How to zero/cleared balance on credit cards?

JJNCN

New to Quicken and budgeting in general. Using Premier subscription version. When I download and connected credit cards, the transactions went back to August 2019. I've categorized 2 months worth of transactions. I connected our bank account too and we've paid credit cards twice in 2 months. But I always have a negative large balance in each card. How can I get the balance to at least the most recent transaction after paying the bill, and not be a huge balance that's already been paid for?

Sherlock

When we first add an existing account into Quicken, we need to determine the earliest transaction we'll maintain in the register and establish the appropriate balance for that date.  This opening balance is typically established using a self referencing transfer transaction with an Opening Balance payee.  After we've accepted the initial set of downloaded transactions into the register and deleted those earlier transactions, the next step is to reconcile the register with the available statements from the financial institution.  This may be performed by opening the register and pressing Ctrl + R.  Once we've established, the correct opening balance and have reconciled the register, we may proceed to add new transactions, etc.

It is normal for the running balance of a credit card register to be negative.  After you have reconciled the register, if you sort the register by the Clr column (left click on the column title) with the triangle pointing down, you should be able to see the running balance of the transactions you have indicated are reconciled.  The reconciled balance should be the total amount due on the reconciled statement.  The remaining transactions should be transactions that are or will be posted after the closing date of the reconciled statement.  

JJNCN

So, since we're only going to categorize two months worth (mid-March to mid-January), should i delete all prior transactions (mid-January-ish to August 2019)? And then allow current transactions to keep coming through, and keep categorizing? (As a budget newbie, I don't understand reconciling. Bear with me here. I may ask more questions later about that.)

Sherlock

JJNCN said:

So, since we're only going to categorize two months worth (mid-March to mid-January), should i delete all prior transactions (mid-January-ish to August 2019)? And then allow current transactions to keep coming through, and keep categorizing? (As a budget newbie, I don't understand reconciling. Bear with me here. I may ask more questions later about that.)

Correct.  

As you're newbie, you may want to review: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-reconcile-my-account-first-time-quicken  

There's also an FAQ category and a FAQ list.  

I suggest starting with the first 2 long posts at: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7107529/faq-accounting-101/p1