I do it pretty much the same way as Oscar, but with a twist. In Brazil it's
common to buy things in installments and I wanted to track the total I
still owe (future installments), the current credit card bill and account
for the full value of the expense when the transaction took place rather
than spreading it out. This is what I came up with (for purchases with
installments only).
This is the transaction the registers the full value of the purchase
(disregard the extra metadata, this is for a script I'm working on)
2025-11-20 * "Pedra de pizza" "Mercadolivre*Brasart" ^pedra-pizza
installments_summary: TRUE
installments_link: "pedra-pizza"
Expenses:Hobbies:Cooking 158.96 BRL
Liabilities:Felipe:BR:Nubank:Credit:Installments:BRL -158.96 BRL
This is one of the installments "moving" liability from the pool of future
installments, to the current credit card bill. You can see this is
installment ("parcela") 2 of 4. This means I've paid 1 already (NOV), I'm
paying one now (DEC) and there are two more to come (JAN and FEB) before
I'm done.
2025-12-20 * "Mercadolivre*Brasart - Parcela 2/4" "Pedra de pizza" ^
pedra-pizza
Liabilities:Felipe:BR:Nubank:Credit:CurrentMonth:BRL -39.74 BRL
date: 2025-12-20
ofx_fitid: "6940555d-bd20-4897-9594-1864584829ab"
ofx_memo: "Mercadolivre*Brasart - Parcela 2/4"
ofx_type: "STMTTRN"
Liabilities:Felipe:BR:Nubank:Credit:Installments:BRL 39.74 BRL
These are the accounts involved:
- Expense account charged for the full purchase when the transaction took
place: Expenses:Hobbies:Cooking
- Temporary liability account that is initially charged with the full
amount but is deducted from as pay monthly installments:
Liabilities:Felipe:BR:Nubank:Credit:Installments:BRL
- Liability account for the current credit card bill I'll have to pay at
the end of the cycle: Liabilities:Felipe:BR:Nubank:Credit:CurrentMonth:BRL
Also not sure this is the correct way but it works for me and numbers add
up.
@Oscar I'm interested in how you've set this up to make sure you don't miss
payments. Could you share it?
On Wednesday, March 18, 2026 at 4:16:29 PM UTC-3 Oscar Ale wrote:
> I'm going to assume that the two 'problems' you have is that you want to
> know 'how' to record credit card transactions using beancount, if not,
> disregard this and use the importers as Martin suggested.
>
> This is how I manage my credit card transactions, statement reconciliation
> and due dates, may not be the correct way but it works for me. Credit cards
> are a liability and carry a negative balance.
>
>
>
> 1) Record opening balance (if you are not importing all of your
> transaction history)
>
>
> 2026-01-01 * "Discover" "Opening credit card balance"
> Liabilities:Discover:Credit -1000.00 USD
> Equity:Opening 1000.00 USD
>
>
> 2) Record/import transactions as they happen, positive for expense
> accounts, negative (increase debt) for liability account
>
>
> 2026-01-05 * "Supermarket" "Groceries"
> Expenses:Groceries 50.00 USD
> Liabilities:Discover:Credit -50.00 USD ; Increase debt
>
>
>
> 2026-01-10 * "Amazon" "Supplies and clothes"
> Expenses:Clothes 40.00 USD
> Expenses:Supplies 30.00 USD
> Liabilities:Discover:Credit -70.00 USD ; Increase debt
>
>
> 3) When you receive your statement record interest accrued and run a
> balance to check against your statement balance
>
>
> 2026-01-15 * "Discover" "Interest"
> Expenses:Interest:Discover 30.00 USD
> Liabilities:Discover:Credit -30.00 USD ; Increase debt
>
>
>
> 2026-01-16 balance Liabilities:Discover:Credit -1150.00 USD
>
>
> 4) Record your credit card payment, you can add some meta data or a tag to
> show for which bill it was for, or the due date
>
>
> 2026-01-20 * "Discover" "Credit card payment for 2026-02" #discover-2026-02
> due: 2026-02-15
> Liabilities:Discover:Credit 100.00 USD ; Decrease debt
> Assets:Bank:Checking -100.00 USD
>
>
> If you are wanting to track your bills/due dates in a more granular way so
> that you don't miss a payment or you want to keep track of which payments
> you've already made, I have a method to do that as well, but this should
> suffice for basic credit card management and to check your balance.
>
>
>
> "Yitzhak Dashevsky" [email protected] – March 17, 2026 5:21 PM
>
>
> I use my credit card on a daily basis, and at the end of the month I
> receive a statement. I have two problems: first, I need to record each
> transaction to keep track of my expenses; second, I need to record the
> total outstanding balance along with the payment due date.
> Do you have any ideas on how to solve these issues?
>
>
>
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