Quicken Community is moving to Single Sign On! Starting 1/22/21, you'll sign in to the community with your Quicken ID. For more information: http://bit.ly/CommunitySSO
Track credit card rewards

It would be nice if we could have "linked" accounts to track rewards in credit cards.
There are few type of rewards money (cash back), points (membership rewards, hilton, etc) or miles.
There are few patterns as well, usually based on category, sometimes this category can change quarterly. Just let us update the rules/criteria and points/miles/% per dollar each period and keep accumulating this items and showing them along with the linked account.
This way we could track and add transactions in case of redemption.
There are few type of rewards money (cash back), points (membership rewards, hilton, etc) or miles.
There are few patterns as well, usually based on category, sometimes this category can change quarterly. Just let us update the rules/criteria and points/miles/% per dollar each period and keep accumulating this items and showing them along with the linked account.
This way we could track and add transactions in case of redemption.
3
Comments
I love the idea that categories can have an associated % reward that can easily be tracked and adjusted during each period.
Great idea!
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP
If you want track awards in Quicken, why not just set up a separate account and enter the awards whenever they accrue? It is generally when the statement comes in and you need to reconcile accounts anyway, I do this for Discover Rewards since I use them frequently for Amazon purchases. I just enter a deposit for "Earned this Period" as reported on the statement. Then I can use those funds to offset the cost of items purchased later. This seems much easier to me that having to update the award rules frequently and it does not become a new feature that Quicken Support has to deal with (we have enough of those already).
Win10 Deluxe Subscription thru 2021
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Home & Business
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP
To me it isn't if the rewards have a dollar amount or if you can't somehow shoehorn them into an account. The real issue is what @jrfaris points out. There isn't any system to get this information automatically. And the rules of how they accumulate and de-accumulate (yep return something and the points go away) are way to complicated and varying to setup a system in Quicken to calculate them.
So you are back to manually tracking them. And as @jrf40 pointed out you can already do that.
The last thing Quicken needs is another complicated system that "sort of works".
"There isn't any system to get this information automatically. And the rules of how they accumulate and de-accumulate (yep return something and the points go away) are way to complicated and varying to setup a system in Quicken to calculate them."
That pretty much sums it up. And since Quicken can't keep up with all the issuers, at best it would come up with a flexible, programable rule-based system for your Sunday night pleasure and entertainment. Imagine that YOU, the user, will have to digest all your many credit cards individual and ever-changing rules and then program them into Quicken (if it offered this option), account by account. Good luck with that.
Not to mention that you buy gas hoping to get 3x the points, but because the business has a grocery or convenience attached, you only get one. Now go figure that. In Quicken.
Instead, I've created an account called Cash Rewards (I disfavor miles - hard cash is my thing) and simply let the card issuers themselves do that math. In this account, I have a transaction line for each credit card, and I chose to categorize these transactions as Other Income.
Every so often I visit the issuers' websites, check the points, convert them to ca$h (typically just divide by 100), and then in Quicken simply adjust the value of each of these "transactions" to reflect updated amounts, without creating new transactions. The account balance at the bottom then reflects my entire trove of rewards, which in turn adds (slightly) to my Net Worth. That works well because I let points accumulate for a while before cashing them out.
When I do cash them to either check or to pay the credit card itself, I freeze the original balance and add another transaction with the same credit card name/number (I use their last 4 digits as tags, as well - this allow me to report on 'rewards by card' later), but with the cash-out amount as a decrease. And that updates the account bottom line while keeping records of how I used the rewards.
My system is even simpler. I don't count my money until I get it.
And yeah, me too, cash is what I want.
So every once in a while I log into by credit card account and select for it to give me the cash back and as a credit card "credit". These come in with a payee of "Redemption Credit", which I have a memorized payee for, and have the category of Cash Rewards (no tax line).
As for tracking rewards, I read a tip last year to use a separate application for that, and their suggestion was https://awardwallet.com/. I'm using it, mostly to make sure any rewards I have don't expire unknowingly.