[GNC] Newbie: Gnucash credit card payment transactions don't make sense

[R Losey]

People have already said this, but it seems that your credit card is not
set to have "Account Type" set to credit cards.

When you do that, you'll see that you have been entering charges on the
credit card incorrectly; they will all be under payments.

Like you, I have the formal accounting labels turned off.  Just for
reference, the first column is always "debit" and the second one is always
"credit". With credit cards, as you use them to pay for goods, you are
being extended credit, so your credit balance increases. When you may a
payment, you are reducing how much credit you have with the credit card
company, so this is a debit.

If your credit transactions have been entered incorrectly (and it looks
like they have), you may want to check your Expense accounts to ensure that
they are of type "expense" and that the data there is being entered
properly.


On Sat, May 24, 2025 at 4:34 PM Deborah Robson <robson.deborah at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I’ve reviewed the concepts and tutorial and spent a couple of days trying
> to figure out what’s going on with payments from ASSET:CHECKING to CREDIT
> CARD accounts. This is happening with both credit cards, but I have three
> examples from the same account. I have attempted to make payments on the
> cards by (1) in the checking account transfer field, specifying the
> destination credit card account; (2) using the “transfer” button in the top
> bar; (3) manually correcting the entries in both affected accounts (this
> tends to be least successful, not that the others were).
>
> I have screenshots for all three examples but apparently cannot attach
> more than a couple. The ones below are example #1.
>
> What am I doing wrong? ? ? ? ?
>
> #1:
> Checking account payments correctly reduce value of asset account.
> In credit card account, payments INCORRECTLY increase the amount owed, and
> should decrease it.
>
> #2:
> Checking account payment INCORRECTLY increases the value of the asset
> account, and should decrease it.
> In credit card account, payment correctly decreases the amount owed.
>
> #3:
> Like #2, checking account payment INCORRECTLY increases the value of the
> asset account, and should decrease it.
> Like #2, credit account payment correctly decreases the amount owed.
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8