When you use a Journal Entry to bypass the provided tools you can cause other issues down the road. Names are not reported from journal entries and it bypasses the differential between accrual and cash reporting.
Notwithstanding, when you post A/R in a journal entry a customer name is required, not a vendor/contractor. You cannot save a JE with A/R without a customer. And you do not post credit card expenses in a JE, either.
Expenditures performed with a credit card are recorded as expenses on the date the card is charged, not when you pay it. Two ways to look at buying and getting reimbursed.
One. You claim expense and then collect from contractor or customer as income. Doing so you would use billable expenses and either a customer or job name.
Two. You post not as an expense but as a passthrough item and charge it to a Current Asset loan to track balance owed by contractor. When you pay contractor for their billed services you just deduct in the check from the loan asset account.
Essentially you will only have two transaction entries involved either way.
Another issue with what you propose, contractors by definition are not your employees and thus what you pay a contractor cannot be Payroll Expense
