Basic Cash Flow Report Question (Q Mac)

Kevin Weid

Ok, this is probably a dumb question but please bear with me while I attempt to explain it. I use Quicken Classic Premier for macOS laptop basically for personal home use. When I download my lasted posted transactions from my Checking and Credit Card’s in the Checking Account, I leave the category as “Credit Card Payment”. Then over in the Credit Card Account’s I will change the category to whatever it pertained to (Home Furnishings, Shopping Clothes…. on and on). But leaving the Checking as one lump payment tagged as “Credit Card Payment” (not split). So, my question is, when I run a “Cash Flow” report am I seeing two of the same negatives in the “Outflows Total” since it lists Credit Card Payment and all the different categories?

Hopefully that made sense since I am not an accountant and just want to keep track of what we have coming in and what we are spending it on. Thanks for any advise you may have.

volvogirl

I didn't quite follow that. The payment in your checking account should be a TRANSFER to the credit card account, not to a category called credit card payment. 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 Mac versions have a separate Transfer column.

The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT (which you have) and enter the individual charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the credit card bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account (not a category). Then if or when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.

NotACPA

Since you have a Credit Card account in Q, the usual method is to record that payment FROM the checking account as a TRANSFER to the card account.

volvogirl

I didn't quite follow that. The payment in your checking account should be a TRANSFER to the credit card account, not to a category called credit card payment. 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 Mac versions have a separate Transfer column.

The proper way is to set up a credit card ACCOUNT (which you have) and enter the individual charges into it when the purchase is made and assigning it to a category. Then when you pay the credit card bill you TRANSFER the payment from your checking account to the credit card account (not a category). Then if or when you download the payment from the bank you match it to the one you already entered.

NotACPA

Since you have a Credit Card account in Q, the usual method is to record that payment FROM the checking account as a TRANSFER to the card account.

Kevin Weid

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20452318#Comment_20452318

@volvogirl Even with my poor explanation I think you nailed the correct answer. I was just leaving the Checking Account category as “Credit Card Payment” and not utilizing the Transfer option to the correct credit card (Capital One Venture, JetBlue, Discover…so on). So if I understand correctly when I change the category to “Transfer [Venture]” it will not double up as an “Outflow” on my Cash Flow report?

volvogirl

Right. Well I don't know about the cash flow report and I don't know Mac. You might need to exclude Transfers from the report. But a Transfer won't double up on the expense. The expenses are only the charges in the Credit Card account.

How is your Credit Card accounts working? Do they show the right balance? If you Transfer the payment from the checking account you will have to delete or match the payment that downloaded to the credit card. You aren't splitting the payment in the credit card account into the categories, are you? The charges should be downloading as separate transactions.

Kevin Weid

@volvogirl … Yes, my credit card accounts always match the balance on the credit company’s website. No, I am not splitting any transactions on the credit card accounts. I will only do that sometimes in the checking account and only when we used our bank debit card. I will only tag the correct category on the credit card account side. Tomorrow when I attempt to change the checking account category to “transfer”, I will run the report and see what changed. If nothing happens then I will have to figure out how to remove the Credit Card Payment payments from showing on that report. 😁