up every deposit and every debit going back to April last year, even though the checkbook had been balanced at least three times since then. The mistake is in the neighborhood of $300, and we can't find it.

He complimented me on the neatness of the check register, and I did all the math again and still can't find any errors. He made copies of the pages in my check register last week and did the same thing. Nothing is in the credit column that should be in the debit column, or vice versa. We're both at a loss to find any mistake.

Late today we passed it off to a female "personal banker" who will look at it again, just to get a set of fresh eyes on it. I'm not optimistic, but hey, who knows?

Here's question #1 -- Could the bank have made an error in math? Seems impossible because it's all done by computer, but right now I don't have any other explanation.

Here's question #2 -- If we can't find any error on the on my side and the bank can't explain why I was overdrawn, what happens? If the bank can't prove I've made an error, how can I get them to consider my checkbook to be correct and credit me approximately three Benjamins?

Here's question #3 -- Have you ever heard of such a thing? This has been unresolved for at least two weeks now.

Thanks.
Steve.

OT
Consider having a credit card as overdraft protection.

even computers makes mistakes (or more correctly: even optical scanners misread numbers)

two recent examples:

the bank deposited $3500 into my wife's account erroneously (the image of the deposit slip clearly was someone else's). It sat there for a week until she called them about it. they had to manually reverse it - the computer reconcile wasn't going to catch it.

last fall the electric company incorrectly credited my business account $13,000 (usual bill: $355). took them three months to figure out where the $13K belonged. (insert breaking bad joke here)


in both cases, I'm not sure they would have figured it out had we not called and told them the money wasn't ours...

Because the discrepancy involves a "3", it's likely a human-induced calculation error at the hundo level.

Where? YOYO

You should be able to tie out the bank's records to yours and vise versa. Pretty simple, really. I just use a red pen, as it stands out, and put a small dot besides the corresponding amounts on each record, their's and yours, and the discrepancy usually falls out by having no match. It's best to start at a point when the reconciliation was already tied out.

yes, it does happen.
few years back i had a positive balance in an account, went to the bank to tell them, their response was we don't make mistakes. Okay.
Money sat there for about six months, till i said the heck with it. If you don't want to correct the error in your favor, so be it.

It use to be you had humans with a machine inputing a magnetic code on the bottom of the check off the numeric and written amount. I am sure computers do that now. And they can make mistakes by not reading it properly.
I always look at the code at the bottom to compare to the written amount in case of an issue.

What's a checkbook?

I've had the bank make mistakes, but you are missing something. A balanced checkbook tells no lies. It's there somewhere.

I had an employee leasing company make a mistake on my employees payroll once for over $1000. I talked till I was blue in the face trying to get them to understand they had not been paid that money and were entitled to it, but it was sitting in my bank account. A year later I moved, closed out the bank account and got it back. What are you gunna tell someone that insists they are right when they are not?

Is there a deposit that went into a savings acct, or another checking acct, by mistake, that is shorting you? The bank did that to me yesterday on a $2000 deposit. I caught it and went around the block and had them correct it.

#1 Errors in math occur but are almost always caught by the bank if they're "unbalanced".

#2 You lose unless you can show it was the banks error

#3 Yes, mistakes happen

- do you use personal finance software like Quicken?
- when was the last time you knew you were in balance with the bank?
- look at the MICR encoding in the bottom right corner of your checks, that's the amount they actually posted for. Same with deposits.

Banks balance everything daily, all cash taken in and paid out to the cash on hand, deposited items to deposit slips. Mistakes happen and the exact amount of the error would give a good hint where to look. If it's divisible by 9 then it's likely a transposition (eg $527 instead of $257 would create an error of $270) in your case a $3 check posting for $300 would be a logical place to look and an easy error to make by adding a decimal. Also, if something posted to your account for an extra $300 then some other account

That can keep us from overdrawing on the account, but if there's a bank mistake of $300, I'm out $300. But thanks.

Steve.

We've done that. Twice. Each of us -- the "personal banker" and me. Everything matches. We started at last April, and went through three places since then where it balanced. But thanks.

Steve.

But obviously...

The bank has no obligation to reconcile your personal records. Have an accountant do it.

Not sure it involves a "3." The discrepance is roughly $300, but we can't be exactly sure yet because there are a couple times interest has been added in amounts like 6 or 8 cents, which I didn't know about.

Steve.

You balanced your check book only three times since last April and wonder why there is a problem? You should be getting a statement every month and balance it every month.

I'm familiar with all you're saying. In fact, I used to work in a bank, and I balanced everything daily. No easy errors here. Both I and the "personal banker" know what to look for. We did find one check that posted for 20 cents more than it was written for, so if we can find 20 cents you'd think something on the order of $300 +/- some centavos would jump up and slap us in the face.

Still at a loss. I asked the guy today if there's anyone he can kick this upstairs to, and he said he didn't think so. I think there is. If it's not resolved I might ask my neighbor to look into it -- he's a VP at the bank, though I don't know what his particular bailiwick is.

Keep the answers coming; something might help.

Steve.

Yes, the banks can make mistakes. One time they credited $6,000 to our business account and refused to admit that we had another businesses money. They said that their account books balanced. Six months later a bank examiner came to our restaurant and explained what happened and why it took so long to find the error. We gave the money back and he was shocked. He said that by law, after that amount of time we could just keep the money. So yes, the banks can and do make mistakes.

With all due respect, if you're within $300 of bouncing a check then don't write a check.

I know it's the norm to live paycheck to paycheck but really, just don't do it. Keep enough money in the account to cover accidental screw ups like this. Anyone with a job can set aside $2000 to keep as a buffer in their savings account.

Before I married her my ex-wife would always spend everything she had every month. She was obviously capable of counting money because she spent everything she had plus $100 every month. If she was capable of doing that then she was capable of spending $100 less than she made every month.

I'm not comfortable unless I have at least $10K in my checking account. I don't want to bounce a check...period. It's not that hard, don't spend more than you have. If you don't have something put away then make the wife eat ramen noodles for a couple of months until you have that buffer put away. I've never balanced a checkbook in my life and I'm 47 years old. Just keep enough money in the account where a $300 screw up doesn't leave you bouncing a check.

Beyond that it's just math, add the columns on the statement and figure out where the screw up is. They key is not to let it get to the point where you're in danger of bouncing a check.

I use Excel for a check register and balance it 2 or 3 times a week against my online account. It pays to keep up with it.

You balanced 10 months ago, but only went back 6 month.

You need to go back another 4 months, until the last time you balances.

With all due respect, please read carefully. The problem isn't that I had a cuppla overdrafts. They paid them and credited my account for the overdraft charges. No problem there. The problem is that the bank can't reconcile my account and show where there is a mistake.


Again, not the problem. I can have $10,000 in my account and the bank can think I have only $9,700. There's still a problem even if I'm not overdrawn. If the bank makes a $300 mistake, that's like giving them $300. And you'll never know you gave it to them.


Again, the problem isn't that checks bounced. In fact, it's a good thing checks bounced. That's the only way I would know there is a discrepancy between what I say is in the account and what the bank says is in the account. A million dollars in the account can't solve the problem of accuracy. The problem is neither the bank nor I have yet been able to do the math.

For the record, I have another account at the same bank in which I have a lot more money than I keep in this one. So overdraft protection isn't the issue here.

But thanks anyway.
Steve.

No. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. The bank and I agreed in April last year what was in my account. That's a matter of record. Since then I have balanced it three times using the bank's statement. I write almost all of my checks at the first of the month, so most of the time around the 20th of the month I can tell by my deposit receipt that the balance agrees with my check register, so I don't bother doing the math. There's even one place, because of that, where the guy at the bank said today, "It balances here."

Right now I'm guessing there are some transposed numbers we haven't noticed. I can't imagine the bank's computer making a simple math error.

Many years ago I remember bouncing a check and the bank called me. They found that they inadvertently put my payroll check into someone else's account. I don't k now how that happened, but it got corrected real fast.

Steve.

Last year there was a deposit of $110,000 into my account. Wife and I are retired mill workers so I knew she didn't make the deposit. I guess they found the mistake because the account went back to four digits.

I spent 20 years in the industry. Never once was I not able to find the discrepancy if there was a point in time where our balances agreed.

You got bit by that new math.

Hope you get it figured out.
Had something like this that took a while to get tracked down.

Something funny going on here.

I am sure that you have checked this but it has happened to us a couple of times in the last ten years or so.

If you look in the lower right hand corner of your cancelled check there is a number that corresponds to the amount the check was written for. Do these agree on all of the checks? $300 is a lot of discrepancy for this but you never know. The two of ours were much smaller than that.

Private Client Banker here...

Question #1: The bank cannot make an error in math. Where the bank very well COULD have made an error, would have been on a deposit. I have seen multiple times where a deposit goes missing because a tellers scanner reads a deposit slip as another number.

Question #2 and #3: If you guys continue to disagree typically it's too bad for the customer. For my customers, it depends on the relationship. I am not going to lose a large customer over something like a $300 dollar discrepancy, but we would have to profit enough off the customer (balances, loans, investments, etc) to be able to offset the written off loss. For the average customer I would only balance the checkbook if you balanced in the last 2 statement cycles, otherwise it gets force balanced to the bank balance. If you come in and talk hunting, fishing, and shooting, we would go all the way back to the point we both agreed and we would find the error. Any banker worth their salt should be able to find it IF they put in the time.

Back when I made a lot of check deposits from different businesses there were quite a few errors made in the process.

On one the check was written on the same bank (CU actually) and deposited back in the account it was drawn on.

Again, it is you who cannot reconcile his account, not the bank.

here ya go - "new math"

andif that doesn't work for ya -

and in the same vein -

I'm confident some kind of mistake will turn up. What's funny about it is that he said my check register is one of the most orderly he has ever seen. Should be easy.


OK, OK, you're right. I can't reconcile my account. No question about that. And it's also true that the guy at the bank -- the guy representing the bank -- can't reconcile it. Neither of us can. We've worked on it together, and we've worked on it separately. His title is "personal banker." It's his job to help customers with things like this. He has been trying for two weeks. He hasn't been able to do it. That's a fact, even if it is actually my responsibility.

Steve.

Steve, I didn't say it was easy, just that I was always able to find the issue. Of course, I was the guy thing were sent to after the likes of your personal banker had failed.

Hint: Excel is your friend.

I'd have Mathman look into it.....

Hang in there -
Banks employ people - and people make mistakes.
I would personally sit and compare entries, side by side, with the bank statements - starting at the last time we agreed (balanced)
Sounds like the 2 of you have overlooked the problem so many times that it's habitual - a new set of eyes may just look it over, and say "Well, there's the problem - right there in plain sight"
I HATE when that happens

You're both just chasing your tails if your going back and forth just comparing a list of items. You must do an airtight two-part reconciliation to the penny based on the closing date of your bank statements. Learn to do that and you will turn up the error(s).

Something just isn't adding up. If you've been balancing your checkbook each month with your statement, how can $300 be missing? Are you saying your checkbook matched your statement last month but is off by $300 this month?

Steve: Don't get frustrated. Errors in balances are very easy to find. It just takes time and diligence. I've done work like this with large amounts of money and have never been stymied.

First get the bank to print out a monthly statement on the account since it was opened. If it is really old, go back two years. Then simply find a month where the ending balances are the same and go from there. Regardless of how far back in time that is. There has to be a point in time where both balances match. Then just reconcile each month going forward until a mismatch appears. Keep in mind that it could be more than one mistake. It just takes time. You and your banker shouldn't do this together. That can increase the chances of overlooking the problem.

Also, not trying to be a jerk but maybe you are not exactly sure how it all works because you made a couple statements that were incongruous. Your initial post says, "About two weeks ago I had two checks bounce." But later you say "For the record, I have another account at the same bank in which I have a lot more money than I keep in this one. So overdraft protection isn't the issue here." This doesn't make sense since the overdraft protection would have prevented the bounced checks. You might have to fill out some paperwork to link that larger account to your checking account so you will have overdraft protection in the future. Just focus and go slowly and you will find the discrepancy. Good luck. -tnscouter

I had the same exact same scenario happen about 10 years ago. The bank was very rude and scoffed at the very notion they had made a mistake. We had to go all the way to the bank manager who sat there and basically insulted my wife and her bookkeeping. After he and others audited my wife's books they found that the error was on their part. They reluctantly refunded the fees. No apology. The next day i pulled every penny out of their bank moved all loans and had to restrain myself from putting my middle finger in the face of the manager. I will never for the rest of my days do business with a bank. I have used credit unions ever since and they almost fall all over themselves to help u.

My bride, a retired banker, had some thing similar happen a couple of times in her career. Eventually higher ups said to just go with the customers numbers and drop it.

Jim

Chase Private Client client here and all is more than good. Something seems more than odd with the OP's issue?

If you would learn to do a proper two-part reconciliation you would not have to go back more then two or three months from where you think everything was copacetic to work forward and find the difference. You certainly do not have to go back to day one unless this difference has been lurking in your ledger since day one.

From your checkbook ledger:

Prior period reconciled balance. (This will be a leap of faith on the first prior month you start with.)

Plus deposits. (The total of a written list of deposits.)

Minus checks written. (The total of a list of checks written.)

Plus or minus each item on the bank statement that is not a deposit or a check. Check off each such adjustment item on the bank statement as you list them onto your reconciliation. (Fees, deposit differences, returned deposited items, checks clearing for a different amount than you listed, etc.)

Everything on the bank statement should be checked off by now, otherwise list it as a difference, plus or minus.

Equals a possibly correct balance.

Then:

Ending balance per bank statement.

Plus "deposits in transit" (Any deposit on your list of deposits that didn't make it onto the bank statement by the cutoff date. Take your list of deposits and check off each item on the list and on the bank statement.)

Minus "outstanding checks" (Any check on your list of checks written that didn't get cleared on the bank statement by the cutoff date. Take your list of checks written and check off each item on the list and on the bank statement.)

Equals the possibly correct balance from the first part.

If the two parts don't equal, you go back over it again and again to see what you're missing. (Use pencil when checking off items on the bank statement in case you have to erase everything and start over.)

Since you are just jumping in a month or two before you think you went out of balance, you may find a check clearing from months earlier that you had not listed as outstanding. Or you might find a bank charge or adjustment that you forgot to write into your ledger. Etc.

You don't have to go back to the day you opened your account. Starting a couple of months earlier than your problem should build a foundation that will isolate the difference when it occurs.

If you can't make the top and bottom parts of the reconciliation balance you have to go over it until you do. Or the imbalance is before the month you are reconciling and you have to go back further to find what you missed.

This is not rocket science but it has to be done diligently, in detail for it to work.

Having done thousands of bank reconciliations I would put the odds at about 100 to 1 that the error is something missing in your ledger, not a bank error. Bank errors are not impossible, but their math is usually perfect and it is just a matter of finding the differences in the items as they and you list them.