I have set up my credit card as a bank account. As suggested, I used the transfer feature when I paid it from my checking account. But when I tried to reconcile my bank account there was a problem. I went to the Guides and it appears I have to make a second transaction to take the money from my checking account, but what do I balance that against? I seem to have the same problem in balancing my credit card statement.
I did not originally transfer data from my bank, instead manually entering transactions in December which would show up on my bank statement for January. I am running the most recent version of Manager that my Mac will support. Thank you-- mgk
No second transaction is needed, so you should not be concerned about what to balance one against. An inter account transfer simultaneously credits the bank or cash account the transfer is paid from and debits the account it is received in. If either of those accounts is set up as a bank account, the fields for clearance status and date appear for the respective account.
This is irrelevant, so long as those transactions were entered correctly. The only reason a problem might arise for reconciliation is if you have not entered clearance status and date correctly.
That information is inadequate. We need to know the actual version number.
That is version 22.12.17.556 running on Mac OS 10.14.6
It appears that the problem is in the credit card reconciliation. I had entered a starting balance of 0 but I might have fiddled with that because the directions told be to delete entries which were not listed on the bank statement, and that deletes it entirely.
Please explain this statement. What do you mean by “fiddled with that?” Either you left the starting balance at zero or you did not. That can be determined by looking at the Edit screen for the credit card account in the Bank and Cash Accounts tab. A starting balance should only have been entered if the credit card had an outstanding balance on the date you began using Manager.
And what “directions” are you referring to? If you mean something in one of the Guides, which one? If you mean something the program instructed you to do during the reconciliation process, no one will be able to reproduce that. Bank reconciliations are almost impossible to troubleshoot remotely, because the displays are dynamic and depend on your records, what you do in what order during reconciliation, etc.
I can tell you from experience that failures of reconciliation for credit cards are almost always due to transactions that were not entered. But if you are importing your credit card statement, that is unlikely to occur.
My brain goes foggy sometimes and I may have tried to change
the opening balance and then change it back again. It shows it as 0, which was where I started (I do not download statements) but the numbers are off, (not what I would have expected). It may have had something to do with dates.
I am inclined to forget about it and make a journal entry against retained earnings to fix it. This is my personal accounts, I am not a business, and I installed the program in December, hoping to get it set up for January. I know this is anathema to real accountants but if it will be correct after this I am game, since I have no idea what happened. The reconciliation on the bank account worked beautifully, BTW.
This statement was on the page in the program which helps you to reconcile an unreconciled statement: “Enter missing bank statement lines, fix incorrect amounts or delete transactions which don’t appear on your bank statement.” Assuming that it deleted only the transaction which had not cleared on the statement reconciliation and not the transaction entirely, I tried it. Peace-- mgk
Don’t! Bogus transactions to cover up a problem invariably cause other problems. Besides, you cannot use journal entries for transactions involving the movement of money into or out of the financial entity.
It won’t be correct.
The instruction you reference is only applicable in cases where you made a mistake when entering a transaction. For example, you have a debit card linked to your checking account and a standalone credit card. You purchase something via a card, but mistakenly post the transaction to your credit card, whereas the debit card is a transaction on your checking account. Obviously, the transaction on your debit card will not appear on your credit card statement.
Your situation should be very easy to diagnose—only a couple months’ of possible transactions. So, assuming you want to start recording your transactions on January 1, 2023, all you need to know is whether there was any balance on your credit card on December 31, 2022. If you had no unpaid charges (no Christmas gifts, New Year’s Eve dinners, etc.) on December 31, your starting balance was zero. But if anything was unpaid at that time, you had a starting balance.
Note that a starting balance on a credit card should entered as negative, because you owe money to that account.
Thank you. What I finally did: I had entered only those transactions for December that would appear on a statement. I had entered the payment to Discover from the bank, but not the actual transactions to the credit card. I simply added one transaction, the total of transactions from December, against the credit card as a misc. expense. It balances. I am only interested in January.
Good point about entering credit card statement balance as a negative-- I did catch that.