tracking gift cards purchased for my own use

FredGrandt

Is there a best practice for tracking gift cards purchased for my own use? I routinely buy discounted gift cards and use them to purchase items from stores, Lowes, for example. I save around 4% when doing this.
What is the recommended way to track these gift cards? Like a ‘cash’ account, perhaps?

Quicken Anja

Hello @FredGrandt,

Since there isn't a way to download transactions from a gift card, the best way to track them would to set up a manual account.

For instructions on how to do so, please refer to this support article.

Hope this helps!

Tom Young

Establishing a new manual "cash" Account for each gift card probably is the best way of dealing with this. When you buy the card(s) you take the money out of your checking Account and put it into the "cash" Account for that gift card. When you buy something using one of the cards you take the money out of the Account for that gift card. If you're buying multiple cards for the same store then there's no easy way to distinguish in Quicken exactly which one of those cards you're using at any particular time, so I'd start with a specific card, use it up completely, then grab a different card, use it up completely, and so on.

FredGrandt

My plan was to use a 'cash' account and transfer the cost of the gift card to that account. When I spend all or a portion of the gift card, debit that 'cash' account. Here are some of the odd things I'm encountering. I purchase the gift cards online using a credit card and they are instantly delivered to me. That gives me the opportunity to use the gift card right away, before the trnasaction shows up in my credit card account. So , it will look like it has been spent before I purchased it. How do I handle that? Next, I purchase the gift cards at a discount. A $100 gift card costs me $95.40, for example. My credit card statement is for a $95.40 purchase but the 'cash' gift card account should show $100 available to spend. How do I enter the extra $4.60 into the gift card account so when I spend part of it the balance on the card and in the gift card account match?

Thanks!

Tom Young

"So , it will look like it has been spent before I purchased it."

"Best housekeeping" when it comes to doing your accounting is to enter transactions when you make them, transactions that will be found as a "Match" when the transaction is subsequently processed and downloaded some days later. So I'd say the "best" way to handle this is to make an entry in the credit card Account when you place the order, "funding" the appropriate "cash" Account with that entry.

Of course you can do that the other way around, making a "deposit" in the "cash" Account when you place the order, with the "other side" of the entry being an increase in your credit card liability Account. Either way, the credit card entry should be found as a "Match" within a day or two by the download of the transaction from the credit card company.

The "discount" aspect of the purchase is handled as a split entry over in the credit card Account. You make a purchase of the gift card in the credit card Account for $95.40, then in the split transfer $100 to the Gift Card "cash" Account, with a negative entry to a Category that you create - an expense Category would make the most sense - for the $4.60 of the discount:

You could also do this the other way around, starting with the "deposit" of $100 into the Gift Card "cash" Account.: