Credit Card Transfer Payments Showing Up as Purchases in my Account

KMiller500

My checking account and credit card are with the same financial institution. I can simply transfer from my checking to my credit card to make a payment. When I do so, my checking account reflects the payment (-$50) but my credit card account shows the payment as a purchase ($50). In my category I select transfer:[credit card].

What am I doing wrong and how can I correct this?

UKR

Do you manually record this transfer transaction or do you allow Quicken to generate this transfer based on downloaded transaction data?

Can you please capture one or more images of the parts of your Quicken window showing the issue(*), sensitive information blacked out as necessary to protect your privacy but annotated to describe the situation, and attach the image(s) here?
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7867159/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-windows

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7663259/faq-how-do-i-post-a-screenshot-in-the-community-from-a-mac

Please save images to files of file type PNG, JPG, or GIF only. They're easier to work with than PDF files.

(*) Would like to see image snapshots of the account registers, both checking and credit card accounts, including account name and column headers. You can filter the registers to only show the transactions in question

KMiller500

My checking account transactions are download and I simply change the category to [5Point Visa Platinum]. My Credit Card transactions do not down load.

Chris_QPW

Note this is in fact a Quicken Mac question that was posted in a Quicken Windows category.  I'm going to flag this thread to the moderators to move it to a Quicken Mac category.

KMiller500

Thank you

jacobs

Im not quite clear what's shown in the screen shots, but it seems to show that in the credit card account, the transfer from checking is a positive number. If so, that's correct! In a credit card account, purchases are negative and payments are positive. It may be easier to see this more clearly if you click on Columns in the toolbar, hide the single Amount column, and instead show the Charge and Payment columns where only positive values are used.

KMiller500

As you suggested, I turned off the "amount" column and turned on the "charge" and "payment" columns and everything is in the appropriate column. The issue is when a payment is made it is increasing my credit card balance rather then decreasing.

UKR

KMiller500 said:

As you suggested, I turned off the "amount" column and turned on the "charge" and "payment" columns and everything is in the appropriate column. The issue is when a payment is made it is increasing my credit card balance rather then decreasing.

That seems to indicate that your account register needs to be reconciled, i.e., compared to the bank statement.
If you owe money to the credit card company, the running balance in your register needs to be negative, the opposite of what the credit card statement shows. Only in the event of an overpayment (double payment, unexpected refund or credit) should a credit card balance ever become positive (or show as something like "$123.00 CR").
Compare your transactions to the bank statements, resolve any discrepancies (missing or duplicate transactions, charges recorded as payments or vice versa, incorrect amounts) and your balance should match eventually.
Do make sure that the account's Opening Balance transaction is recorded correctly. If you owed money, the amount must be negative.

KMiller500

Thanks for your assistance. I have everything setup correctly now.

Maret Kunze

How do you assign a category to a transfer, as in paying a credit card?

jacobs

Maret Kunze said:

How do you assign a category to a transfer, as in paying a credit card?

@Maret Kunze You don't assign categories to transfers. Categories are for income and expenses, and a transfer, such as paying a credit card bill is a movement of funds but not an expense.

The way to handle credit cards is this: Create an account in Quicken for each credit card, and enter or download the charges made on the card. Each transaction is categorized for the appropriate expense(s). When you pay the credit card bill, you do a transfer from your checking account to the credit card account. There's no category for the transfer; you've already created all the expenses with the transactions in the credit card account.