How do I record shared credit card expenses?

Question

I normally share a credit card with another person, and we share the expenses. When we get a bill, we pay it with two checks. Asd an example, let's assume we jointly charged $130 one month, the totals being:

Payee Amount Applebees 30.00 Bloomingdales 100.00

We pay with a $65 check from each. I then record the credit card payments in Quicken for my check only as follows (the two lines are a split off the total payment to Visa):

Payee Category Amount Applebees Eat out 15.00 Bloomingdales Housewares 50.00

That has worked very well until I recently traveled and came back to a credit card bill that had to be paid immediately. So I paid the whole $130 (using the example above) and he wrote me a check for $65. How do I record the two transactions (my check for payment + his check for reimbursement) into Quicken, preserving the Categories correctly?

Thanks in advance. This is driving me crazy!

Laura · Accepted Answer

Here's how I usually record reimbursements:

-record your portion using the correct categories.

-record your partner's portion of the bill to a expense category called Reimbursement

-record your partner's reimbursement check to the Reimbursement category.

This will leave the Reimbursement category $0 and only your expenses posted to the appropriate categories.

Andrew · Answer

Or use a TAG (or CLASS if pre-2008 Q) (not a CATEGORY) called 'Other Expenses' or something to that ilk that you can exclude from reports and such. By crediting and debiting transactions to that TAG as Laura suggests, you can easily track and exclude these expenses/income that really are not yours.

Gary · Answer

Thank you Laura.  This is exactly what I was looking for.I made a slight change: I used the category "Shared" instead of"Reimbursement", but it's otherwise right out of Laura's playbook.Thanks again!

How do I record shared credit card expenses?

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