Transfer within Split Category

Marvin Gardens

Within Quicken I have an account for my Amazon Store Credit Card and another one for my Amazon Gift Card.

Today I had balance of $4.76 on my Gift Card and wanted to buy something for $7.45. I created a transaction in the Store Card register and selected Split from the category menu. In the first line I entered the item and cost of $7.45. In the next line I set the category to a transfer from the gift card -- [Gift Card] -- and set the amount to -$4.76. The Store Card register now shows a charge of $2.76 as expected. But the gift card register, where I expect to see a “Spend” of $4.76 and $0 balance, I see a “Receive” of $4.76 and balance of $9.52.

I know I have done this before. I ended up deleting the Store Card transaction, which also deleted the Gift Card transaction. Then I found a an old Store Card transaction that included a transfer from the Gift Card, copied it then edited it with proper date and amounts.

The transaction I typed and the one I copied look the same, but Q handled the negative amount differently

So what it the proper way to do this?

Chris_QPW

How Quicken treats the negative amounts in a split is dependent on if you start with a deposit or a withdraw for the main transaction.

Marvin Gardens

I didn't start with anything, In the credit card register I entered the date, payee, clicked Split in the Category field, entered a positive number in the first line and a negative in the second, with the category set to the transfer account. Q recorded in as Charge in the credit card and a Receive in the gift card (Cash) account. But as I said I have other similar transactions that record the transfer as a Spend.

volvogirl

Try changing the signs on all the split lines.

Chris_QPW

When I tried this where I entered only the date and the payee, and then hit split and then entered the amounts gave I got this:


Note that the math for 7.45 - 4.76 is 2.69 not 2.76, that that isn't the point its the popup asking what this is a payment or a deposit.  This is what I was referring to about the signs in the split transaction.  Note that if perchance you typed in a memorized payee, this decision might have already been made.

If I select Payment, it closes and the results is (from account):

To account:


Open split:


Repeat selecting Deposit this time (from account):


To account:


Split:


From the split you can't tell the difference.

Changed the signs in the second one (the deposit) as @volvogirl suggested (and selected Adjust button):


Transaction changes to a payment (from account).

To account:


Open the split again:


And you can see that Quicken changed the signs to start with a positive number.