How do I record my Credit Card purchases?
Many companies use their credit cards every month for minor purchases. When they write the check for the Credit Card payment, they 'split' the payment into the various expense categories. While this is acceptable for minimal purchasing, there are several features that are lacking with this method. The main issue is that you will have no specific record, when running reports, of the individual purchases. For this reason, we recommend setting up each credit card just as you would set up a new bank account (1.). This will create an expense register that looks exactly like a checkbook register, and can be reconciled each month (2.).
You can enter your Credit Card purchases in several different ways - you can download the data directly from the credit card company, just as you might do with your bank. (However, we prefer to enter each charge from the receipt, so that when the statement comes in, we can verify that information against our own, to catch any bank errors.) Or you can enter the charges directly into the register and classify the expense into whatever category it belongs. Or you can enter each purchase or refund using the form shown below. While all of the methods work, this is our preferred method because it provides more data fields.
Choose Edit > New Credit Card Charge (or Ctrl + N). This provides a new window with options for the Vendor name, Reference Number, Memo, Account Number, even Inventory Items. By entering all of this information, you will be able to recall all of these details when you format reports by expense account, or by vendor.
