Managing Business Credit Card Accounts with Multiple Users: Master and Child Account Reconciliation

JerryC1

Hello Quicken Community,

I’m seeking advice on how best to manage and reconcile a business credit card with multiple users in Quicken. Here’s my situation:

I have a business credit card account with:

• A master account (which includes an aggregated balance for all transactions, fees, and interest).
• Two child accounts (separate credit card numbers for individual users, tracking their respective purchases).

Challenges:

• Quicken does not officially support a linked "master-child" account structure for credit cards, so each card shows up as a separate account in the Accounts List Pane.
• Payments are made to the master account, but individual transactions and balances exist in the child accounts.

I’ve seen a suggestion about using a "Category [transfer-account]" approach, where I would categorize payments in the master account as a transfer to the respective child account, so the balances reflect accurately. Essentially, the child accounts would have all the real data (transactions), and I’d manually transfer payments from the master account to zero out their balances.

Questions:

1. Does anyone have experience with this method? How effective is it for keeping everything in sync between master and child accounts?
2. Are there any downsides I should be aware of, particularly when reconciling these accounts?
3. Is there an alternative method or best practice that you’ve found works better for this kind of setup in Quicken?
4. Finally, how do you handle the overall balance and cash flow reporting if payments are made to the master but transactions live in child accounts?

Any insights, feedback, or alternative suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

NotACPA

How about a slight variation on what you're suggesting.

Record the transactions (or download them) into the child accounts and simply record the payment (presumably from a business banking account) as a split payment transaction into the appropriate child account. No need for the Parent account at all.

You can still make the actual payment to the Parent, just record the children as the categories.