Q2010: Completely wrong balance - payment added instead of subtracted

"Keith Snyder" wrote in news:lRRHn.4192$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe16.iad:

Did you by any chance enter the amount of the check as an negative amount?

Transfers will go either debit or credit depending on the sign of the amount.

Definitely no.

From the checking account the payment was entered in the payment field. FWIW, the balance in the checking account is correct.

On the credit card side, the same payment shows in the payment field, not the charge field.

Playing with the entry, if I zero the amount in the credit card payment field and enter the amount in the charge field, the amount is DEDUCTED from the balance.

It's weird.

Which is where it should show.

As it should be.

I don't find anything weird about anything you've reported.

Charges always make the balance more negative. If the balance started at zero, a new "charge" would make the "absolute amount" of the new balance greater ... but more negative. A second charge, would make the "absolute amount" of the new balance larger yet ... but still more negative.

Payments always make the balance more positive. If you made a partial payment (on a typical negative balance), the "absolute amount" of the balance would get smaller, and the amount would get more positive. If you paid the (negative) balance in full, the new balance would be zero ... but zero is more positive than any negative balance.

If you overpaid the negative balance, the new balance would not only become more positive ... it would become greater than zero (and would change from red to black). If you then added a second payment (if no new charges) ... the balance would get even more postive and even greater than zero.

I have yet to see, or read, any reliable evidence that Quicken mis-computes the balance of credit card accounts.

But I have read many times, of users, who failed to note that the credit card balance that was increasing after a payment was made ... was not only getting more positive (as it should), but that the Quicken account balance was already greater than zero (not normal, though possible) before the payment was made (or that the payment was an overpayment).

One key to locating the problem is to note when the balance amounts shift from red to black, and vice versa.

Any number of specifics can cause the problem, from an incorrect opening balance, to an incorrect transaction amount, to a missing transaction, to an extra transaction, to an accurately recorded overpayment. If your credit card balance is positive (appears in black) immediately after you have paid the real-world balance in full and recorded that transaction in Quicken; then something is recorded incorrectly in the account, or is missing from the account. [If your credit card balance is positive (black) after a true overpayment, that is the way the balance should appear.]

You're right. I wasn't paying attention to the sign of the balance; red for negative, black for positive.

Thanks for making me look more carefully.