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Posted by Laura on March 17, 2008, 9:23 pm
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> Melvin wrote:
>> I take it that you don't save your credit card / debit card receipts
>> and enter them into your register first.
>>
>> When you download transactions for your credit card / debit card into
>> your various registers, you can operate in one of two ways:
>>
>> 1. Accept each downloaded transaction (as a NEW transaction) into
>> your register.
>> 2. Match each downloaded transaction to an EXISTING transaction in
>> your register. This requires more work because you're manually
>> entering the transactions from your receipts beforehand.
>>
>> If you're doing #1 you're opening yourself up to accepting the
>> occasional fraudulent / incorrect transaction if something like that
>> were to wind up in your account. You're essentially trusting the
>> bank's record of what happened and not your own.
>>
>> If you do #2 you are creating a mechanism whereby you can detect
>> fraudulent / incorrect transactions pretty much on the day you
>> download them to your register and probably 21-30 days before you'd
>> see them on your printed statement.
>>
>> I do #2; I think #1 is sloppy recordkeeping. If you do #1, you're
>> missing out on one of the best benefits of the program.
>>
>>> I'm catching up on my transaction register hitting each transaction
>>> one-by-one. I'm glad Quicken automatically chooses the category,
>>> most of the time, but it seems to me it could be much easier. I'd
>>> like to open my transactions up in a big window, select a bunch of
>>> similar transactions, ie grocery stores, select the category (if
>>> required) and then accept all those transactions. Next I'd do the
>>> same thing for gasoline fillups. Doing this transaction by transaction
>>> it pretty time consuming. Am I
>>> missing something? It seems like I used to be able to do something
>>> like this with Tobias - "Managing Your Money" years ago.
>
> "I think #1 is sloppy recordkeeping. " - Why is it 'sloppy'? Those
> transactions (fraudulent or not) are ALREADY in your credit card account,
> and you're merely making Quicken match reality. You can't ignore them!
>
> So perhaps an alternate is to do your #2, but ALSO do #1 for those that
> are not pre-entered by you. THEN you need to figure out WHY you have
> "excess" transactions, and if indeed they're fraudulent or shouldn't be
> there, you'll need to CONTACT your CC company to have them reverse the
> charge. And of > course, THAT will come in as a new transaction that
> you'll accept at the future date.
It is interesting to read that you feel that #1 is sloppy record keeping.
That is how I do it myself. I do review the bank statement every couple of
days to make sure that there is nothing strange on the statement. But when
you are keeping tabs on several credit & debit cards where 3 or 4 people are
using them on a regular basis it is unrealistic to enter them in advance. We
do not carry much cash on us so we use the debit card constantly. It is not
uncommon for there to be 10-15 transactions in one day for us to record. In
the 4 years that I have been doing things this way, nothing has gotten
booked that was not authorized. It just takes monitoring closely but I don't
have the time to key the transactions into Quicken on a regular basis.
Downloading and categorizing them one at a time works for me. I do use
memorized transactions and naming rules to assist me.
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