I have read thru your reply a couple times, and I am still a bit confused.
1 - Your first step ... Writing a check. Normally, I would have entered the credit card charge before attempting to write a check to pay something I haven't entered yet. Additionally, you said (#5) to enter "Accounts Payable" in the Expenses tab. As an accountant, I have been conditioned to never use a control account (AR, AP) directly, and unless I misunderstood something regarding Credit Cards, the liability for a credit card charge is not posted to AP but to an account used for each credit card used. ???? This entry would credit a cash/bank account and debit AP, and there would generate an imbalance in the GL AP account and the total on the AP Detail report, no?
2 - Your second step .... using Enter Bills to record the charge to the credit card. Here, unless I really misunderstood the QB instructions, I don't use Enter Bills. I go to the credit card liability account in the COA, and right click, then select the item for "Enter Credit Card Charges". In this entry, I post the individual transactions to the affected GL accounts (normally expenses),and then Save. This posts the total of the charge to the liability account and the debit to each of the GL accounts listed in the lower portion of the entry. So now I have a credit in one of the credit card liability accounts offset by the debits to the other accounts entered in the entry.
3 - You then say "After that, pay the bill." To me this seems like this would credit cash/bank a second time and offset with the credit card liability account. This would be ok, making Step 1 unnecessary, and more than that, generating an imbalance between the GL and supporting data.
I understand trying to get the detail into a "bill" status so it can be paid using the Pay Bills portion, but this is a lot of extra steps to simply be able to enter alpha characters in the check field, which is a reference field in most of today's systems.
It seems like it would be easier to simply Write Checks and list the credit card liability # in the lower portion of the check entry, leave the check # blank, and check-mark Print Later, then go to the Check Register and enter the alpha characters (BILLPAY) in the check number field, and remove the check from the print queue ... IF I could find out how to get to the Print Queue. How do I find that? Documentation doesn't tell me how to get there, only that there IS a way to remove something from the print queue!!!
Is that not easier and far less time consuming, plus it doesn't adversely impact the Control Account AP?
Can you tell me how to access the print queue?
Or am I really way off base here? Thanks in advance.
