Basic Accounting: Short Term vs. Long Term Expenses

[Greg Novak]

> Do you have a liability account set up for your credit card? When you incur
> and expense on the credit card you enter it as:
>
> Liabilities:Credit Card 100 (Cr)
> Expenses: Whatever 100 (Dr)

Thanks for the response.

Yes, of course I have an account set up for the credit card.  The problem 
here is that I want there to be, at some point, a _single_ number that I 
can look at and say "I'm $150 ahead for the month."  Doing the usual thing 
(as you described it) leaves me in a situation where I can _think_ that 
I'm $150 ahead for the month b/c I've got the extra money in my checking 
account, but I'm actually down $150 b/c there's $300 on the credit card.

One solution is just to stop using the card, or use it only for large 
expenses that I need to spread out over several months.  The problem here 
is that sometimes I use the credit card because I'm not comfortable using 
my debit card with the merchant for one reason or another.  So in general 
there's a mix of short term and long term expenses on the card.

All of the information about the transactions are there, in Gnucash, but 
it's not "propogating" to the right place.

Thanks,
Greg