How to Undo a Reconciliation in QuickBooks Online

There are two ways, and they do different things. Undoing a whole reconciliation takes a period, and everything after it, back to unreconciled. Unreconciling one transaction changes a single row and leaves the rest of the report standing.

Published 2 November 2026 · 7 min read

The short answer

To undo a whole reconciliation, go to Accounting, then Reconcile, then History by account. Pick the account and the period, open the dropdown in the Action column and choose Undo. Tick the box acknowledging what it does, then confirm with Undo reconciliation.

To fix one transaction instead, open the account's register from the chart of accounts, find the transaction, and click the box in the checkmark column until the R disappears. Then save.

Undoing a reconciliation deletes its reconciliation report and any attachments, and it also undoes every reconciliation completed after it. Download the reports you want to keep before you start.

Decide which of the two you need

The choice is about scope, and getting it wrong costs time in both directions. Undoing a whole reconciliation to fix one transaction means redoing every month after it. Unreconciling transactions one by one to fix a month that was wrong from start to finish leaves a reconciliation report that no longer matches anything.

Situation	Use
One transaction was ticked that should not have been	Unreconcile that transaction
One amount was entered wrongly and then reconciled	Unreconcile, correct it, reconcile again
The wrong statement ending balance was used	Undo the whole reconciliation
A month was reconciled against the wrong account	Undo the whole reconciliation
A reconciliation adjustment was posted to force a match	Undo the whole reconciliation
Several months are wrong, starting from one point	Undo from the earliest bad month

A useful test: if the statement itself was entered correctly and only some rows were ticked wrongly, fix the rows. If the numbers you typed in from the statement were wrong, or the result was forced, undo the period.

Who can undo a whole reconciliation

For years the answer was: only an accountant working through QuickBooks Online Accountant, which is why so many forum threads end with somebody paying a bookkeeper to press one button. That changed in 2026. According to Intuit's community team in August 2026, the whole-reconciliation undo is now available to:

the primary admin of the company,
a user with the in-house accountant role,
an accountant connected to the company through QuickBooks Online Accountant.

Intuit also says the option can depend on your plan as well as your role, so what you see may differ. If there is no Undo in the Action dropdown, your login does not have it. Ask the primary admin, or your accountant, to do it from theirs. Everyone else can still unreconcile individual transactions in the register.

Undo a whole reconciliation, step by step

Go to All apps, then Accounting, then Reconcile. On older layouts the same page sits under the gear icon as Reconcile.
Select History by account.
Choose the account and a date range wide enough to show the period you want to undo.
Before anything else, open the report for that period and for every later one, and download or print them. They are deleted by the undo.
In the Action column for the period, open the dropdown and select Undo.
Read the confirmation window. It will not let you continue until you tick the box acknowledging the consequences.
Select Undo reconciliation.

Afterwards the transactions from that period, and from every later reconciled period, show as cleared or uncleared rather than reconciled. The beginning balance for your next reconciliation resets to the ending balance of the last reconciliation still standing.

What undoing actually deletes

Three things change, and only one of them is the one you wanted.

The reconciled status of every transaction in the period goes. That is the point.
Every later reconciliation goes too. Undo March in a file reconciled through October and you have eight months to redo, not one. This is the consequence people miss.
The reconciliation reports and their attachments are deleted, not archived. If an auditor, a lender or a client has seen a report, keep the copy you downloaded: there is no way to get the original back.

The transactions themselves are not touched. Undoing a reconciliation does not delete, move or change any entry in your books. It only removes the record that they were matched to a statement.

Unreconcile a single transaction

Go to All apps, then Accounting, then Chart of accounts.
Find the bank or card account and select View register.
Find the transaction. Reconciled ones show an R in the checkmark column.
Select the transaction to open it in the register.
Click the box in the checkmark column until it is blank. It cycles from R (reconciled) to C (cleared) to blank (uncleared).
Select Save, and accept the warning that you are changing a reconciled transaction.

This is available to anyone who can edit the register. It does not change the old reconciliation report, which still lists the transaction as matched. What it does change is the beginning balance of your next reconciliation, by exactly the amount of the transaction, and that is how it usually gets noticed.

If you are correcting the transaction rather than removing it, change the amount or date now, while it is unreconciled. Then reconcile it again in the next session, against the statement it actually appeared on.

When the reconciliation adjustment is the problem

If a reconciliation was finished with a difference still showing, QuickBooks offers to post the difference to an expense account so the screen can close. Many of the reconciliations people come to undo were finished that way, and they are the ones worth undoing first.

An adjustment does not fix anything. It records an expense of exactly the size of the error, so the account agrees with the statement while the real mistake, a missing deposit or a payment entered twice, stays in the books. The next reconciliation then starts from a figure that is only right because of a made-up entry.

To clean it up, undo the reconciliation that created the adjustment. Then delete the adjustment entry itself, which undoing does not do. Then reconcile the period again, and look for the real cause of the gap.

Redoing the month properly

Once a period is unreconciled, reconciling it again is the same job as the first time, done more carefully. How to reconcile a bank statement covers the method. The parts that matter most when you are redoing one:

Take the ending balance and the ending date from the statement itself, not from what QuickBooks suggests. A suggested figure built from the previous wrong reconciliation reproduces the same error.
Write down the starting difference before ticking anything, so you can tell whether each change moves you closer.
Work oldest first. If you undid several months, redo them in order, because each one starts from the closing balance of the one before.
Check the beginning balance first. If it does not match the statement's opening balance, the problem is in an earlier period, and no amount of ticking in this one will fix it.

Most stubborn differences come from transactions that never reached QuickBooks at all, because a feed dropped them or an import skipped a page. Comparing the books against a clean list of every transaction on the statement is faster than hunting for them one by one.

Converting the statement here gives you every transaction on it as a list, from the PDF or from the bank's export, and checks the rows against the statement's own opening and closing balances, so you know the list is complete before you compare it with QuickBooks. An export is read in your browser; a PDF is read on our server and dropped when the request ends. It does not categorise anything or touch your company file.

Get the statement as a list

Mistakes that make it worse

Undoing without downloading the reports first. They are gone afterwards, and they are often the only record of what was matched against what.
Undoing the latest month when the error is older. The beginning balance will still be wrong, and you will undo again.
Deleting and re-entering transactions to make them unreconciled. That changes the books, breaks links to invoices and bills, and leaves the old report pointing at transactions that no longer exist.
Reconciling again on top of an adjustment. Remove the adjustment entry as well, or the next period inherits it.
Undoing a period that is in a closed year. If your books have a closing date and figures have been reported or filed, talk to whoever prepared them before changing anything.

Frequently asked questions

Can I undo a reconciliation in QuickBooks Online without an accountant? Yes, if you are the primary admin or have the in-house accountant role. Intuit extended the whole-reconciliation undo to those roles in 2026. Other users can still unreconcile single transactions from the register.

Why don't I see an Undo option in the reconciliation history? Your user role or your plan does not include it. The primary admin, an in-house accountant user, or an accountant connected through QuickBooks Online Accountant can do it from their login.

Does undoing a reconciliation delete my transactions? No. The transactions stay exactly as they are. Their reconciled status is removed, and the reconciliation report and its attachments are deleted.

Can I undo an old reconciliation without undoing the later ones? Not with the undo. It also reverts every reconciliation completed after the one you pick. To fix one old transaction without that, unreconcile just that transaction in the register, then deal with the beginning-balance difference it creates in your next reconciliation.

How do I remove a reconciliation adjustment in QuickBooks Online? Undo the reconciliation that created it, then delete the adjustment entry, which undoing leaves in place. Then reconcile the period again and find the real cause of the difference.

Why did my beginning balance change after I edited a transaction? Changing, deleting or unreconciling a transaction that was already reconciled changes the opening figure for the next reconciliation. The reconciliation guide covers how to trace a beginning balance that no longer matches the statement.