I paid a bill via Venmo and the amount was deducted from my available Venmo balance, so the amount

Question

I paid a bill via Venmo and the amount was deducted from my available Venmo balance, so the amount was not deducted from my checking account. I want the budget to pick up this expense but if I post the expense to the Ledger it's going to reduce my Ledger balance And that would be a problem since the bill wasn't paid from the checking account. How do I get an actual expense to post on the budget without putting something on the Ledger that will erroneously reduce the Ledger balance? Thank you very much.

BK · Answer

So, what is the real-world source of the payment in your case?

@Tom Young , I use Venmo and here is an example of a source: I may host our wine group in my house where I buy all the wines for the event and at the end we split the cost. Everyone pays me via Venmo, so I'll have $300 in my Venmo account.

@Louis H , I don't use the budget feature of Quicken so I cannot help you with that. But I can tell you how I handled Venmo in the past and how I do it today:

In the past: I added the Venmo to Quicken and downloaded the transactions on a regular basis. So I was able to categorize all the debit/credit transactions in the Venmo account and the ledger was balanced.

Now: I decided I didn't want to deal with Venmo in Quicken. In order to keep the ledger balanced, I aim keep any balance in Venmo zero: If I receive money, I immediately transfer it to my bank account. And when I pay, it automatically draws it out of my bank account. So I categorize all the transactions (debit/credit)  same as before, but instead in my bank account. I do the same with PayPal.

If you have many Venmo transactions on a regular basis, you should add it to Quicken to make life easier. If you don't or don't want to add it to Quicken, then I suggest that you transfer the funds to your bank account immediately and categorize them. Ultimately I am repeating what @Tom Young wrote. Hope this helps.

Tom Young · Answer

I don't use Venmo so maybe I'm wrong, but as I read the Venmo site you can have a balance in a Venmo account so that would be a source of cash, you can also have Venmo draw on your bank account, and that might be delayed a day or so, and maybe even have the payment put on your Venmo credit card.

So, what is the real-world source of the payment in your case?

If you do have a balance in an account with Venmo, then you should also have a Venmo Account in Quicken.  If the money ultimately comes from you bank then the expense could picked up when the cash leaves your checking account, and if the 1st source is a credit card, the expense could be picked up in the Quicken  Venmo credit card Account.

The money ultimately has to come out of your pocket, one way or the other.

So how did you come to have an "available balance" in your Venmo Account?  You need to account for the transactions that resulted in the available balance, or, make a one-sided entry to create a balance in the account immediately before your payment.