Trouble Entering Refunds on My Credit Card

SDF

I reserved an AirBNB for $750 in January, inputted the expense as one many a split transaction on my bank account (which is how I paid the credit card). Then in May I got a refund, and inputted that with a minus sign in front of it. The list of transactions under "Vacation Expense" shows both the $750 expense (with a minus sign), and the $750 credit (with no minus sign), so all is good.

But I also reserved a rental car for $200 in January. And in May I got a refund, and inputted that with a minus sign in front of it. But for some reason the list of transactions under "Vacation Expense" shows TWO $200 expenses with minus signs.

I am not using the automatic downloading from accounts, as I am temporarily working outside the US, and that does not work where I live.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

UKR

Are you using individual account registers in Quicken, one for each bank and credit card account you have in the real world?
That would greatly simplify the record keeping for your credit card transactions. Each purchase, each refund is a separate transaction in the register.

And the monthly credit card payment from your checking account would be recorded as a simple transfer.

See image below. This is how the transactions you described would look like.

SDF

Thanks for asking. I have not been doing that way. I've just entered the payment to my credit card under my bank checking account, then used the splits to enter each individual expense under that line item. Would it make a difference to do it as you describe?

SDF

That did solve the problem in the reporting, although I'm still not sure why. Thanks again!

volvogirl

 Right, There is a MUCH better way to do it.  You should not be splitting out the payment.

The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT and enter the charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the credit card bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account (not a category).   Then if or when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.

When you enter the payment in your checking account you put the credit card account name in for the category using square brackets around the name to indicate it is a transfer...like this… [credit card] or newer Mac versions have a separate Transfer column.

I used to do it the wrong way for years!  Then I wised up and now enter them properly. I would split my credit card payment into all the categories on one transaction in my checking account. And since I always pay more than the bill I would need to figure the difference and put it to another category.  But then I needed to have them entered on the date the charges actually happened. So I finally set up a credit card account. It makes it much easier to enter and balance!

And if you split your credit card payment into the categories and some of the categories are Transfers to the same Account  it will lump all them together and make 1 transaction in the Transfer Account.  

Here's a list of some other reasons why you should do it this way…..

You don't have to wait to make the payment and split it out

You won't run out of split lines (In older versions there's only 30 lines)

You can use both the payee and memo fields for more description

You don't have to figure out the difference if you pay a different amount

Then your Credit Card Account will exactly match your statement

Charges get entered with the right date (better at year end for taxes)

You can enter all charges to date, not just what's on the bill - then you can see what you still owe

You won't forget what a charge was for if you enter it right away from the receipt