
Credit card Available Payment does not match actual balance
My amount available for payment is less than the card balance and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I went back through all budget months to see if there was any overspending or other negative amounts. I went through the last couple of CC statements to make sure the balance is correct and reconciled.
My Total Available is greater than the total of all on-budget accounts, by exactly the balance on the CC – so the money needed for the CC payment is hidden somewhere in the budget! How does this happen? I realize I can now just move money from other categories to the CC to balance it out, but I would still like to find out where I've gone astray.
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Hi tobiv !
When your Credit Card Payment category is red, it can take some investigating to find out why.
By chance, was there a positive balance on your credit card at any point? When this happens, the positive balance is treated like cash. It'll appear in your To Be Budgeted to be allocated to your different categories and budgeted spending won't move funds to your credit card category until the balance is negative again (because there's no debt to pay off).
If that's not the case, have you entered any refunds for that credit card?
Let me know and we'll go from there! :)
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I have similar issues. My payment is also in red and the balances never seem to match for some reason. I don't touch the credit cards at all in the budget. I only make sure all the transactions and payments are added and categorized properly. Could there be an issue because the card's cycle begins and ends in the middle of the month.
Since I pay the balance off every month, I'm thinking of just reconciling it and starting at $0 to see what happens.
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Reasons the account balance and category balance may differ:
- starting balance on a paid-in-full card - category is lower
- overspending - category is lower
- uncategorized transactions - category is lower
- outgoing transfers to other on-budget accounts (e.g., gift card account, mixed funding splits) - category is lower
- purchase/cash-back rewards (should be categorized to TBB) - category is higher
- categorizing item returns as TBB (should use the original spending category instead) - category is higher
- reconciliation adjustment - category is lower for an outflow adjustment, higher for an inflow adjustment
- taking the account balance positive - category should be $0 in this case
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