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Record a credit-card payment

Open this in Talisk HQ

When you pay your credit card from your bank account, that's money moving between two accounts you own, not a new expense. Recorded as a transfer, it reduces your bank balance and pays down the card, and it never counts as a cost.

TALISK_HQ usually does this for you

Most card payments are matched automatically. When both sides have arrived (the payment leaving your bank account and the payment landing on the card) and there is no doubt about which goes with which, TALISK_HQ pairs them and records the transfer on its own. You do not have to do anything.

You can tell it happened by the Transfer ✓ chip on both lines. The tick means the state is settled and there is nothing left to click, which is what tells it apart from the Transfer button an unrecorded line offers in the same place.

It will not guess when it cannot be sure. It leaves the lines for you when:

  • the credit card is not set up as a Credit card account under Banking › Accounts
  • only one side has arrived so far
  • two payments of the same amount fall in the same few days, so more than one pairing would fit
  • either line has already been categorised or matched to a bill

Recording one yourself

  1. On Ledger › Banking › Transactions, find the payment leaving your bank account (a money-out line).
  2. Click Transfer, then pick the card that was paid under "It paid down one of these". If the card's own statement line is already imported, you can pair the two lines instead from the same window.

Why there's no category on a transfer

A transfer's Category column shows where the money went instead, for example Transfer → RBC Visa on the bank line and Transfer ← RBC Chequing on the card line. That is deliberate: the transfer already records the movement, so giving the line a category as well would book the same money a second time as an expense. An empty-looking category on a transfer is correct.

To reverse one, open the line's details with the chevron and click Undo transfer under Change what this is. That works from either line, and it releases both.

Good to know: A credit-card payment is a transfer between your own accounts, not an expense: recording it as a category would double-count it. You need the credit card set up as a card account first, and the bank line must be unmatched (unmatch it from any bill before marking it a transfer).

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