One purchase paid with two credit/gift cards

Monte Kern

I'm trying to enter a recent purchase that was paid for partially by a gift debit card and the balance by a credit card. I already have an account set up for each card.
How do I enter this transaction?
2 transactions, one in each account for that account's contribution? That seems messy. What am I missing?
Thanks
Monte

Sherlock

I suggest using a split transaction in one of the accounts with an entry for the purchase and an entry that is a transfer of the balance of the purchase from the other account.

Chris_QPW

If both credit card accounts are in Quicken and downloading, I personally would just wait for the two transactions to download and categorize them as whatever the category is for that purchase.

That is what happened.

If you think two transactions are messy trying to bring this into one account when two are really involved is going to get really messy.

I started to explain how you might enter that, but it is so messy I'm not even going there.

Not A Robot

Listen to Sherlock,

Here is how I would do this

Let's say you bought a $20 shirt at WalGet, using $10 from Gift_Card and $10 from Debit_Card.

In Debit_Card register, enter a transaction for Payee WalGet with split categories for $10. The Split Categories would be Clothing for $20 and [Gift_Card] for -$10.

This will result in a transaction in Gift_Card and Debit_Card.

good luck

Rich_M

@Monte Kern Another variation I have on the suggestions already made, is to record all your gift cash and cards in one Quicken cash account, instead of trying to track each gift card as a separate account.

Then the entry in the split described above can be drawn from one common cash account, keeping things a bit simpler.

If you really want to keep things as simple as possible, don't track these gift cards at all, just spend them.  Are a few $25 gift cards going to make a significant difference to your overall financial picture?

GeorgeGizmo

I am a recent convert to Quicken having used YNAB for 10-12 years and MS Money for about 10 years prior to that os I had some insight how to do this but checked the forum first.

My company awards contests and incentitives via Amazon Gift Cards and I also purchase Amazon Gift Cards to add up my points on a another card.

Rahter than create a new account for each card, I created a "Gift Cards" Credit Card account (after all, a gift card is a prepaid credit card). When I redeem a card at Amazon, I enter it as a payment in my "Gift Cards" account so I then have a credit balance.

Example of a purchase today: I ordered 2 items from Amazon, one was a Home:housewares category for 19.48 and the other was Health & Fitness:Pharmacy for 25.99, Subtotal 45.47, tax 3.41, then my current gift card balance of 12.04 was applied as a credit so Grand Total due was 36.84 which was applied to a Mastercard account. (19.48+25.99+3.41-12.04=36.84)

On the MC account I began with the total amount 45.47, then entered the two items with appropriate categories leaving a balance of 3.41. I used allocate to distribute the tax between the items, then I added another line using [Gift Cards] as -12.04 so the Transaction total was 36.84. Quicken correctly entered the 12.04 to the Gift Card account bringing it to 0.00, and applied 36.84 as the purchase amount to the MC. And I had appropriate tracking.

UKR

Here's another thing you could do if you wanted to track the remaining balance on each of the gift cards:

Use the Tag field and record the last 4 digits of the gift card number on each transaction: when you receive the card, when you make purchases and when you write off an unused left-over balance after the card expired (do they still do that?)

A Report By Tag (e.g., "Itemized Tags") will show you the running balance for each card and how much is left on it.