Managing credit cards within PocketSmith

When dealing with credit card purchase and repayment transactions in PocketSmith, we recommend treating all of the purchases on your card as expenses. Assigning your credit card repayment transactions to a transfer category will then ensure that you don't double count your credit card expenses.

Categorizing credit card transactions

• Purchase transactions

We recommend treating your credit card purchase transactions as you would any other expense transactions - by assigning them to appropriate expense categories. 

• Repayment transactions

Repayments made on credit cards will appear on both the 'paying' account and the card account. It's important to assign both sides of the repayment to a transfer category to ensure that you are not counting the repayment of your credit card purchases as an expense.

Setting up a transfer category for credit card repayments

It's best to assign your credit card repayment transactions to a category that is set up to correctly deal with transfers. 

1. Ensure you have a unique category set up to assign your credit card repayment transactions to, eg. Credit card repayments. For detail on how to create a new category please see:  Adding new categories
2. Then, head to your Credit card repayments category on the Categories page ( Manage > Categories)

3. Hover your mouse over the far right side of the row, click the three-dot menu and select Edit

   

   
   

4. Select Category Options

   
   

   

   
   

5. Tick the checkbox This is a transfer category 

   

   
   

6. After selecting this, another option will become available to you -  Mark transactions already assigned to this category as transfers.

   

   
   

   If this category already has transactions assigned to it that you'd like to be treated as transfers, choosing this option will also mark those transactions as transfers and display them with the transfer icon.

7. Click Save

   
   

   Once you have your transfer category set up, make sure to assign both sides of your credit card repayment transfer to that transfer category. For example, the repayment transaction leaving one account, and then that same transaction entering the credit card account.

   

   
   

8. If you'd like to, you can set up a transfer budget for your credit card repayments.

   
   

   Transfer budgets help to create an accurate forecast and allow you to keep track of your payments without adding to your overall budget figures. 

   
   

   To learn more about setting up transfer budgets, see Creating a transfer budget.