Personal Credit Line (Reserve Line/Bus Res Line) Account Setup

Frank Jones

My bank offers a account called a "Personal Credit Line (Reserve Line/Bus Res Line)". It basically is a line of credit for an existing checking account and used for situations where the checking account becomes overdrawn. Unfortunately, this line of credit uses the exact same account number as the checking account it is associated with. What is the best way to categorize or keep these the transactions for these two accounts separate?

Tom Young

I'm sort of assuming that the issue of "this line of credit uses the exact same account number as the checking account it is associated with" means that you can't automatically download transactions that affect the line of credit?

If that's the case then you set up the line of credit as an offline Account and make manual entries or edit transactions downloaded into the checking Account that affect the line of credit. If you don't routinely make manusl entries in your checking Account but instead rely on downloads into the checking Account, then you have to scan the transactions to recognize when a transaction affects the line of credit, (either a draw against the line of credit or a payment), and make that transaction into a Transfer either from or two the line of credit Account.

If the bank makes entries into the line of credit that don't affect the checking Account, (like maybe increasing the balance in that account for an interest charge?), then you could make a manual entry at that time in the credit line Account to recognize that expense, or wait until the money actually leaves the checking account and then recognize the expense at that time.

Frank Jones

The issue is that if I try to download transactions for the Line of Credit account, the transactions for the entire checking account that it is associated with also download into the register. I'll take your advice to disable the "download transactions" for the line of credit account and just use it manually as an offline account.