Advice for Business Credit Report
Q. I'm trying to get my business account in order for taxes, and am having trouble understanding the best way to handle my business credit card transactions in Quicken Home & Biz 2002. Everything's hunky dory when I pay for things out of checking, as I get line-item specificity for each transaction within the main business bank account. But I don't know the best approach for the credit card. I'm about to delete the credit card account I set up and enter everything all over again once I figure this out, so want to get it right this time. Could anyone give me a quick run down on how this is done? Or point me to an on-line resource? I assume there's some way to list the line items on a credit card bill so that individual purchases can be categorized, but what's the best way to do this or set this up? For instance, I have a credit card bill with entertainment and office expenses. How can I pay the whole bill from my business checking account with one check, and record the individual transaction items separately so that they are categorized correctly when it's tax time?
A. The categorization of expenses from credit card charges occurs in the Quicken credit card account. Basically each item on your credit-card bill becomes a transaction in your Quicken credit-card account: categorize a given credit-card transaction the same as you would a similar checking account transaction. (Just as in your checking account, some credit-card transactions can have more than one category: handle this with "splits" just as you would in your checking account). When you pay the bill from your checking account, you merely transfer the total amount of your payment from the checking account to the credit-card account, reducing the outstanding balance; but the categorization of the expenses has already occurred - the expense occurred when you made the original charge. When you produce a Quicken report, you can select what accounts (and what categories for that matter) you want to see in that report. Include the credit-card account in your business expense report(s). If you don't already have a credit-card that permits downloads or transactions via the internet, consider getting one: it can be a real time saver. .