how to record an opening debit balance in a credit account

[FireFly]

--- On Sun, 3/20/11, jay <nav1490 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am recreating the CC account for
> 2010.  For January I entered the positive
> opening balance and the one transaction successfully. 
> My CC register looks
> like this:
> 
> 1) Jan statement - the reduced positive balance amount
> shows up in red and
> in brackets (similar to the negative sign on the CC
> statement) - so I assume
> this is correct.  I read that I can change this in
> Preferences if I want.

Correct, the default is that liability accounts (which includes credit cards) show as positive (black without brackets) when you owe money, and would be negative (red in brackets) if you have a credit balance.
> 
> 2) Since I didn't make any payment from my Checking
> account, the Jan CC
> record is not followed by any payment record from
> Assets:Checking.  I carry
> forward a positive balance up until the May statement.
> 
> 3) Now in the Feb statement, I have previous positive
> Balance from Jan
> statement, and a few purchases.  In the March
> statement, I have previous
> positive Balance from Feb statement, few purchases and 2
> refunds from
> returns.  For April, same as March.  In May I
> start with a previous positive
> Balance, have purchases & returns, and finally owe the
> CC company.
> 
> 4) Does the first line for Feb have to be the previous
> positive Balance
> carried over from Jan statement or the New Balance on the
> Feb statement?  I
> am thinking it should be the New Balance.  I
> understand in general the order
> of entry should be: outstanding balance, purchases, then
> refunds.

Not sure I'm following at all? So normally you'd simply keep going from where you got to, so lets say you had a $100 credit at the end of Jan (and that's your opening balance)

You'd start with the $100 transfer from Equity opening balances to Liability:ThisCard

After that it's simply recording your transactions, so say in Feb you had two purchases, you record those (most likely transactions that are charge on the credit card, and go against one of the many expense accounts) refunds would be the same only a reverse (so effectively payments to the credit card, coming from an expense account) for each month you want to reconcile the account.


- James Duerr

E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com
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