Downloaded credit card payments entered as transfers

Question

Downloaded credit card payments are entered as transfers from my checking account.  I want to track payments as a cash payment, not transfer.  There is supposed to be an article about deciding how to track credit card payments, but I can't seem to find it.  Appreciate your help!

Boatnmaniac · Answer

Generally, when both the credit card and the checking accounts are set up in Quicken, the preferred method for making the credit card payments (and how Quicken is set up to manage them) is to have them be transfers.  That is because credit card payments are not really an expense.  The expenses occur when you make the service or product charge to the credit card.  The payment then is simply a transfer of your cash assets to your credit card debt resulting in no change to net worth.  It can only be a true expense if it reduces your net worth and credit card payments do not change net worth.
Some people do prefer to do what you say you want to do.  In this case the credit card payment in the checking account would be a debit and charged to the default Bills & Utilities:Credit Card Payment category.  This then means you will need enter the payment in the credit card account against this same category.  The net result in the category will be $0 because they will offset each other.  But they will no longer show up in reports as transfers but as transactions under this category.  If it is not done this way (with offsetting debits and credits) then the credit card payment represents a doubling of expenses...once when the charges are made to the credit card and again when the payment is made from the checking account...and that messes up and makes inaccurate Budgets and Expense and Spending reports.
ADDITIONAL COMMENT:When the credit card account is not set up and being managed in Quicken, then the payment to the credit card payment is an actual Quicken expense because all the charges made to the credit card have not been tracked in Quicken.  The credit card payment being debited to Bills & Utilities:Credit Card Payment is the means, then, for tracking the expense of all the credit card purchases that have not been tracked in Quicken.