Accounting for credit card purchases (revisited)

[Derek Atkins]

Christopher Scott <wabe5 at yahoo.com> writes:

[snip]
> Credit card register:
>
> Liabilities:Credit Card             CR 100
> Expenses:Food                       DR 100
> Assets:Checking (Reserved)          DR 100
> Assets:Checking                     CR 100
>
> This seems to square things away correctly; my main checking account
> goes down (so I know how much money I REALLY have left), the credit
> card balance goes up, and the expense categories appear as expected.
>
> Now, when I pay my bill, I did something like
>
> Assets:Checking (Reserved)          CR 500
> Liabilities:Credit Card             DR 500
>
> This balances my reserved account and the credit card account. 
> However, the money is actually coming out of Assets:Checking.  This
> throws my checking balance off.
>
> So, my questions:
> 1.  If I'm doing this more-or-less right, how do I account for the
> payment?

Yes, you're doing it more-or-less correct.

> 2.  If I set this up incorrectly, how should I amend my setup?

Make Assets:Checking (Reserved) a subaccount of A:Checking

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available