[GNC] Reimbursement in a credit card a/c

[Tommy Trussell]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 8:36 AM Mahon Finbar <mahon.finbar at neuf.fr> wrote:

> I got reimbursed a sum of over €500 on my credit card account.
>
> It seems to be causing some issues with reconciling the a/c.
>
> I entered the amount as a 'credit card payment' The reimbursement meant
> that the a/c was in credit for quite a while :-) but is now back to
> 'normal' i.e. I pay for things and then pay at the end of the month,
> always, i.e. I don't have a balance unpaid at that moment.
>
> However, the a/c won't reconcile, even avoiding, as uncleared, the
> current outstandings.
>
> Am I doing something wrong?
>

Hi! I can think of a couple of possibilities. Have you been reconciling the
credit card account every month, or was this the first time you tried?

If you have been reconciling it every month and this is the first time
you've had a problem, I would suspect you entered the statement balance as
a positive when it should have been a negative. (So in other words, most of
the time when you get a statement, you owe something, let's say €240. But
after the credit balance instead of -€260 -- negative two hundred sixty
euros.)

Another thing I noticed is that you said "I got reimbursed a sum of over
€500 on my credit card account."

When you got reimbursed, you do NOT enter that amount as if you wrote a
check to the credit card company -- if you were reimbursed for an
expenditure (either you returned an item to a store, or you were reimbursed
by a third party for things you bought on your credit card) then you would
enter that in the credit card register as a NEGATIVE expenditure. In the
register it would appear as a positive number in the same COLUMN as your
payments, but its other split account would offset whatever expenditure you
are being reimbursed for.

So in your credit card register, if you purchase an appliance, the original
transaction might look like:

Store A    Expenses:Household:Appliances  [cr] €500

Then you return the appliance to store A for a full refund:

Store A   Expenses:Household:Appliances [dr] €500

The first transaction increases your credit card liability and the second
transaction reduces the credit card liability (in this case, as you
described it, below zero because in between the purchase and the return you
paid off your credit card bill). SO the next time you reconcile your
statement you would need to enter a NEGATIVE number in the starting balance.

If you had been reimbursed using a different form of payment (such as a
check or bank draft) then you would have entered it similarly into THAT
bank account, as a negative expenditure with the positive part of the money
going into the bank account.

If you need some more guidance, have a look at the GnuCash documentation,
especially section 2.9 of Chapter 2.

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_txns.html


> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>