Working with Credit Cards / Reconciling Credit Card Accounts
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Subtitles of the Movie
The credit card reconciliation process in Quicken is very similar to the bank reconciliation process. As always, you will find the process to be very simple and straightforward. Within each credit card we will see Reconcile on the top of the screen. I select Reconcile and we'll be brought to the Statement Summary Screen. Here it wants to know the information directly from your statement. Now, disregard anything that you've typed into Quicken at this point. Literally pick up your statement that you receive in the mail and type in the information. So from my statement I notice that I have charged 45 dollars worth of products, I made a payment of 25 dollars and my ending balance all together turned out to be 75 dollars. Now, the difference here is that I had a continuous balance that I revolved from my previous statement. If there are any new finance charges, you would enter them at this time and again, you'll need to make sure you have a category selected. If a category is not there, you can select from your pull-down and it is at this time that it'll allow you to add a category if you do not have one for interest. When I'm finished I will say OK. At this point we are now ready to select all the items that cleared on the statement, just as if we were doing a bank reconciliation. I've noticed that there was a charge to Albertson's for 45 dollars that I indeed made. And I also had a credit for that charge because I thought it was an error. I have selected everything that was on the screen to see if that would reconcile with my statement. And you notice in this case at the bottom it did. My difference is zero. Now, at this point I could finish later if I thought that there was other information that needed to be recorded. Perhaps I'm at zero but I still have 200 dollars worth of payments and 200 dollars worth of charges to record. I really need to put all those entries in; otherwise I will not be tracking proper spending habits. If there's quite a bit going on and I need to finish at another time, I can finish later. If, however, I'm completely finished, I'll hit the word Finished and I will return. You will notice that as going back it asks right away, Do you want to make a payment now? It asks if you'd like to print a check; if you have a handwritten check; or, if you simply do not want to pay it at this moment. Now, notice in the background of my screen that everything turned gray. It is also marked with an R for reconciled. This is Quicken's way of letting you know that these transactions have been taken care of, they've been reconciled and they are only here now for historic purposes. If we go to our Account Bar and we go to an additional credit card account, you will notice in this case that they are still all darkened. Also, notice that they simply have a C and not an R. The C means that we have downloaded it from our banking institution or we have marked it as cleared because we know it's a correct charge. This C will not turn to an R until we've actually completed the reconciliation process. If I go to Reconcile and I complete the screen again, and in this case I'm just going to put zero so that we can get to the next screen, when I say OK you'll note now that the minute I actually select and say Finish, I will then be setting any cleared transaction to reconciled. The C for clear is reflecting the check mark that's next to the account. If I remove these checks and then return to the screen, any item that I removed the check mark from will remove the clear from the screen. So C for cleared, R for reconciled, grayed out when the transaction is closed, and is now available for viewing for historic purposes. Get in the habit of reconciling your books on a monthly basis. It's a good way to know exactly what's happening in your financial planning and your progress against your goals.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Quicken 2008 |
| Author: | Lauri Sowa-Matson |
| SKU: | 33913 |
| ISBN: | 1-934743-98-4 |
| Release Date: | 2008-09-19 |
| Duration: | 7 hrs / 87 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | Available on CD and Online University |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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