Credit Card payments

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/13/2015 11:14 PM, John Ralls wrote:
>> On Nov 13, 2015, at 7:49 PM, Lou <zquark32 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I have a 0% credit card that has a balance on it.  When I make a payment on my credit card, it does not show as an expense on my income statement or budget.  How can I see the expense on my budget/income statement?
> It shouldn’t. The expense accounts balance the charges.
>
> If that doesn’t make sense to you, please read through the Tutorial and Concepts Guide.
>
And especially reread the sections related to the "cash flow" reports. 
Because I suspect that is what is confusing you (what you expect to be 
shown by the different reports). The expense paid by credit card was a 
transaction earlier than the credit card payment, an expense paid for at 
the time not by laying out cash but by incurring a liability. You later 
cleared that liability when you made the credit card payment. But in 
terms of cash flow, you didn't have a flow out when you incurred the 
expense but when you made the payment on the credit card debt.

If you are running "tight" you may be needing to run not just "Income 
Statement" but the cash flow reports as well because they are showing 
different things. You can be doing OK by one but not by the other in 
which case you need to see that. On the other hand, if you always have a 
significant cash cushion, you might not need to worry about cash flow.

Michael