Question on credit card balances

[Oliver Hardy]

If I run:

ledger -p sep reg credit

I get a listing of all credit card transactions for the month of September.

My problem is that the running balance is always decreasing instead of increasing.

I have a balance of $333.07. I enter a transaction for $55.00

2020/09/01 Health

            Expenses:Insurance   $55.00

            Liabilities:Credit_Card

The running balance shown on the report is now $248.34 ($333.07 - $55.00).

Shouldn't it be $581.41 ($333.07 + $55.00)?

Am I doing something wrong or is this how double entry accounting is supposed to work?

Thank you

[psionl0]

Ordinarily a credit card would have a negative balance (that is, the balance should be $-333.07) so that when you do a spend on the credit card the balance will becomes -$333.07 -$55.00 = -$388.07.

If your credit card has a positive balance then it means that you made deposits that totaled more than what you owed on your credit card and that would mean that your new balance is as reported. Something tells me that this is not the case ......

[Oliver Hardy]

I understand what you are saying. My qusetion now is: How do I fix it?

Do I edit my ledger file and put a minus sign before all credit card transactions? Or only before payments I've made to the card? Is the way I enter my credit card transactions incorrect? Do I go to the start of the file and edit opening balances?

Thanks

[psionl0]

Your sample transaction is already correct. I would need to see all of your credit card transactions to pin point any errors. I'm guessing that when you originally did an opening balance on your credit card that you put a positive balance instead of a negative balance on the card?

[Oliver Hardy]

No, I had the opening credit card balance from back in July as a negative number. One last question, if I may.

If I have a credit card balance of $500.00 but only pay $200.00 is this correct:

2020/09/01 Bank

    Liabilities:Credit Card   $200.00  ; partial payment

    Assets:Checking

or is there some way to indicate this is a partial payment against a $500.00 outstanding balance?

Thank you

[psionl0]

That is the correct way to record a payment to the credit card.

Of course, if the balance prior to the payment was really positive $500 then the new balance would be positive $700. I think you meant that the original balance was minus $500 so that the new balance would be minus $300.

You can run ledger bal credit to check (do this before and after you make the payment entry)

[Oliver Hardy]

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for heping me with this. I wen tthru my ledger.dat file and corrected a few entries and now "ledgr bal credit"

gives me the correct total.

Thank you