How do you set up budget to record credit card payment?

PamB

When I pay a credit card I use transfer - it enters the payment and records the payment in the individual cc account. But the payment does not record in the budget. How should I set up the budget so that it reflects payments for credit cards?

Chris_QPW

In my opinion you shouldn't.  You budget the expenses as debits to your credit card as they happen, not when you pay off the credit card.

Snowman

Agree with Chris. I think what the OP may have meant was how would one see if there is enough cash to pay for the next credit card payments?

I have all of my credit card accounts set for automatic payment from my checking account. I also have a savings account. When I get a credit card bill, I reconcile it and note the due date. I then open my checking account register and enter the date and the amount the credit card payment is due. I do this for every one of my six credit cards. By looking in the checking account register I can see if I have enough money in the account to pay for the payment of the credit cards. If not I schedule a transfer from my savings account to keep the checking account from being overdrawn.

When the payment happens you need to double check that the amount paid matches what you entered in Quicken. Sometimes the amount may be less because of credits to the credit card. If it does you just put in the correct amount and you are good to go.

Since my major source of income is Quarterly (end of quarter) I have set all of my manual reoccurring payments to be put into my checking account register 91 days in advance. This gives me a good picture of if and when I may need transfer money from savings to checking.

Chris_QPW

Let me add that I see people trying to use Quicken's budget for cashflow.  I suppose it can be done, but that wasn't its intent, and you will run into problems if you try to do it, like double counting of expenses.  For cashflow I do basically what @Snowman does, but just use a reminder for the credit card payment and when I get an email that the statement has posted I enter the next instance into the register.  Note there are a few ways to set the estimate for the reminder.  I used the current credit card balance.

And I look at the projected balances graph (which I have on my Home tab) that has my checking account and credit cards selected.  I'm of course looking that my checking account that pays these with credit cards doesn't dip to zero (actually I make sure there is buffer of that amount just in case).  It makes it really easy to see this when I first start Quicken.

Chris_QPW

I got I suggestion from another user that I'm going to post:

I agree that most users will want an Income/Expense budget, and that they cannot expect to use such a budget for cash flow purposes. 

But the user can create a separate cash flow budget in Quicken as long as they realize what the difference between the two budget types is.

 Using credit cards as an example:

- an Income/Expense budget would budget for the categories used in the individual transactions recorded in the credit card accounts, and exclude all transfers.

- a cash flow budget would exclude amounts charged in credit card accounts by excluding credit card accounts from the budget, and include transfers into the credit card accounts.