credit card purchases

[bjsbrown65]

Trying to set up as described in Feb 20, 2014 by JohnDMeyers. I have a liability account set up for credit card purchases and a vendor. I began to enter the transactions using AP, open invoices, CR credit card purchases and DB expense account. I realized that this will result in numerous invoices to select for payment and by the time, they are paid, the information won't fit on the check. I really only want the total amount being paid to appear on the check to the credit card company. What is another way to handle these liability purchases? Also can they be reconciled the same way as the banking reconciliation?

[JohnDMeyers]

The best work-around we have found is to make the REFERENCE three letters long, and put as much information in the Description field as possible.

On most reports, we get this:
BCA (for "Bank Card") is the REFERENCE field

BCA pens
BCA amazon purchase
BCA parts for copier

[Matt]

I would recommend entering the credit card purchases as manual checks, not as invoices. I would only create an invoice when you go to actually pay the credit card bill. The debit on this invoice will be to the AP account you set up and the credit will be to your checking account.

If you pay the ending balance on the credit card statement in full each month you can use the bank reconciliation feature to reconcile the transactions posted to the AP account you set up to the transactions on the credit card statement. The secret to getting this to work is to enter the ending balance on the credit card statement on the reconciliation as negative instead of the normal positive. Also, do not post the check to pay the ending balance in Fund Accounting until after you have done the reconciliation for that statement.