Newbies, account setup and manual reconciliation

[Andrew Sackville-West]

Jeff Smith wrote:
> Okay, when it comes to accounting I'm about as newbie as they come. You
> have been warned. Neither my wife nor I are what you might call
> accounting savants. For years, money has been the basis of heated
> marital discussion but neither one of us is an authority, so the
> arguments just go round and round.

welcome to MY life...

>
> But I don't understand the accounting principles involved clearly enough
> to be sure how the accounts SHOULD be set up. Do I just post all these
> transactions to the credit card liability account? Or should I set up
> individual "bank accounts" for each card, and transfer money from those
> accounts to the categorized expense accounts for each transaction?

As a good starting point, your accounting should mimic life as closely 
as possible. So if you have multiple credit cards then you should have 
multiple CCard type liability accounts. Whether you choose to group them 
under one "master" account for all credit cards or not is really up to 
you. Try it one way, and if you don't like it, you can change it later.

Any exepnses that you pay with your credit card (groceries, travel, 
whatever) are just like paying with your bank account debit card EXCEPT 
-- instead of lowering the value of your bank account, it raises the 
value of your ccard liability. The subsequent payment from bank to ccard 
lowers the bank account value and lowers the ccard liability. Note here, 
and this I think is where a lot of people get confused, that lowering a 
liability is "raising" a negative number -- moving closer to positive 
territory... ahhh... someday...
> 
> Any direction on the best way to manage this would be most welcome.
> 
> On another issue, is there a manual way to declare two records in the
> system as "matching records" as a sort of manual reconciliation? There
> are times when I'm importing records that I forget that a payment in the
> credit card QIF should be matched to an outgoing transaction from my
> checking account. So I end up with what appears to be a double payment.
> What is the correct way AFTER doing the QIF import to fix these and tell
> the system that they are two reports of the same transaction?

just delete one of two. doesn't matter which. they are doing the same 
thing and are simply duplicates. If you like the notation that comes 
from the bank then keep that one. If you prefer it as you have entered 
it then keep that one. simple.

IANAA

Andrew
>