Transfers and New to Quicken

Rap2027

I understand that a transfer from a checking account to a savings account is a transfer. But when it comes to credit cards where is the dividing line to make it a transfer or just categorize as a CC Payment. I could say the payment on my truck from checking account to the Finance company is a transfer. I am a little confused on when to use and not use a transfer.

Frankx

Hi @Rap2027,

Welcome to the Quicken club!

Generally a transfer would be the movement of funds - within the Quicken application - from one account to another.  In Quicken you can make transfers that are simply recorded transactions, that only affect your Quicken datafile, or they can be online transfers, which actually cause the movement of funds at financial institutions to occur.  For the first type (only within the datafile) you would need to actually make the transfer (e.g. on a bank's website) for the second type (which can only work with connected accounts) the transaction in Quicken will actually cause funds to ne transferred at the financial institution(s).

Specifically, as it has to do with credit card payments, If your card is a "connected" account (for example, you have a credit card with your bank or credit union and you also have a bank account there) you should be able to make payments on the card simply by recording them in Quicken as transfers from the bank account to the credit card account and then connecting with the financial institution.

Hope this helps.  If you have any followups, please let me know.

Frankx

volvogirl

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. The transactions need to be entered with the date you charged it, not the date you pay the credit card bill.

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.  Then your credit card account should match what you actually owe at any time.

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.