Opening balance from credit card listing as payment

riggz609

Hi All,

An opening balance from credit card listing as payment made on current budget report. I have to allow all transactions including transfers in the report to account for the credit card payments in the budget. Everything works great except for one opening balance showing as a payment made. How can I stop this without messing something else up?

Thank you!

Quicken Francisco

Hello @riggz609

 

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue. If I'm understanding this correctly it sounds like the CC balance is positive currently from the original payment. What you should need to do to get that to show correctly go to the opening balance in question and switch the payment amount over to the charge column. This will make it show as a negative so that it's looking more accurate to a CC usage. 

 

Please let us know if this helps resolve the issue for you.

 

Thanks,

 

Quicken Francisco

riggz609

Hi, actually it wasn't a payment, I assume it was just registering the credit card balance when I added the account as it self categorized as "opening balance". But when I run a current balance report it shows the balance as a payment amount.

Quicken Francisco

@riggz609

Thanks for getting back to me. Could you by chance take a screenshot of the register so that we could take a look. One with the register of the credit card and one with the report as well? Those two should help get it all sorted out. 

Thanks!

-Quicken Francisco

riggz609

Hi, I took the screen shots as requested but I am not sure how to upload them? I have only been a member for a couple weeks and am still learning my way.

Quicken Francisco

@riggz609

Not a problem! When you're writing your comment you'll see that there's this little icon that looks like a photo. From here it will ask you to "choose files" and bring up the file explorer window. Once here navigate to where you have the screenshots saved and double click on one of them. From here it should now start uploading onto the forum post. Here's also a photo on the original icon I was talking about as well.



You may have to do this a couple of times depending on how many screenshots you have but shouldn't be too many. 

Hope this helps out! let me know if you have any more issues.

-Quicken Francisco

NotACPA

@Quicken Francisco  since the OP is a new user, that icon won't work, and might not even be present.

@riggz609, use the icon to the left of what Francisco suggested.

riggz609

Hi, actually the only icon I see is the one for emojis and nothing else.

Chris_QPW

One moderator suggested that even a new user can drag and drop an image into a comment, but I never tested that so I don't know if it works.

On the original question, the way the opening balance should be recorded is a "transfer" to the same account (which is nonsense, and is just used for this purpose to indicate money that comes in or goes out of Quicken and doesn't affect any other account/category).

So if the account name is "Account A" the "category" of the opening balance transaction should be [Account A].  Note this is the same for a "balance adjustment".

riggz609

Hi,
@Chris_QPW The account name and Category are both listed as Tractor Supply and the Payee column list Opening Balance but under the payment column it list 190.00 even though that is the balance not a payment and when I run the current budget report it show there as well as a 190.00 payment being made to Tractor supply which is not correct. It is odd when i search the register all of the credit card opening balances list the same way but none of them other then this one shows up in the current report as a payment that was made that month.

NotACPA

Is that "Tractor Supply" in the Category column enclosed in Square Brackets? [Tractor Supply]

That's how you indicate that it's a transfer ...  in this case back into the same account.

And the Payee for this initial transaction in an account is, usually, "Opening Balance" ... not the name of the account.

Lastly, setting the amount of that "Opening Balance" is tricky.  It usually requires that you use the Ending Balance of your most recent statement on the account and then ADD to that any unposted charges as of the statement date and SUBTRACT any unposted credits.

riggz609

Hi,
@NotACPA Yes it has the brackets around it in the Category column. It has Tractor Supply in the account column, Opening Balance in the Payee column and tractor supply in brackets in the Category column.

NotACPA

This is what your Opening Balance in a credit card account SHOULD look like.

Note that the Account Name (upper left corner) and the Category are the same.

And, are you recording this directly into the Card account ... or are you recording this on the "All Transactions" page, which isn't a good idea.

riggz609

Hi,
@NotACPA if I click on the tractor account it comes up exactly like the example you showed. However, If i go to All transactions and search for either tractor or opening balance to bring it up it list just like that only with the dollar amount in the Payment category instead of the charge category. I actually didn't manually record it it went in automatically by quicken.

NotACPA

SO, Ignore the All Transactions page.  It will only confuse things.

Go to the Tractor account and type that opening balance into the Charge column ... unless you really had a Credit Balance when you established the card in Q.

riggz609

Hi,
@NotACPA as mentioned the amount is already in the charge column in the tractor account. I did have that balance in the account when I opened the Quicken account the other week. But the problem occurs when I run a current monthly budget report, it shows the balance amount as a payment having been made when it wasn't.

NotACPA

Are you including Transfers in your budget?

And, I think that you've got enough stars (next to your ID) that you might now be able to post images.  A snippet of this report would be helpful.

riggz609

Yes I have to click allow all transfers in the report to get all of my credit card payments to show in the current monthly budget report. All of the rest of the credit cards list what was actually paid for the month except that one shows as the balance. You are correct, i guess i earned my additional posting options. I will attach them now.

NotACPA

BUT a Credit card payment ISN"T an expense.  It's the transactions that are charged on the card that are expenses.

As is, you're counting your expenses twice.

An Expense makes you poorer (less Net Worth).  An Income makes you richer (more Net Worth). 

A transfer merely moves money from one pocket to another.  You're neither richer nor poorer.

AND, can you show that Opening Balance in the Tractor account itself ... showing what I displayed in my graphic of 5:07pm.

riggz609

Sure, here it is