How to deal with Credit Card payments and dates

[whwtan]

On 26/1/2014 8:29 AM, xjordanx wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I am still a bit of a novice - so please forgive the asinine question.
>
> The problem I have is this - I have data entered into my checking account
> which is downloaded from CSV files. Included in this data are a series of
> credit card payments from my checking account to a credit card account.
>
> I then enter in all the items from my credit card statements, including
> payments and interest, so that I can reconcile the account.
>
> The problem is that the payments going out of the checking account do not
> appear right away in the credit card account, and gnucash is treating them
> completely exclusively - so now it looks like I have been making double
> payments in the checking account.
Hello and welcome to Gnucash,

It may be possible you are indeed making double payments.
Here's how I work with current accounts and payments to my CC.

I have all my current account transactions entered, so the transfers to 
pay my CC would already show up on the CC account in Gnucash.
I then enter all my credit card expenses. [Yes, just the expenses] I 
would know this from the receipts I have with me.
At the end of the month, I do a reconciliation by ticking all the 
transactions off making sure everything I see on my monthly statement is 
represented in Gnucash.
>
> Do I have to manually delete one of each? I would like gnucash to be smart
> enough to allow me to say the outgoing transaction from the checking account
> is the incoming payment on the credit card for the same amount 2-days later
> or whatever.
Perhaps you were confused by how it work just like I was when I started. 
With your accounting software, such as Gnucash in this case, you enter 
all your transactions before you get your monthly statement.
When you receive your monthly statement, you use it to compare against 
what you have entered in Gnucash, the process of this is called 
reconciliation.

>
> Or do I have to create an account called "limbo" and have all the payments
> go through it?
In your case, nope.
The idea is that if you have something showing up on your statements 
which you didn't enter in Gnucash earlier, you would start asking 
yourself whether you are aware of this payment. In this way, Gnucash is 
in effect helping you to ascertain whether there have been payments made 
without your knowledge.
>
> Thanks for any tips!
>
>
>
>
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