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

[Tom Route-36]

Hi R Losey,

I think your suggestion here is certainly one way of keeping track of 
how large a balance is needed in your checking account.  Essentially 
your "Credit" sub-account is keeping a running balance of the upcoming 
scheduled transactions that will be needed to pay off your credit cards 
each month.  So I can see how that can be useful for ensuring you keep a 
high enough balance in your checking account.  What I don't like about 
that though is that the checking account balance in GnuCash no longer 
matches the actual checking account balance.  And that's too confusing 
for me.  So I need a different solution.

Tom



On 9/9/2025 7:39 PM, R Losey wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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 <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
> 
>     _______________________________________________
>     gnucash-user mailing list
>     gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>     To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
>     https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user <https://
>     lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user>
>     -----
>     Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>     You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> _________________________________
> Richard Losey
> rlosey at gmail.com <mailto:rlosey at gmail.com>
> Micah 6:8