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I've created a credit card liability account. My spouse shares my credit card and makes several purchases on it as well. Each of us makes a payment directly against that account at the end of the month to pay it off.

My spouse doesn't currently use GnuCash, so I track all purchases against the account, but I need a way to record her payment. Where should I source her transfer/payment from?

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Presumably, you and your wife each have separate checking accounts. Each payment to the joint credit card would look something like

                                               Total Increase           Total Decrease
March payment     Liabilities:Joint CC              500
My payment        Asset:My checking account                                   250
Her payment       Asset:Her checking account                                  250

If you want to get fancier, create two subaccounts Liabilities:Joint CC:Mine and Liabilities:Joint CC:Hers to track each of your charges separately.

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  • this makes sense. Since I don't track her checking account, if I added one, her account would constantly be in the negative impacting my net assets? – Aaron Rustad Mar 18 '19 at 11:32
  • You would also need to keep track of deposits to her account. If you don't want to keep full records for both sets, just add some token deposits to her checking account that exactly match her contributions to the credit card account. This would keep the account at $0. However, you probably want to at least keep accurate records of her income, even if you don't track all her other spending. In that case, log a monthly lump-sum withdrawal from her checking account just to keep the balance correct when she balances her checkbook. – chepner Mar 18 '19 at 11:42
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If it's "your" credit card, when your spouse spends money on it, basically she has taken a loan from you. You owe the credit card company for it, and she thereby owes you the money she spent on your card.

Money owed to you is an "Asset", so when she spends money on the card, that's a transfer from "Liabilities:Credit Card" to "Asset:Money Spouse Owes Me".

When she pays the card, which is effectively paying you back for what she spent, that's a transfer back, from "Asset:Money Spouse Owes Me" to "Liabilities:Credit Card". You no longer owe the money to the credit card, and she paid her debt to you back.

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  • And even if it's a shared CC, not "yours", if you're not tracking her accounts, this sounds like the way to go. – TripeHound Jan 6 '20 at 8:47
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As usual its a question of perception.

If its your card with her name on it ( you are 100% liable for it) then yes she owes you money.

The CC will be a liability one way or another. The key here is the source. You can use an equity account directly to source the payment money from (it will not show as revenu) or you can use assets+revenu account (in wich case you will also be tracking her revenu)

you can think of equity account as a Federal Reserve...and "print money out of thin air".

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Welcome!

I'm very new to GnuCash; my level of expertise with it is still very low. I'm also very new to Stack Exchange, too.

Here are some possibilities:

Income:Spouse contributions

Income:Gifts:Spouse

or, at the top level:

"Spouse Contributions"

Technically, these payments aren't Income, e.g. wages, interest, dividends, capital gains, so I don't know if using "Income" is the correct approach.

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