Accounting for credit card purchases (revisited)

[Christopher Scott]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 12:45:15PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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
> 

Sorry, I wasn't clear there.  Assets:Checking (Reserved) is a
sub-account of Assets:Checking.  It actually is
Assets:Checking:Reserved.  The Assets:Checking:Reserved account is
correct, but the Assets:Checking account is off by the amount of the
payment, since the $500 never came out of the Assets:Checking account.