Quickbooks 2008 Question about Credit Card Account

I have a credit card for my business and an account showing the transactions. I would like to use the enter bills and pay bills feature. When I enter a credit card bill in Quickbooks, it shows up in my credit card register as a payment. It is NOT a payment. What am I misunderstanding?

John King snipped-for-privacy@cableone.net

Reply to
Jking482
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"When I enter a credit card bill in QuickBooks, it shows up in my credit card register as a payment." Tell us how you are entering the bill.

Reply to
Allan Martin

If I enter the bill using the expense accounts, it works OK, but then when I go to pay the bill, there is no way to automatically show it as a payment in the Credit Card Account, that I can see. Under "Payment Account" I show my bank account from which the payment is deducted; under "Vendor" I show the name of the Credit Card Company; where do I show that it is a credit card payment? Do I just have to enter it again in the Credit Card Account?

In my original post I was entering the Credit Card Account in "Account" in the "Enter Bill" feature. I guess that's where I went wrong, but it still doesn't seem intuitive to me that I have to re- enter the payment in the Credit Card Account.

John

Reply to
Jking482

By entering the amount due on the CC statement through "Enter Bill" you are reclassifying it from a Credit Card Liability to an Accounts Payable Liability. When you pay the bill, you don't affect the Credit Card account, just the CC Vendor account in A/P.

Reply to
Scott

You are missing the definition of account types in QuickBooks.

A credit card account type is one of several "Balance Sheet Accounts". Credit card transactions are not entered using the "enter bills" screen and payments TO the financial institution for the credit card are not entered using the "pay bills" screen. Those screens are reserved for vendor bills, and are associated with a special account called "Accounts Payable". As an example, let's say you owe money to a phone company for cell phone usage. The phone company is added as a vendor. You use the "Enter Bills" screen to enter the money owed, posting the amount to the correct expense account. You use the "Pay Bills" screen to pay the bill to the vendor. NOTE that you can use a CREDIT CARD to pay the bill.

To pay your credit card, use the "Write Checks" function. If you want to be reminded to pay the Credit Card on time, 'memorize' the check as 'to be printed', and have it automatically enter into the register in time to pay the CC statement.

Reply to
L

Bleh....

Sometimes I type too quickly. I need to remember that with QB there is more than one way to 'skin a cat'

You *CAN* pay your CC as a 'bill'. To do so you would use the enter bills screen, put the bank name as the vendor, and in the expenses tab, enter the account name of the Credit card.

The transaction will show up in the CC register in the payment column of the charge card, as you noted. It is not, however, a payment. If you look to the side you will see that the transaction type will be one of "BILL". The transaction will show in the Pay Bills screen, and in the reminders of bills to pay. When you make the payment, an examination of the 'bill' will show as paid.

This all makes sense, sort of. When pay your "bill" for a liability account, the amount you owe on the liability will be decreased by the amount you paid. But, it certainly is not Intuit-ive.

I much prefer to see a more accurate balance on my CC. An automatically entered check 'to be printed' keeps me from slipping a due date.

Reply to
L

I enter credit card purchases by clicking on Banking | Credit Card Purchases. Then when I pay the bank, I just write them a check (or use ACH) using the normal check writing feature.

Reply to
PT

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