The $1000 you charge to your credit card is always treated as an expense.
The expense would be broken into categories like food:diningout and gas. Or
some people lump it all into one category, which makes budgeting difficult.
When you pay $500 to your credit card company, you want Money to treat this
as a "transfer" from your checking account to your credit card. However, if
you use "transfer", the Money budget picks this up as another expense. So,
it looks like you had a total expense of $1500. By using a withdrawal from
checking and selecting "Credit Card Payment: accountname" as the category,
the budget works properly.

Jeff

"Tagman" <Tagman_2000[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:eRqTBqHYDHA.1736[at]TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
- quote -

Budget planner does too many strange things to create test cases out of
every one, but in neither case should the transfer or credit card payment
effect the budget in the slightest--unless the account is set in its details
to not be included in budget planner. In that case, it will show as transfer
in or out of budget. It will probably continue to do this until the flag is
changed or the budget is redone or transactions effecting it are changed.
The latter may explain the behavior you cite.

I remain skeptical that there is different treatment in budget planner of
Transfer vs. Credit Card Payment when all other things are equal.

"Jeff Durham" <root[at]localhost> wrote in message
news:uD1SzYHYDHA.656[at]tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
- quote -

You have asserted this limitation several times. I'm aware of no such
difference between Credit Card Payment and Transfer. Could you provide more
data? As near as I've ever been able to tell, Credit Card Payment is a weak
cousin of Transfer in every regard. I've never seen it make any difference
in Budgeting or elsewhere.

"Jeff Durham" <root[at]localhost> wrote in message
news:ubu6EeBYDHA.2152[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I forgot to mention in my previous post, when using "Credit Card Payment:
account name" as the category, use withdrawal rather than transfer. It is
really a transfer, but necessary in Money 2003 to make budgeting work
correctly.

Jeff


"VJ" <me[at]nospam.iam> wrote in message
news:eJaJEf8XDHA.2448[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

At least for Money 2003, use "Credit Card Payment: account name" as the
category. This is a transfer behind the scenes, but is necessary to make
budgeting work.

Jeff

"VJ" <me[at]nospam.iam> wrote in message
news:eJaJEf8XDHA.2448[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

If you have the credit card setup as an account, there is absolutely a
benefit of using Transfer as opposed to some expense category--Transfer
moves the cash from one account to offset the liability already incurred, by
the charges you've made, in the other account.

Here's a relevant FAQ:
---
Q): I've entered charges in my credit card account, when I pay the bill
aren't I spending twice? Is my card a category or account?

A): These, and many other fundamentally related questions, are frequently
asked by people new to personal finance software and formalized accounting
methods.

There are two ways to approach this whole issue. Let's describe the more
useful, and generally preferred, way first: You setup Accounts, not
Categories, for the tools you use to spend money. I.e., setup accounts for
your checking account and your credit card account(s).

When you spend on the cards, you record transactions in the credit card
account for WHY you spent the money. E.g., $50 to MCI WorldCom for
category:subcategory "Utilities:Long Distance."

When you pay the credit card bills, you "Transfer" money from, say, your
Checking Account to your Visa Account. Paying a bill like this is not an
expense. It's just taking money you have and applying it to expenses (i.e.,
liabilities) you already incurred--hence the transfer. The special category
"Credit Card Payment" is just a less confusing (but less insightful) way to
say "Transfer" and it behaves exactly the same except you can't create a
scheduled "Credit Card Payment" but you can create a scheduled "Transfer"
and it works exactly the same.

The second way, if you are not ready to dive in just yet, is to categorize
the entire payment to the credit card as "Miscellaneous" and not worry about
what, in turn, the credit card charges were for. In this scenario you don't
even have to setup the credit card as a separate Account. If you really want
to use Money to understand where the money comes from and goes to, don't do
it this way; it masks what you are really spending the money for.

Money provides an intermediate path that can be simple to start while you
are getting up and running and can easily morph into the recommended method.
When you create the account, tell it you want to "AutoBalance" the account.
(This is the same as the radio buttons "Account tracking: I want to track
individual charges/Just track the amount I owe" on the Account Details
page.) When AutoBalance is enabled, a "Credit Card Payment:[credit card
account]" or the more normative "Transfer:[credit card account]" will popup
a dialog box to balance the account. It will also do automagically what was
outlined above as a manual task: it will enter an account adjustment
transaction to expense the entire balance as "Miscellaneous."

There is much more on this in Help, the Help videos, Audio Help, and the
book that came with Money. Also look at the sample file. The key hurdles for
many people to cross are that 1) Accounts are HOW you spend/receive money
and are where individual expense and income transactions are recorded. 2)
Categories and Subcategories are WHY you spend/receive money and are
recorded as transactions in accounts. 3) Transfer is how you move Money from
one account (say a cash account of which checking is one type) to another
(say a liability account of which credit card is one type.)

"VJ" <me[at]nospam.iam> wrote in message
news:eJaJEf8XDHA.2448[at]TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
- quote -

I'm a little confused after reading a few posts. How do most users treat
credit card payments from a checking account for example? Is there a
benefit to using transfer over withdrawal?

Thank you.