How to enter a credit card payment in QuickBooks

Intuit's prerequisite is to reconcile the credit card account before you record payments to it. If unpaid bills remain on the account, QuickBooks shows you what's still left to pay.

Have the payment details in front of you: how much you paid, the date, the bank account the money came from, and either the cheque number or the electronic funds transfer (EFT) number.

Then choose a method. Pay down credit card, in the steps below, handles most payments and has a box for cheques. If you wrote a physical cheque and want it entered as a cheque, the note after the steps covers that. If both the bank account and the card are connected for bank transactions, you can record the payment as a transfer from the bank feed instead, so the two sides are paired.

1. Select + New (or + Create).
2. Under Other, select Pay down credit card.
3. Choose the credit card you paid.
4. Enter the amount of the payment, the date you made it and the bank account it came from.
5. If you paid by cheque, tick I made a payment with a cheque and enter the cheque number. If you paid electronically, enter the Electronic funds transfer (EFT) number.
6. To add notes or attach files, select Memo and attachments and follow the prompts.
7. Select Save and close.

For the bank feed route, go to All apps, select Accounting, then select Bank transactions, and choose the account the payment left from. Select the transaction, set Transaction type to Credit Card Payment, and choose the account you're paying, such as the credit card account. Look for Pair in the Match/Categorise column, then select Post.

Pay down credit card saves the payment against the card you selected, from the bank account you named, with its date, its cheque or EFT number, and any memo or attachments you added.

On the bank feed route, the Pair label shows that QuickBooks has matched the payment to the corresponding transaction in the card account, so the money leaving the bank and the payment arriving on the card are tied together.

Posting from the bank feed can be reversed. Open the Posted tab from Transactions, choose the account, and select the undo icon in the Undo column; on the other version of the banking page it's Bank transactions, the Posted tab and Undo in the Action column. The transaction goes back to the Pending tab, where you can change it. Intuit's tip is to get changes like this done before your monthly reconciliation.

No Pair showing in the Match/Categorise column? QuickBooks couldn't match the payment to the transaction in the other account by itself, so pair it by hand. Open the other account, find the transaction on its Pending tab and select Match.

If QuickBooks suggests the wrong transaction, select Find other match to look for the right one, or Match on the other version of the banking page. And if the account you need isn't in the Category dropdown, select + Add new account there.