Transaction Report Ruined--Credit Card Payments Can't be Splits!!

lgonick

I enter a credit card payment as a single transaction, as it would appear in a traditional check register. Then I detail the individual payments to vendors as lines of a split. Each vendor is identified in the corresponding Memo/Notes field. This field used to be displayed in a Category Report--but no longer!! Now a Transaction Report shows ONLY THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY as the payee. This is useless!!! I can't see where the money went!!!!! Please restore the Notes/Memo column to the Transaction Report ASAP!!!

jacobs

First, you can easily add the Memo/Notes column to a Transaction report. With the report open, just click View > Columns and check Memo/Notes. The column will now be visible in the report. Done.

Second, I always hesitate to tell fellow Quicken users they're doing something wrong, because we all find different ways to use the software. In the case of credit cards, you have indeed found a way -- but it's really not the way Quicken is designed to work, and it greatly limits what you can do with the data you're entering.

Here's a better way to deal with credit cards in Quicken…

For a credit card from XYZ Visa, create a new Quicken account, which you would then see in the left sidebar, under your checking account. Click on that account in the sidebar to view a register for that credit card. In this register, record each credit card transaction individually.

When the time comes to pay the credit card, in your Quicken checking account, record a payment to XYZ Visa: the amount would be the amount of the bill you paid via EFT, and the Category would be a transfer to your credit card account -- which would simultaneously reduce the cash in your checking account and reduce the balance due on your credit card account.

Why is this better? First, you don't have unwieldy transactions in your checking account with many, man split lines which are hard to scan and correct when needed. Each transaction is dated on the date of the purchase, not the date of the credit card payment. Each credit card purchase is its own Payee, so you can easily run a report of purchases from, say, Amazon or Home Depot, instead of just getting a list of all the transactions which contain those names in the Memo field. Your credit card account in Quicken will always show your running balance, and you reconcile it when you get your monthly statement, just like you do with your checking account. You can enter transactions during the month instead of in a batch transaction when you pay the bill. If you ever decide to download the credit card transactions from your card company, you're already using the correct set-up to make that a simple change from entering the transactions manually. You have more space to record notes about each transaction than you do if the first thing in the notes field is the name of the company your charged the transaction from. there's more, but hopefully you get the idea… there are a host of benefits to having your credit card as a separate account in Quicken, rather than recording all the detail in a checking account transaction.

volvogirl

FYI - Just in case you are doing it the wrong way,

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 bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account. Then 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 versions have a Transfer column.

Here's a list of some 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 (I used to use Q2004 and there was only 30)

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

And if there are multiple categories purchased on a single credit card charge, you can split that one credit card charge to detail the items purchased each with their own category and memo/note.

jacobs

First, you can easily add the Memo/Notes column to a Transaction report. With the report open, just click View > Columns and check Memo/Notes. The column will now be visible in the report. Done.

Second, I always hesitate to tell fellow Quicken users they're doing something wrong, because we all find different ways to use the software. In the case of credit cards, you have indeed found a way -- but it's really not the way Quicken is designed to work, and it greatly limits what you can do with the data you're entering.

Here's a better way to deal with credit cards in Quicken…

For a credit card from XYZ Visa, create a new Quicken account, which you would then see in the left sidebar, under your checking account. Click on that account in the sidebar to view a register for that credit card. In this register, record each credit card transaction individually.

When the time comes to pay the credit card, in your Quicken checking account, record a payment to XYZ Visa: the amount would be the amount of the bill you paid via EFT, and the Category would be a transfer to your credit card account -- which would simultaneously reduce the cash in your checking account and reduce the balance due on your credit card account.

Why is this better? First, you don't have unwieldy transactions in your checking account with many, man split lines which are hard to scan and correct when needed. Each transaction is dated on the date of the purchase, not the date of the credit card payment. Each credit card purchase is its own Payee, so you can easily run a report of purchases from, say, Amazon or Home Depot, instead of just getting a list of all the transactions which contain those names in the Memo field. Your credit card account in Quicken will always show your running balance, and you reconcile it when you get your monthly statement, just like you do with your checking account. You can enter transactions during the month instead of in a batch transaction when you pay the bill. If you ever decide to download the credit card transactions from your card company, you're already using the correct set-up to make that a simple change from entering the transactions manually. You have more space to record notes about each transaction than you do if the first thing in the notes field is the name of the company your charged the transaction from. there's more, but hopefully you get the idea… there are a host of benefits to having your credit card as a separate account in Quicken, rather than recording all the detail in a checking account transaction.

lgonick

I appreciate the suggestions about making a new account, but this doesn't help me fix a year's worth of credit card entries. After making the new account, I'd have to re-enter a vast number of transactions.

Per jacob's suggestion, though, I found the place to customize the columns. It's not called View, though, but "Table Options."

This, by the way, doesn't solve the problem of what appears to be total inflexibility in formatting the report so it fits nicely on letter-sized paper oriented in the usual (portrait) way. By default, Quicken wants to put the report in landscape mode with very few transactions per page, a huge waste of paper. My workaround this time was to export it to a spreadsheet, which has its own formatting limitations. I guess I'll start another thread about that?

jacobs

@lgonick  Are you using Quicken Mac? You posted in a Quicken Mac category, so  I assumed so. The way to add columns to a report is called View, followed by Columns, as I originally wrote. 



"Table Options" sounds like it might be from Quicken Windows.

If that's the case, I won't address formatting the report for printing, as my suggestions would only pertain to Quicken Mac. 

As for the original problems with the credit card transactions, I'm not sure what more to say. The posts from volvogirl and me above explain why your approach is problematic, and there's no shortcut to fixing it. If you can come up with a way to get what you need from last year, then I'd suggest changing as of the start of 2021.

lgonick

It is most certainly on a Mac. And mine says View Options. I'm still in version 5.something, not having upgraded to 6. Thanks for your help.