Credit Card Payments vs. Transfers

drumsdb

I wanted to ask the collective for some advise on budgeting credit card payments. Note: I'm a a LONG time Quicken user so very familiar with most of the basics. This is more of a process question than strict functionality, but I'm hoping maybe someone as some ideas.

All of my credit card payments currently process as transfers and net to 0. This makes sense as this is just moving an asset (checking) and paying off a liability (credit). In general, this fits with my general believe as the expenses are calculated based on the credit card transactions and those apply correctly against the budget.

My question comes in trying to budget CASH FLOW due to lingering credit card debt, especially carried over from previous years. When working my budget, I like to see how much is outgoing from a cash flow perspective. This doesn't work to budget credit card payment because it nets to zero.

I used a quick workaround in adding an "uncategorized" line to my budget for the amount of my credit card payment. This works fine for budgeting monthly cash flow, but it doesn't help when reviewing performance to total budget because the actual value always remains 0.

Any recommendations?

jacobs

As you've likely seen, over the past 6 months, the developers have added a way to get a cash flow perspective on Reports, allowing users to see transfer cash flow by selecting an account(s) on one side of the transfer. This capability doesn't exist yet in budgeting, but the product manager has stated that they are currently working on this long-promised functionality. I don't know when it will be released nor how exactly it will work, but my suggestion is if you've been making do with the limitations all along, maybe wait a little longer before resorting to cumbersome work-arounds you may not need within the next few months. 

jacobs

As you've likely seen, over the past 6 months, the developers have added a way to get a cash flow perspective on Reports, allowing users to see transfer cash flow by selecting an account(s) on one side of the transfer. This capability doesn't exist yet in budgeting, but the product manager has stated that they are currently working on this long-promised functionality. I don't know when it will be released nor how exactly it will work, but my suggestion is if you've been making do with the limitations all along, maybe wait a little longer before resorting to cumbersome work-arounds you may not need within the next few months.