Store refunds on credit cards show as Income

BonnieG

My credit card accounts have Charge, Payment & Amount columns. I use the category of "Shopping Refund:Refund ( name of cc here)" when one is issued and that amount is shown in green numbers. Why are those refunds all showing under "all transaction" report as "Income"? There is no mention of "refunds" in help.

jacobs

@BonnieG  It's not clear what actual report you are using, but it sounds like it may be one of the "old" reports in Quicken. (These are the ones which now show on the Reports menu as Quicken Reports > Other Reports, and have gray icons.) Those reports incorrectly treat every account with more money in than out as Income, rather thasn using the Category Type to determine whihc are Income and which are Expenses.

If you use any of the reports developed with the new reports engine (e.g.Transactions by Category or Summary by Year, you will find that Income and Expense is always in the right place, whether the values for a particular category are negative or positive.

UKR

BTW ...

Register Column Amount together with Charge and Payment Columns

Does your account register show the Amount column together with Charge and Payment (or Payment and Deposit) columns?
Depending on your personal preference you should use
• either the traditional pair of Charge and Payment columns together
• or the newer Amount column alone (where you have to enter negative amounts with a Minus sign and positive amounts with a plus sign)

but you really don't need all three of them.
Please decide which columns to use and remove the other one(s) from the view.

Q Windows: To add / delete columns in your register click the Register Columns gear icon located next to the Balance column header.
Q Mac: there's a Columns button at the bottom right of the register view

John_M

One other thing to consider is that a refund is actually an undoing of a previous transaction. If I buy $100 worth of clothes and return $30 worth of them, what's my clothing expense? In my opinion, it's $70. Therefore, when I return the clothes, I use the same expense category. This would show on a transaction report as -100 and +30 for a net of -70 for clothing expenses.

volvogirl

Definitely.  If you get a refund for a returned item it should go back to the same category you originally charged.  Or what are the refunds from?  Are you getting rewards on your credit card?  Is there a reason you want to have a Refund category?