Credit Card Cashflow

HOCO

Quicken seems to be setup for the old fashioned way of getting a bill and mailing a check or maybe paying it online. The reality is for most of us 99% of payments are made by credit card. Therefore what we really care about is cash flow vs credit card payments. For example I Have X in the bank and need to know how much I owe in credit cards this month say the 15th.. Quicken would need to know the amount owing each month (bot current balance) and the date it's owed. then you can get a report that would say you have X in the bank right now and you owe Y.. then see if you are short or good. anyone know how to do this?

Boatnmaniac

What I do is set up recurring Bill Reminders and Income Reminders for each of my repeating bills and incomes.  Most of my bills are from credit cards but there are some that are not.  Almost all of these bills are set up in my accounts with the billers to automatically debit my checking account. 

Some bills are the same amount every month so those are really easy to set up and work with.  But with others that vary from month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter I will edit the Bill Reminder amount once the statement/bill is received.

Then I have my checking account register set up to show Reminders in the register for the next 30 days.  There are other time periods you can select ranging from 1 week to 1 year.  To select the option you would want, click on the Gear icon to the right above the Account Register:


Then I would suggest that you click on that same Gear icon, click on Register Columns and check the box for Status.

When done:

• Your Reminders will show up in your Account Register and will increase or decrement the account balance (depending on whether it is and Income Reminder or a Bill Reminder).  So you can always see if you will have enough cash in there or if you need to adjust the bill payment(s) or transfer some cash into the account.
• Future date transactions shown there will be shaded differently from past and current dates to easily differentiate between them.
• The Reminders that show up there will also have their status shown in the Status column on the left (the one with a Blue dot for the column header):  Upcoming, Due, Uncleared and Overdue.  
• You can set up the Reminders to be either automatically entered into the Account Register or to be manually entered into the Account Register based upon criteria you can set.
• Once they have been entered into the Account Register and they have been cleared and/or reconciled the Status will go away.

Here is an example of what you can expect to see.  (No, that account balance is not real.  This is taken from a Test file that I play around with....but wouldn't that be nice if it were!  ):

Do you think this meets what you are looking for?

Boatnmaniac

I should have also added that once you have set up the Reminders you can get a graphic view of your projected checking account balances going out as far as a year on the Bills & Income tab.  I use this graphic view and the balance projections in the checking account register extensively during my planning and have found them to be very helpful.

HOCO

Thanks for that.. probably easier to make my own spread sheet but that is also another way to do it within quicken

Boatnmaniac

HOCO said:

Thanks for that.. probably easier to make my own spread sheet but that is also another way to do it within quicken

It's not difficult to set up in Quicken at all.  The biggest thing is taking the time to set up the Bill Reminders....something that takes me all of just a couple of minutes (at most) to do for each one.  And once it is set up there is almost no effort involved...just monitor and tweak based upon the actuals from the statements and what's in the checking account balance column.  It is so much easier and faster to use than a spreadsheet.

But the choice is yours.  If you prefer working with a spread sheet then more power to you.  But this is a great feature of the program you have paid for.  Why not give it a try?  I think this gives you exactly what you are looking for and that if you give it a shot, even with just 1 or 2 credit cards to start with, you will fall in love with it and never look back.

Unknown

This content has been removed.