Why are my credit card purchases subtracting from balance?

A charge (purchase) in a credit card account is supposed to make the balance more negative. You owe the card company more than your did before the purchase.

AND, the balance column in a card account is supposed to be RED (as in "You're in the red", meaning that you owe money.

That balance column would be black IF;

You overpaid your account, or
You didn't record your purchases in the account, or
You set up the account with an amount in the Payment column, instead of the CHARGE column.

Have you been reconciling this account?

Sherlock

If you haven’t already, you may want to verify the register is sorted appropriately and there aren’t any unexpected filters being applied: open the register, select the Date column header (you want the small triangle to right of Date to point up) and Reset.

Purchases (aka charges) should always subtract. Usually, a credit card has a negative balance reflecting the amount we owe. When we enter a charge, the negative balance increases. When we receive a refund or over pay the balance due, we may have positive credit card balance reflecting the amount owed to us. When we enter a charge, the positive balance reduces.

pferrer

Solution: I am HAD the exact same problem. My Capital One credit card account was SUBTRACTING charges from my balance and ADDING payments to my balance. Completely opposite from what is supposed to happen. How I fixed the problem was I found where my CC payments had started to be booked TWICE a few months ago. When the CC balance went positive (like I had overpaid my balance) then it started adding payments to my balance and subtracting charges. I pay off my CC balance in full each month. I went back and deleted the extra payments..I had several. Then that fixed it. I also checked the RESET button at the top of the register. This is a Quicken programming problem that should be easy to fix.

All comments

A charge (purchase) in a credit card account is supposed to make the balance more negative. You owe the card company more than your did before the purchase.

AND, the balance column in a card account is supposed to be RED (as in "You're in the red", meaning that you owe money.

That balance column would be black IF;

You overpaid your account, or
You didn't record your purchases in the account, or
You set up the account with an amount in the Payment column, instead of the CHARGE column.

Have you been reconciling this account?

Sherlock

luv57chvys

Okay, parts of both replies (answers, suggestions, etc....) helped me to figure out what was going on. For some reason (probably more operator error than anything else) when I would update the account online, some of the transactions didn't download (had happened in the savings account too, but I found that) so I went back to the past year and double checked all the transactions (debit and credit/payment)...found the missing debits and corrected a couple of payments that were showing incorrectly. My charges are showing a negative balance (red) while the payments/credits are showing properly with a decrease in balance (to the good) or an actual 0.00 when paid in full.

So, I guess I need to be more diligent in reconciling in the future. Thank you for your help.

DRMcLain

In one credit card account, with the initial transaction posted in 2015, charges, payments, and credits, posted correctly, specifically, charges increased the balance and credits decreased it. In late 2019, the problem with charges decreasing balance and credits increasing it began. What I notice is that I had two successive credits, a payment and a cash back credit After that, the posting error began. This is not a sorting problem. I have run a file validation. This appears to be a bug.

What I notice is that I had two successive credits, a payment and a cash back credit

Should there be the two transactions? Did they really happen or could they have been the same transaction, just duplicated?

This same issue is happening to me. The "Charge" column is deducting from the balance owed and the "Payment" column started adding to the balance owed. It is impossible to reconcile because it start doing it after the last reconciliation. It is definitely a bug... just on this credit card account.

@ricejerry What color is the BALANCE column in that account, Red or Black? For a credit card account, it should usually be RED (as in "you're in the Red"), unless you're:

Missing transactions or
Have duplicate payments or
Set up the opening balance incorrectly.

It is black. It has been red and working as normal... until last week. I've been using Quicken since 1999 with this same credit card account. Now it appears to happen randomly on and off going all the way back to transactions in 2018. Totally hosed. I can make no sense of it.

I did purchase a new computer two weeks ago, but I got the data file transferred fine. Everything worked until this week. It is only doing it on this account. The payments are posting correctly on from the checking account side of the transactions so I'm kinda stuck. It is a definite bug. Unless Quicken can fix it the only way I see fixing it is creating another account and zeroing this one out.

When was the last time that you Reconciled this account?

And, I've already explained why the balance in a Credit Card (or other liability) account could be black when it should be red.

It is reconciled every month... for decades. The problem just started last week out of the blue... only on this account.

Have you checked as suggested for duplicate payments or missing charges that would make your balance in the "black" meaning that the credit card company OWES you money?

mshiggins

@ricejerry have you checked the register sort order as mentioned by Sherlock earlier in this discussion?

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20126216/#Comment_20126216

JudiF

I am having this exact problem on one Credit Card only. I do not see anyway to correct it as I have checked all the way back to the beginning in 1999 and whatever happened changed it back to the beginning. It was fine last month. All the charges and payments are correct for the last 2 years. Not going back farther than that. I will try making a reconcile for this month and then an adjustment. If that does not work I will leave this as an old account for research and begin again with a correct balance. I believe that something strange happened in my download of charges from Quicken. Very annoying.

JudiF said:

I am having this exact problem on one Credit Card only. I do not see anyway to correct it as I have checked all the way back to the beginning in 1999 and whatever happened changed it back to the beginning. It was fine last month. All the charges and payments are correct for the last 2 years. Not going back farther than that. I will try making a reconcile for this month and then an adjustment. If that does not work I will leave this as an old account for research and begin again with a correct balance. I believe that something strange happened in my download of charges from Quicken. Very annoying.

If there are no EXTRA/INCORRECT transactions (most probably credits), then the only thing that can be wrong is the Opening Balance amount. Just making a balance adjustment is giving into defeat.

This is definitely a Quicken bug with the download on this account. The more I research this, the transaction download is changing RECONCILED transactions going back years. It makes it so that my online balance does not match the Quicken balance for the account. I have used this exact account in Quicken since 1999 with no balance matching problems until last month. I ended up making an adjustment transaction to balance with my bank balance. I downloaded transactions today and it is off again. In total there have been $2,771 in errors in the downloads on RECONCILED transactions. It will be impossible to find them going back 20 years. It would appear the only way to fix this is to zero out this account by moving the balance to a new account in Quicken then disconnect the old account and connect the new account to my bank.

I reset the account on the "Online Services" tab of the "Edit Account" dialog box. If this does not fix it I will deactivate the account, create a new account, and transfer the balance to the new account... then activate the new account.

pferrer

https://www.quicken.com/support/positive-black-balance-credit-card-account

pferrer said:

Solution: I am HAD the exact same problem. My Capital One credit card account was SUBTRACTING charges from my balance and ADDING payments to my balance. Completely opposite from what is supposed to happen. How I fixed the problem was I found where my CC payments had started to be booked TWICE a few months ago. When the CC balance went positive (like I had overpaid my balance) then it started adding payments to my balance and subtracting charges. I pay off my CC balance in full each month. I went back and deleted the extra payments..I had several. Then that fixed it. I also checked the RESET button at the top of the register. This is a Quicken programming problem that should be easy to fix.

Thanks for confirming that the problem was with EXTRA downloaded/accepted transactions and NOT with how Quicken's registers work.

MissyErnie

Same problem on my end. Only I'm not downloading from the financial institution, just manual entry. Was working fine at one point.

MissyErnie

The only way I could fix it as someone else mentioned, doing an adjustment within the account. This is not correct, Quicken should be doing this correctly in the first place.

UKR

MissyErnie said:

The only way I could fix it as someone else mentioned, doing an adjustment within the account. This is not correct, Quicken should be doing this correctly in the first place.

Have you reconciled your credit card account register and compared its entries to the bank statements?

Is it possible you have duplicate, missing or incorrect transactions? For example, a charge (-123.45) recorded as deposit (+123.45)?

Is your account's Opening Balance transaction correct (see below)?

About the Opening Balance transaction in your register:

Make sure that the "Opening Balance" transaction in your register
- always is the oldest transaction by Date
- its amount matches the bank statement balance shown on that day
- if you owe money in a credit card account, the Opening Balance transaction as shown in the register must be a negative amount, e.g., $-123.45
- the transaction is marked "R"(reconciled) in the "Clr" column
- occurs only once in your register
- uses the same account name, surrounded by [square brackets], as Category as the account it's in (e.g., Opening Balance transaction in your MyChecking account has Category = [MyChecking]) *
If the Opening Balance isn't correct, your register balance on any given day will never match the bank's balance on the same date and your register will never reconcile correctly.

* that's called a "transfer back into the same account" and is OK. Quicken uses this method to establish the Opening Balance without making it appear as an Income or Expense in any views or reports.

MissyErnie

I'm actually starting from scratch. I've created a NEW Credit card account with my NEW statement (manually). I've entered the date of the statement along with the balance. Now my question is, do I enter each "charge" that is on the statement to the account? When I pay this card in July it will pay with the "Transfer in brackets" option. Will this all come together?

UKR

If you owe money on the credit card, does the Opening Balance transaction in the register appear as a negative Amount (or an entry in the Charge column), making the Running Balance column show as a red negative number?

Yes, you do enter all charge transactions individually as they occur.
When you pay the card statement before the next due date in July, you record a transaction in your Checking account and categorize it as a transfer to the credit card account. This will make a mirror image of the transaction appear in the credit card register, reducing the Running Balance by the Amount paid.

volvogirl

You enter each charge as a separate entry like normal. Or did you enter the beginning balance of the statement or the ending balance? You should enter the beginning balance then enter the charges to get to the ending balance. Yes if you do it right the running balance will be accurate. It may never show zero unless you pay the full amount of the prior statement before entering the new charges.

The credit card balance you OWE should be in RED. If the balance is Black then it's showing the credit card company owes you and you have a credit balance. And then when you make a payment it's like the cc owes you more. So you need to go back though your entries and find where the balance switched to black to being in your favor.

Kim Kelly

I spent over an hour with customer support. Showed how all other credit accounts are adding/subtracting correctly. She insisted that only the one account was right and the others were wrong. She tried telling me that a payment is supposed to make the balance go higher and charge would decrease the balance. I finally ended the chat before I destroyed something. So I STILL have ONE credit account that shows a balance in BLACK (as a credit) when I KNOW in fact it should be in RED (I owe them!) UGH... I'll be looking for a better way to balance my finances once this subscription ends.

volvogirl

OK, here's my standard answer. Sorry if you've already seen it, please don't get mad.

First make sure you are sorted in Date order with the newest date at the bottom. If you are not then click the DATE Column heading to sort.

Sounds like you're running a credit balance. Is the balance in red or black? Look back through your transactions and maybe you'll spot one that was entered backward. Or a payment in the charge column or a charge in the payment column. Look around back where this first started happening. Or maybe you are missing some charges?

If the balance is in Black, it means you have a credit on the card. Like if you overpaid the bill or got a refund for something you returned. When you enter a charge it will reduce (decrease) the credit you have available on it. And a payment will increase the balance.

Also make sure you have the right starting balance. If it's zero you might need to add a beginning balance for when you started the account in Quicken. I've been reading the opening balance might have got changed during an update or when syncing.

The credit card balance you OWE should be in RED. If the balance is Black then it's showing the credit card company owes you and you have a credit balance. And then when you make a payment it's like the cc owes you more. So you need to go back though your entries and find where the balance switched to black to being in your favor.

See this for more info…..

See this post 9/9/22 for reversed math

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7919353/chase-credit-card-has-reversed-math