[GNC] Scheduling Monthly Transactions for Full Credit Card Balances?

[R Losey]

Sometimes you can come to a solution by looking at it another way.  How
about this solution (which I use):

Create a "Credit" sub-account under the checking account. Whenever you
enter transactions (I enter them weekly, but some people enter them as they
occur, and others enter them every day or two). Anyway, after entering my
credit transactions, I then look at the current "credit" sub-account
balance, and the credit card balance, and transfer money from the checking
account to the "credit" sub-account. The amount is "Current Credit Balance"
minus "Credit sub-account balance". For example, if my "credit" sub-account
has $85, and my credit card shows a balance of $114.68, I need to transfer
$29.68 from the checking account to the credit sub-account. It will then
show $114.68, and my checking account register will be lowered by $114.68.

By doing this, you effectively move money out of the checking account
register (so it shows what you have left), and there should always be funds
in the credit account to pay the credit card.

When you pay the credit card off, you then transfer funds out of the credit
sub-account and into the checking account.

This solution does not use scheduled transactions, but it has worked very
well for me.

(Note: I keep any sub-accounts to an even dollar amount, so if my credit
card balance needs $30.58, I transfer $31.00 to the credit sub-account.
This is just so that I don't have to mess around with cents in the
sub-account).


On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 8:08 PM Tom Route-36 <tom.route36 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> This is a follow-up to my earlier email question here.  I really would
> like some way of creating ongoing monthly Scheduled Transactions for
> each of my credit card accounts that will always default to the full
> credit card balance each month.  What I'm trying to do is to be able to
> look at a list of Scheduled Transactions for my checking account; and
> from that list know each month how high a balance my checking account
> needs to be in order to pay off all those credit cards in full.  It
> seems like no one has been able to come up with an answer though.  So
> let me ask a more specific question.
>
> When creating a Scheduled Transaction, the splits for each transaction
> include two columns labeled Debit Formula and Credit Formula.  Typically
> (for say an Internet provider or a Phone carrier) I'd enter whatever
> fixed amount I get charged each month as a FIXED dollar value.  But
> since these columns are labeled "Formula" that also implies that I can
> enter a mathematical expression (i.e., a formula) that results in a
> CALCULATED dollar value.  There is some bare bones documentation about
> formulas at this link:
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Scheduled_Transactions.  But I don't see
> any info there on how to query an account to get its current balance,
> which is what I need.  Does anyone know how to grab an account balance
> so that it can be included as a variable in a formula?  If anyone has an
> idea about how to do that please let me know.
>
> Tom
>
>
> On 9/8/2025 4:04 PM, Tom Route-36 wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Does anyone know if there's a way in GnuCash to create monthly Scheduled
> > Transactions for a checking account to pay a credit card account where
> > the formula for the monthly transaction amount is always equal to the
> > current monthly balance of the credit card account?  What I'm hoping to
> > do is to have something functionally similar to "Bill and Income
> > Reminders" in Quicken.  Please let me know if there's some way of doing
> > that.
> >
> > Tom
>
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-- 
_________________________________
Richard Losey
rlosey at gmail.com
Micah 6:8