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Recatagorize transfers

unknown

My credit card payments are categorized as transfers since all the accounts are in my quicken. Is there a why to change them to credit card payments without changing the transfer and having the payment accounts credited back the amount of the change?

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volvogirl

Huh? I didn't understand that. "payment accounts credited back the amount of the change"? Oh, and what Quicken version and OS?

Are you entering them this way? Just in case you are entering your credit card bills the wrong way.....
The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT and enter the charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account (not a category). Then if or when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.

When you enter the payment in your checking account you put the credit card account name in for the category using square brackets around the name to indicate it is a transfer...like this... [credit card] or newer Mac versions have a separate Transfer column.

unknown

Thank you for the reply. Let me see if I can better explain it. I do not enter the payments manually. When they are downloaded from my provider they are entered into Quicken as a transfer (not cat) from the Checking account (paid from) to the Credit Card. Thus the category for the transaction shows the transfer account instead of credit card payment. This does not show up in reporting as money out. Now I am novice with Quicken and by no means a financial guy so this maybe be expected/desired behavior, but to me it seems odd. Unless I am missing a report there is not one for credit card spending. Trying to simplify what I am looking at. Again thank you for you help.

unknown

So, you want the credit card payment from your bank to look like a categorized transaction? Why? The credit card transactions are what are categorized; the payment from the bank IS merely a transfer of funds from one place to another, with no further categorization needed.

unknown

It sounds as if you are thinking "When I pay my credit card I am spending money." It will be more helpful, and accurate, to think "When I USE my credit card I am spending money, and incurring a debt." You owe the money the moment you use the card. Don't get caught in the trap of thinking that you don't owe the money until the bill comes in.
To expand a little on what Steve said; when you pay your credit card you are transferring money from an asset (checking account) to your liability. That is: your are paying down your debt.
If you want to see how you are spending on credit, or how much you are paying to the cards you can run a Banking Summary report. Below Income, below Expenses, will be Transfers. Transfers TO Credit Card X will be how much you paid to the card company.
You can refine this a little more by customizing the report to show only your credit card accounts, or only a single credit card account. If you do that the transfers will show FROM your checking, but not itemize the specific CC account. In either case you should look at your categories for how much you're spending on CC interest. That may help curb any credit card habit.

unknown

Thank you!! This definitely changes the way I view and helps a LOT!

unknown

Thank you very much for you time and input.. Very helpful.

unknown

Assuming credit card payments from checking account are transfers, what is the category "Transfer: Credit Card Payment" used for? When I try to delete it from Categories, Quicken says "required: used internally and cannot be modified". When I search for "credit card payment", I get nothing. Confusing.

unknown

Eric, when I buy, say, a jacket on my credit card and pay that card out of checking, i categorize the payment from checking as a transfer to the credit card account and match the transaction in my credit card account so it does not show up as an expense. The expense is the jacket so I categorize the jacket purchase in my credit card account as "clothing". no problem there. But I have another card I borrow on, rather than make purchases on. So when I pay that one out of my checking account and categorize that as a transfer and match the transactions in both accounts, there is no credit card payment shown, only a transfer between accounts and so the credit card payment does not show up as an expense in my budget. So should I show the payment out of my checking account as a transfer but not match to the credit card account transaction so I can categorize the credit card transaction as a "credit card payment" or, better yet, a "debt payment"?

jacobs

Stephen: I'm not sure I understand what you mean by saying this other credit card is one you "borrow on, rather than make purchase on." How exactly do you borrow, and what is the result of a transaction? Do you get cash? In any case, the key is to think of it just like the first credit card: each transaction in the card account is what must receive proper categorization.

For instance, if this is a card you tap to receive cash from an ATM, then the transaction in the card account would be a transfer to your cash account (assuming you have a separate account for cash). When you spend the cash, you have a transaction in your cash account for whatever you spend the cash on: dinner, clothes, a newspaper, etc. And your payment from your checking account to pay off/pay down this credit card is a transfer, just as it is for your other credit card on which you purchased the jacket.

Now, you raise the additional significant wrinkle of budgeting. Quicken for Mac budgeting currently has the fatal flaw of not allowing user to budget for account transfers that need to be viewed as expenses from a budgeting standpoint. Paying off loans is the biggest problem, whether it's a home mortgage or any other form of debt. we can only hope the development team will address this shortcoming sometime soon.

In your case though, with a credit card you borrow against, I would focus on where the money goes that you borrow. THOSE are the expenses that have categories, and those expenses will show up in your budget. Unfortunately, it makes it hard to budget for the monthly cash flow transaction of paying that card -- but if you record all the expenses you pay with the money you receive from your borrowing, then you have those funds accounted for in your budget. Does that make sense?

unknown

If I categorize transactions from credit card dawnloads and then I create a report the expenses are categorized however there is also a charge to my Bank that pays the credit card
I have not idea how to correct for this "double " expense in my report
Category for example Groceries ( paid with my credit card ) and then this bill is also reported in my bank when I paid the credit card
How to do it
I categorized my debt to the bank account from the Credit card and when the credit card shows my payement to the credit card I categorized that as + by categorizyin it as to the credit card
Is that the way to do it ?

volvogirl

Not sure I follow how you are recording the transactions but they might be right. You can customize the report to exclude the transfers. Or don't include the checking account in the report.

Tom Young

"If I categorize transactions from credit card dawnloads and then I
create a report the expenses are categorized however there is also a
charge to my Bank that pays the credit card "

I think you are saying that each charge to the credit card is Categorized as some type of expense - gasoline, groceries, etc. - but that when you run a report the monthly payment from your checking Account against your credit card Account - a "transfer" in Quicken-speak - is being shown as a form of "expense" too?

If that's the case then you need to customize that report to either exclude all transfers (Customize > Advanced > Exclude all) or, if you do want to see some transfers, just not that particular one, don't let the credit card Account be reported as a Category (Customize > Categories > untick credit card Account).

unknown

Thanks so much

I will do it

Would the Total expenses be affected ?Tha is to say If I pay from my bank a credit card and then I also pay individual expenses such as groceries ,travel etc You will show the same debit twice One as a payement tothe credit card and then also as individual categorized expens

Wrong ?

unknown

so if I understand when the charge from my bank to the Credit card is a transfer I should not type any category at all and when the $ from my bank shows in mt credit card account i also should not categorize this

Correct ?

Tom Young

You pay some expenses with your credit card, you pay some expenses with cash or check from your checking account.

The payment from the bank Account to the credit card Account is NOT an "expense" as accountants use that term, i.e., "period" costs that are not posted to a balance sheet Account but, instead, immediately flow through a profit and loss report (a "spending" report in Quicken-speak.)

From the way you describe things it sounds like what you are seeing on your report is expenses paid from your credit card, expenses paid from your checking account AND you are seeing the payment of the monthly credit card bill, and all three items are being totaled together in Total Expenses. That payment of the credit card bill ("transfer" in Quicken-speak) is NOT and expense and the inclusion of that payment amounts to a "double counting" of expenses incurred on the credit card.

unknown

yes you are right that is what I was afarid of

i am not an account but it did not make any sens to include my payement BANK to CC as a expense and then all the categorized expenses in my credit card as well

so what i was doing was when the transfer of $ from my Bank to the Creit cartd appeared in my credit card statemnet I categorized back to the credit card so the positive money into my credit card was credited to the credit card and that cancelled my credit card expense from my bank I was therefore left just with the expenses of the expensitures within my credit card ( Gas ,car ,transport etc )

IfI understand you now I will not categorized my transfer bank -CC nor the positive income in my credit card from my Bank

I gues it is the same that I was doing only I was categorizing it and then returning back to the CC which always warned me that I wa s putting back the money (transaction ) into my Credit card

Thanks .... I resolved the problem an unconventional ways

No categorization as you sugest is simplier

Thanks

Tom Young

Let's make sure we are really communicating here.

"Best practices" is to make your own manual entries into Quicken when you make them and then NOT automatically accept transactions into Quicken when they are downloaded. Instead, you accept the transactions one at a time. You don't have ot run Quicken that way, but it does help catch and prevent all sort of errors.

In order to properly record a payment out of a checking Account to a credit card Account you start with recording the check, naturally. When you enter that check the "offset" to the $ amount you're entering is to the credit card Account, recorded in the Category field as [Name of Credit Card Account]. The square brackets around the Name of the Credit Card Account] tell Quicken that the offset isn't going to a "Category" as Quicken uses that term but instead is going to an "Account."

When you hit "enter" the transaction then shows up in the credit card Account in the same dollar amount, as a reduction in credit card debt, with an offset of [Name of Checking Account] in the Category field.

When the bank processes the check and you download it, the download reports a "match" with a transaction already entered.

When the credit card company process the transaction and you download it, the download reports a "match" with a transaction already entered.

So yes, when you write the check you don't "Categorize" it, (the capital C means I'm using it as that term is used in Quicken-speak), but you do "categorize" it, (small c means I'm using the common English meaning of "placing something in a particular class or group") by using the square brackets to tell Quicken that the entry is going to an Account.

unknown

Tom

You are patient and I appreciate

I will try to do better following your advise althogh I am still a little confussed

May be I am dumb but this is not all that easy and I surely appreciate your help

Tom Young

unknown

Not having set this up properly (to do transfer entries on both checking and card accounts), can I change the category field of these transactions, or must I make whole new transactions with the new category field entries using the transfer method?

unknown

You could go back and change a credit card payment (assuming you had a category called "credit card" or some such) in your checking account to a transfer to the appropriate credit card account by renaming the category of the transaction(s) to the appropriate credit card account. You will probably then have to go to the credit card account and delete the existing payment which was not recorded as a transfer. Otherwise you will show double payments. Whether or not this is worth your effort as opposed to just doing it correctly moving forward is up to you.

unknown

Eric, Thank you. I found a less complicated way to do it. I only had transactions since August 2017, when I took out the card, so re-categorizing each payment as a transfer, both on the checking account and card account side, was not that bad a task. I expected, as you indicated, that editing the category on the checking account side would generate an entry on the card account side and that I'd have to delete the previous card account (non-transfer) entries. However, that didn't happen. I just went in and edited the category on each card account side entry to reflect a transfer from the checking account. The accounts look ok and the reports come out right. Don't ask me why it happened that way, or why editing the category to change the entries on both sides didn't make a mess, but it all came out right. Go figure! Thanks for your help.