Set Up and Uses for Credit Card Account

nello

Where can I read about setting up and using credit card accounts?

I’m currently using a category for each credit card to record credit card payments and then splitting the payment into categories to record what the payment was for. Yes, effectively the category I’m using for each credit card is a wash account, an standard accounting technique.

I’m guessing that using a credit card account instead of a wash category has advantages but I can’t find anything about what they are.

Thank you.

nello

I found these:

https://help.quicken.com/display/MAC/Learning+about+credit+cards and this
https://help.quicken.com/display/MAC/Entering+credit+card+transactions


Is there something else I should look at?

How do I apply a payment from a checking account to the individual transactions in the credit card account?

nello

Apparently a payment is applied to a checking account by using a transfer transaction:

https://www.quicken.com/blog/question-of-the-month-may-2021/#

volvogirl

To enter credit card....

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.