I think that you may have misunderstood... Creating the deposit transaction as Kevin suggested isn't a fake transaction. You said that your original purchase was on the debit card. I'll assume that you spent $200 on the 10th of the months and were eventually credited back $57.75 on the 12th.
When you receive your bank statement, or you see your statement on- line, you should see a charge for $200 on the 10th. Even if the store credited the money back to your credit card, this original transaction wouldn't change. You would have a credit on the 12th for $57.75 (this credit you should assign to your clothing bucket which will reduce the amount MoneyWell shows you spent for clothing). In the example above (which is a little different from yours), you wouldn't go back and change the original transaction to $142.75. While the net change in your account is the same, that $142.75 wouldn't match any receipts that you have, and it wouldn't match any bank records. Instead, you should have two transactions. One on the 10th for $200 and one on the 12th for ($57.75), both assigned to the clothing bucket. In the same way, since you actually received the $57.75 in cash, you would still have two transactions, it's just that the second one is credited to your cash account rather the checking/debit account (but both are assigned to your clothing bucket). While you could go back and edit the original transaction, and make a split from the $200 into two $142.25 for clothing and $57.75 transfered to cash, this could make life complicated. For one thing, you don't have any receipts that show $142.75. Instead, you have a receipt for the first transaction of $200, and a second receipt for the second transaction of $57.75. A second reason your approach could get complicated is because it doesn't work consistently. Consider the situation where you tend to return things a lot. It's much more complicated to go back and continually edit the original transactions. Instead, you would want to actually show how the money came in to your hands--as a credit back from the store a few days later from the clothing that you returned. A third reason would be if you waited a long time after your original transaction to return the item. In this scenario, you will have already likely reconciled the original transaction. Would you want to edit a reconciled transaction? I wouldn't think so. Instead, if you receive the money back a month later on the 15th, you would leave the Mar 10th transaction alone and then show a deposit into your cash account on April 15th. Also, this would show that you actually overspent your clothing in Mar, and had a change of heart and received your credit in April. You could probably take whatever approach you wanted to. I think that what Kevin initially described and what I have tried to explain is more common in the banking/accounting world and would ensure consistency between your records, the bank's records, and the store's records. Creating the second transaction isn't creating a "fake" transaction--it's simply showing a transaction a few days after the original purchase where the store gave you money in exchange for returned merchandise. How you suggested reconciling the account below with MoneyWell or Quicken will probably not cause your financial documents to get out of whack, but it may be difficult a few weeks from now to understand what actually happened, especially if you were to try and investigate using bank records or receipts. I have no doubt it makes sense now, but since it doesn't actually match the documents you have, it could be difficult later on. Anyway, the choice is really up to you whether you'd want to go with what is more of a standard (which I'd really recommend) or take a different approach that you're comfortable with. Grace to you, Blair On Mar 21, 2009, at 5:44 AM, ciara belle wrote: > > nope sorry dont want to start creating 'fake' transactions... sigh > then when i look at a month from now i will be like what? where'd that > come from... > the original transaction is already removed - and reconciled... in the > q program i would have just added a line for misc -- so i guess i will > just do that :) also - if i Dont change the original split it looks > like i spent 57.75 MORE in that bucket (for which i returned items) > than i actually did. > > ml > > > On Mar 20, 5:08 pm, Kevin Hoctor <ke...@nothirst.com> wrote: >> On Mar 20, 2009, at 3:36 PM, ciara belle wrote: >> >>> HI there; >> >>> question for ya... >> >>> I spent around 200 at a store.... but some of the items didnt fit -- >>> so i brought them back - 57.75... but the store doesnt credit back >>> to >>> the debit card - they give back cash... so i need to change that >>> original transaction split to show i have that amount in cash now... >> >>> how do i do this? it has not yet been allotted... >>> thanks >> >> I wouldn't touch the original transaction (since that is the amount >> that will be removed from your account). Instead, I'd create a >> deposit >> transaction to my Cash account and assign that deposit to the same >> bucket as the original purchase. This will fund that bucket with the >> returned cash and you can go spend it on whatever you want still. >> >> Peace, >> >> Kevin Hoctor >> ke...@nothirst.com >> No Thirst Software LLChttp://nothirst.comhttp:// >> kevinhoctor.blogspot.com > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "No Thirst Software User Forum" group. To post to this group, send email to no-thirst-software@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to no-thirst-software+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/no-thirst-software?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
