Credit Card Company processed double payment, how do I account?

MtWashUMC · ‎September 16, 2024

First off, I am not an accountant, and have limited QB skills. I took over as Treasurer for my church when our accountant abruptly left, and I am trying to find my way. When everything goes as planned everything reconciles and my reports are spot on. This is a rare case where I am stuck.

We keep no balance on our credit card, and pay it off monthly. For some reason our payment was made twice in July, effectively giving us a negative balance, or credit, on our card.

I have found when going to "Enter Bills" there is an option to change the radio dial button to "credit."

Here I am able to put in the amount, and then I go down to a box called "Account", which is where I normally apply whatever expense I have to their specific fund in our budget. But since this is not an expense, but a credit, I don't know what to apply this to.

Can anyone help make sense of this for me? Or am I trying to account for this "credit" incorrectly?

BigRedConsulting

If your payment to your credit card provider was made twice in the real world, then record it twice in QuickBooks. After doing that, the credit card account balance will go negative, and then as you record additional charges it'll start to return to a normal state.

MtWashUMC

That makes sense, but I don't think that is how our former accountant has set up our credit card payment. It is essentially entered in as any other bill, like an electric bill or lawn maintenance. So when I pay it, I have to assign an account to the expense, or in the case of the credit card, I enter in several different accounts since there are usually dozens of charges. It won't let me save the "bill" unless the amount due equals the total amount of expenses. So I essentially can't carry a "negative" on this bill, I can't enter more of a payment than the expenses accounted for. Ugh it seems like the solution to this is right there and I can't communicate well the problem I am having.

BigRedConsulting

Well, setting it up that way isn't the best accounting practice. And it creates conceptual issues like the one you're facing - where to put extra money you've transferred to your credit card account when you're not tracking the account as an account.

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Credit Card Company processed double payment, how do I account?