What If: Verify Says I Have an Invalid Open Balance?

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A reader wrote in asking what she could do when the Verify utility told her that she had an 'invalid open balance.'

Specifically the Verify report reported a couple of different messages:

  • Error: Verify Target: Invalid Open Balance. Rcrd = [XXXX] Type: [transaction type] txn # [XXXX] Date: [XX/XX/XXXX] Doc# [XXXX] Source Account: [AccountName]
  • Error: Verify Item: Item history Item Quantity on Hand mismatch error. Item ID [XXXXX] expected value: [XXXXX] found value: [XXXXX]

Even though I've written about the causes of these types of errors within the last year or so, there seems to be enough of these going on that it doesn't hurt to respond (in print) to this readers "What If" question.

Under most conditions, the QuickBooks Rebuild utility (especially in newer versions of QB) will repair these problem. Not too many years ago, we had to either manually repair each impacted transaction or, if those of us in the Data Repair business could make use of special tools to fix the problems.

So really, your first attempt to repair either of these error messages is to run the Rebuild utility, just as long as the Verify report does not contain other error messages that might be contrary to the use of rebuild.

After running rebuild, the Rebuild Report (in the newer versions of QuickBooks) should give advise you that it was able to fix the errors under the heading of "Errors we fixed."

If you're not adapt at reading the QBWin.log, it really is difficult to confirm that the Rebuild Utility did all of its job. And, you might miss any other problems reported in the Rebuild Report.

Accordingly, I suggest you simply run the Verify utility again immediately after the Rebuild utility completes. If Verify completes successfully, you'll know that Rebuild was able to repair the damaged transactions and item histories.

If, on the other hand, the Verify utility does not return the message, "QuickBooks detected no problems with your data," and some or all of the same errors still are reported in the Verify Report, you're going to need to attempt to repair each of the transactions shown using manual methods.

  1. Identify, locate and open the damaged transaction
  2. Advance the transaction date by 20 years
  3. Add any item to the transaction, with a quantity of 1 and an amount of $1 each (Note: I always set up an "other charge" item called "Transaction Repair" pointed to the "Ask my Accountant/ProAdvisor'"account, just for this purpose.)
  4. Save and Close the Transaction
  5. Re-open the damage transaction
  6. Change the date back to the original date
  7. Remove the added item
  8. Click Save & Close
  9. Repeat the above steps for each of the damaged transactions

Run the Verify Utility again, the transaction(s) should be repaired and Verity should report "QuickBooks detected no problems with your data".