How do I enter a payment when I used rewards?

Question

I've got a simple problem that I do not know how to resolve. I've got a recurring payment to Sam's Club for our membership. Over the course of a year, buying what we need, we get what Sam's Club calls "Sams Cash" (or something like that). When our membership is due, we use that to pay for our annual membership, or at least pay it down leaving a smaller amount for us to pay. Today I did that.

But I've no idea how to enter that into Quicken. I don't know what these "Sam's Cash" is. (Costco has the same thing, and of course other merchants have similar loyalty systems to encourage you to buy from them.) I don't know this "Sam's Cash" and only pay attention when it's that time of the year when we must pay for our membership.

I imagine that there are multiple ways I could enter this into Quicken. So, I'm asking what ways can I approach entering this into Quicken?

Quicken Kristina · Answer

Thank you for your reply,

When you look on the financial institution side or on the statement provided by your financial institution, how does it reflect there once the rewards are applied?

Thank you!

Rod F. · Answer

Quicken Kristina, I have absolutely no idea how Sam's Club treats the "Sam's Cash". That's a part of my problem.

UKR · Answer

You can probably do something similar to what I did when I received a CostCo reward rebate and cashed it in when I went shopping.

The reward was in the amount of $128.57 and I purchased groceries for $93.42 resulting in a cash back of $35.15

In my Cash account register I recorded this deposit transaction:

The total reward amount was categorized as "Other Income", one of my income categories.

You should be able to do something similar when recording your total membership fee as an expense, offset by the reward amount as miscellaneous income.