Manual CC payment - how to

Newbie alert. I'm using Quicken for Mac (v6.1.1). I have my main Bank of America account linked online so it manually downloads transactions, then I have a separate credit card account for my Apple Card. However, the Apple Card doesn't allow automatic login or downloading of transactions, so I have to manually enter each transaction (as well as when I pay off the credit card).

This was all working well for months, but now I just realized that starting in October 2020, the way I entered the credit card payoff wasn't working as expected. I'm probably doing it wrong and would really appreciate a step-by-step walkthrough.

On 10/31 I paid off my Apple Card ($250). In Quicken, in the Apple Card section, I manually entered an item ("Apple Card Payment") and used category: "Transfer[Bank of America]" and entered +$250.

When I sync my Bank of America account, it adds an item (a few days later) called Apple Card payment, category="Transfer", amount=$250.

But here's the problem: now I have TWO entries in my Bank of America ledger: the automatically retrieved version, and the manually entered version.

What's the right way to handle this? When I pay off my Apple Card using the BOA account, what screen should I enter it on, and how should I enter it? (Specifics appreciated.)

Answers

  • jacobs
    jacobs SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    I typically enter the payment in the account where the payment is coming from -- e.g. the checking account, not the credit card account -- but it works just as well either way. What you did worked correctly to create the correct transfer between the two accounts in Quicken.

    It's not unusual to end up with your manually-entered transfer transaction and the one downloaded from the bank as duplicates in your account. What you do is drag one of the duplicates over the other, and Quicken should merge them -- and learn from this action so that the next time, it will (hopefully) merge them automatically.

    By the way, while Apple Card didn't originally allow downloading transactions, they added that capability sometime last year. you still can't have Quicken login to download your transactions, as most other credit card companies allow, but you can log into your Apple Card account and download a QFX file to your Mac, which you can them import into Quicken.

    A few words of caution. Make a backup copy before you do this the first time, because there will be duplicate transactions from the past 90 days. Work through and eliminate the duplicates; the next month it won't create those duplicates again; this is just a one-time start-up problem.
    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • THANK YOU so much for this.

    Dragging the duplicates over each other works perfectly, and I've easily exported QFX files (via AirDrop) which is making it very easy to import into Quicken quickly.

    Two problems solved and I greatly appreciate it.
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