How do I enter my USD credit card?

Super. Now how do I categorize a US Credit Card Payment from my US bank account? It says that we can't register a credit card payment in another currency than the home currency (which for me is Canadian).

I read about the clearing accounts but I am confuse as to how to use it (transfer or payment of a supplier...)

Hi Catherine. Glad to have you contribute to this Community post. I'll be glad to steer you in the right direction with recording a US credit card payment. To ensure accuracy, I recommend consulting an accounting professional for expert advice. If you're not in contact with one I suggest searching for one on our site. I'll leave this question open in the community so other members can chime in and share their advice. In the meantime, check out this helpful article with info on how to: Record your payments to credit cards.

Feel free to reach out if you need anything else. I'll be here.

Hi Catherine, did you find an answer to this? I have the same thing - a USD account and USD credit card and I haven't figured out how to apply a payment from the account to credit card in US funds. If you have a method, any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hello lmarkham,

Thanks for joining us on this thread. It's important to me that you're able to record your transactions the way they need to be in QuickBooks Online. With a few more details about how you're trying to record the USD credit card payment, I'm certain we can help you get back on track. I have a few ideas of what you might be trying to do.

Based on what you've described, it sounds to me like you've maybe got a USD bank feed set up in the Transactions/Banking tab, and you're trying to assign a payment from your USD bank feed to your credit card to record a payment against it. If so, when you click the transaction for more options, you may have seen the option Record as credit card payment. When you choose that option, the screen will change to include the credit card the payment is applying to, but when you hit Add, you'll get a message like this: The account is not set in the Home Currency. Credit Card Payment accepts accounts only in the Home Currency.

For foreign currency account credit card payments, using the Alternative methods options outlined in the Record your payments to credit cards is the way to go to record these payments. Because the usual recording option through the bank feed and the Pay down credit card option works with home currency only, these alternative methods come into play and will allow you to record the credit card payments.

So, what do you do with the entry in the bank feed? You can simply exclude it. Doing so doesn't hurt your reconciliations and you'll still be able to go through that process afterward. To exclude a transaction in the bank feed, select the checkbox for it, and then choose Exclude. For extra help with these bank feed tasks, check out this article: Categorize and match online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online

Feel free to leave feedback about the options available by following the steps in the article How do I submit feedback? to see how that's done. This helps our team learn the impact of existing features and see new ways to add to the program to make bookkeeping easier. Here's how to keep on top of new features: QuickBooks Online Feature and Product Updates

I hope this helps! If I've missed the mark with what you're looking to do, please don't hesitate to elaborate in a response here.

Hi Laura, thank you for your reply, it's much appreciated. I tried following the directions you sent but it didn't work for me. The issue is that I am located in Canada but do business in the US and Canada, so I have separate bank accounts in both currencies, as well as separate credit cards in both currencies. My 2 main issues with the US accounts are:

1) How do I enter an expense on my USD credit card? I have tried a couple different ways and it will only let me convert it to CAD.

2) Is it possible to show a payment from my USD bank account to my USD credit card all in USD funds without converting it to CAD?

If the transactions need to be converted to CAD funds each time I record an expense on my USD credit card, and when I record a payment from the USD bank account to the USD credit card, my main question/concern is then will the USD bank account and USD credit card amounts show as reconciled to what is actually in those accounts if the withdrawls/transactions are recorded in CAD funds? Also, I saw an article about setting up a clearing account and using that to move money from one account to another, but I wasn't sure if that was needed in this case and if so how to record the transactions with that method. Basically just trying to confirm how to enter my USD transactions correctly with keeping those accounts reconciled to what is showing as the USD balance in both accounts (the bank and credit card).

I hope that all makes sense. Thank you in advance for your help.

Leah

Hi

I was able to set up a credit card in USD in my chart of accounts and then I pay it by transferring from my USD bank account to the USD credit card.

When I pay a bill I have the option of selecting the USD credit card.  In Accounts and Settings I have multi-currency turned on so this may be why I can do this.

Hello again, Leah,

Thanks for the clarification on what you're looking to do and how you're hoping to record your transactions using foreign currency in QuickBooks Online. I want to assure you that it's possible to record your USD transactions the way you're wanting. I'll start with the expense to the USD credit card.

To enter an expense paid by your USD credit card, it's a simple matter of creating the expense and choosing the USD credit card in the Payment account field. If your concern is that the program shows the conversion rate, that's just to show you what it would be in Canadian. Here's a look at that from a test account

Now, when I look at that transaction for the credit card in the chart of accounts, I'll see the USD value of the transaction in the account list, and then both the USD and CAD value when I click Account history. Here, again, are a couple screenshots to demonstrate.

Chart of Accounts view

Account register view (after clicking Account history)

As for your second question about showing a USD payment account for a USD credit card payment, that's also possible. What I mentioned in my last response about using the Alternative methods section of the Record your payments to credit cards article works for exactly that kind of situation. Using the Write a cheque option, for instance, will give you the opportunity to choose a USD Payment account, and in the Category section, you can then choose the credit card. Saving this transaction will result in a payment to the USD credit card from the USD account.

Using these options, you'll be able to reconcile your accounts as normal. For instance, if I were to reconcile my USD credit card that I've been using in these examples, here's what it looks like.

As you can see, the transactions are still in the $500 USD value that I was using for the expense, and then shows the payment I made for the same amount using the method I described.

If you're curious about when you might need to use a clearing account and the impact it would have on your books, I recommend consulting an accountant since that's more of an accounting practice. An accountant can even be added as a user to your account using the My accountant tab, or you can use that same tab and select the Find a pro to help button on the page that comes up to find an accountant near you that can help with these kinds of questions.

For your reference, here's our article about working with multicurrency in QuickBooks Online: About Multicurrency. That one article also has links to other useful multicurrency articles that you can browse through.

I hope this helps clarify the processes. Please feel free to ask more questions if you have them.

I apologize for the delay. I just tried the instructions you provided and it worked great!! That is wonderful. Thank you so much for all your help, I really appreciate it!

I found the best way to do so is use "Transfer" in both the bank account register and credit card register. Choose the matching account on both sides. You will see the "Match" option appear once you have done one side.

I set it up as a rule in my bank account register and now it shows up us a "match" automatically in the CC register. 

Seems to work well!