Using Credit Card as category

klmeagher

What is the advantage of using Credit Card instead of Transfer in category when doing reports

UKR

To pay your credit card statement in Quicken you record it as a transfer from Checking to the credit card account register.

In Quicken Mac you do that by either inputting the credit card register name in the Transfer column or, alternatively, by typing the credit card name enclosed in square brackets, e.g., [My VISA 1234], in the Category column.

By recording this as a transfer, Quicken creates a paired transfer transaction and moves the money internally from one register to another without inflating your budgeted expense numbers. Of course, you still have to make the actual payment by writing and mailing a check or making an electronic payment from the bank's or credit card's website.

NotACPA

On your card payment transaction, if you use ANY category (other than a transfer to the credit card name), you'll be double counting all of those expense monies.

Once when you make the card purchase and again when you use a category (rather than a transfer) for the payment to the card.

jacobs

The category called "Credit Card" is something Quicken includes which I believe confuses more users than it helps. I think they have it there for a user who has minimal credit card usage and doesn't want to track their specific credit card charges in a separate credit card account; those users could simply pay their credit card bill using an expense category called Credit Card. I can't imagine this is useful to many people -- but its presence in the default list of categories makes it easy to think you should be using it for something!

My advice: ignore the Credit Card category. In Quicken, have a separate account for each credit card, and record your credit card transactions individually in the appropriate credit card account -- so you can categorize each expense properly. Then when you pay your credit card bill, as UKR said above, enter a transfer in your checking account to the credit card account. The transfer reduces your credit card balance, but isn't an expense, because the expenses have already been entered with the individual charge transactions.

klmeagher

Thanks all. I have always used a separate account for credit card purchases in the past but when I saw the "credit card payment" category option I was confused and I definitely do NOT want to create more expenses.