How do I split business expenses from a personal credit card

Hi pondball, 

Running a small business means that you'll have tons of transactions to categorize when entering expenses into your books. QuickBooks Online makes this process easy for you, allowing you to track both business and personal expenses. If you'd rather remove the personal expenses all together, you can do that too! I'll explain each option below. 

If you'd like to track both business and personal expenses in QBO, check out the following resources for more information on how to record this in your books: 

• Mixing business and personal funds
• Pay for business expenses with personal funds
• Pay for personal expenses from a business credit card or bank account

Here's more information about how to categorize your transactions into categories such as supplies, office equipment, fuel, etc., as you've described above: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online

Alternatively, you may decide to exclude personal transactions from your account entirely. If that's something you'd like to do, follow the steps here: Exclude expenses from downloaded bank transactions.

I hope this helps. If you need any further assistance, please reach out to our tech support team.

Cheers.

Hi Addie

Thanks for your quick reply! The last link you provided seems to offer the most hope.

The main issue is having only one CC. To summarize, any business expenses on the CC are paid through the business account I automatically download (statement) to QBO. My personal account doesn't come into play at all. However, the mix comes with me using only one CC for all expenses paid on Visa. 

However, I don't mix paying business with pleasure or pleasure with business. Each are paid separately at all times. My question is more if I should download the CC statements directly as I do with my business bank account (that makes matching very simple). The issue is some CC items are paid for 100% by business, while others are only paid to xx% depending on their CoA category. 

The last link starts with

If you need to keep a personal expense out of your business finances, or if you have duplicate bank transactions, you can exclude it from the transactions downloaded from your bank or financial institution.

Exclude transactions

1. Select Banking.
2. On the Banking page, select the For Review tab.
3. Select the checkboxes of the transactions to exclude.
4. From the Batch actions drop-down, choose Exclude Selected.

Excluded transactions are listed on the Excluded tab for reference or review, but are not tracked or reported as part of your business finances and don't appear in any associated account registers or reports.

... and that seems to suggest that I can download the CC statement to my QBO and use the exclude feature to leave out the personal charges?

That's correct. Whether or not you decide to download your statement is up to you, and you can review the information about that process here: Get bank statements directly from your bank when you reconcile. You wouldn't have the ability to edit or adjust the statement itself. For any further help, I'd recommend reaching out to our tech support team. 

Have a great day.

Hello @pondball ,

You face a similar situation to many other small business owners and I'm sorry to say that many of them do not handle this situation well.  It sounds like you are doing your best to keep personal and business separate, in spite of using only one credit card.

I had a business for many years and did the same thing.  It was simpler for me to download ALL the transactions.  Then I would go to the personal transactions and edit them to my Shareholder's loan, as my business was a corporation.  The business would pay the entire amount of the credit card statement so I didn't mess with moving money back and forth.  Basically, the personal portion of expenses and payments were flowing in and out of the S/H Loan account.

If you are a sole proprietor or partnership, you can do the same thing, but code all your personal transactions to Owner's Draw (should be set up as a sub-account of Owner's Equity account).  This way, all the transactions will be available to reconcile the entire statement, instead of just the business part of it . . . makes it much simpler, in my opinion.  The business can pay the entire credit card bill.  If you choose to transfer in personal funds to cover those expenses, you would deposit those funds to your business and credit Owner's Capital (another sub-account of Owner's Equity).  Now you have the personal transactions flowing through the Equity accounts, and if you reimburse the business the entire amount of the personal transactions on the statement, it will always be a wash to $0.00.  If you don't reimburse the company all of the time for personal expenses, you have a record of personal owner's withdrawals, which is equivalent to paying yourself a draw for the value of those transactions.

I'm sorry if it sounds a little convoluted . . . it really isn't.  In all the years I've been doing this, I find this the simplest way to handle the single credit card split between business and personal.

Good luck!