Credit card accounts—Consoles

ID

This required field makes it easier for you to identify specific credit cards, particularly if you have a number of them. Enter a unique identifier that can quickly remind you of this specific card's purpose. This is particularly important if you have not entered descriptions, which are optional.

You can differentiate credit cards versus debit cards in both the Card ID and Description fields by using an abbreviation such as CC and DB.

Description

Enter an optional description for this credit card. Assuming your company has several credit cards, this description explains how this particular card is used.

Type

Choose the card type from the dropdown list. Once the credit card information is saved, this field is no longer editable.

Payment method

Your choice of Credit or Debit defines this credit card as either a credit card or a debit card.

If you define the card as a debit card, and you want to use this card to pay Accounts Payable bills, you must also select a bank account and vendor ID for this card in the Accounting information tab.

Address line 1 ... Country

Enter the relevant address information in these fields.

Expiration

Choose the month and year when the credit card expires.

Status

The default status is Active. However, if you are no longer using the card and do not want it to appear on lists, choose Inactive. You can always see inactive cards later by selecting the Show inactive checkbox in the Credit Cards list.

Last reconciled balance and date

These fields are displayed only for credit cards. If you have previously reconciled the account for a card, the balance and date of that reconciliation are displayed here.

Cut-off date

Enter the date after which reconciliation can begin. This field appears for accounts that have never been previously reconciled and is removed after the first reconciliation.

Credit card offset account or Debit card checking account

You select one or the other, depending on whether you defined the credit card as a credit or debit card, and if you want to pay Accounts Payable bills with this card.

Credit cards: If you defined this card as a credit card, select an offset account for its transactions. You might want to create a new credit card liability account to track your credit card liabilities separately from your other Accounts Payable liabilities.

If you choose a separate liability account that account is credited as you enter charges against this credit card. Thus, instead of crediting the cash account, the system credits the new credit card liability account. This makes a difference in how the Intacct system posts General Ledger entries, depending on whether you select an account that is different from the default Accounts Payable offset account, and if your company is on the accrual or cash basis. For accrual-based companies, the expense is posted to the General Ledger as of the date of the payment request.

If your company is on a cash basis, and you enter a credit card transaction, the assumption is that cash has not left your bank. Nevertheless, it is a liability. A bill you pay in Accounts Payable goes against your Accounts Payable offset account. When you pay it by credit card, you transfer that liability to the new credit card liability account. (However, if that account were the same Accounts Payable offset account, there would be no difference in the General Ledger.) It is only when you pay the credit card company back from Accounts Payable that the transaction is posted to the General Ledger.

Debit cards: If you defined this credit card as a debit card, choose a checking account to associate the debit card with a specific checking account. This checking account must be the same account for which the card was issued. Thus, you must already have this checking account defined via Cash Management > All/Setup > Accounts> Checking. With regard to General Ledger posting, the General Ledger account used is the same one as you choose for the checking account, because you have associated that checking account with this charge account here.

Default GL journal

Whenever you do a credit card transaction in Cash Management, this is the journal into which it is placed. This could be the same or a different journal from the one you choose in Accounts Payable for paying bills. You can track these transactions with greater or lesser granularity.

The system suggests a default, which is the same journal used for AP payments (go to Accounts Payable > All > Setup > Configuration). However, you can override this. In the event that you do not enter any journal, the system still defaults to this journal.

For credit cards, all transactions (charges on the card and payoffs for the card) use the same journal. For debit cards, banks have different journals (Default Payables Journal and Default Receivables Journal) specified via Cash Management > All/Setup > Accounts > Checking > Edit > Accounting information tab.

If you have not opted for dual-method reporting, you have choices for one journal. However, if you did opt for dual method reporting (go to General Ledger > > All > Setup > Configuration), you have choices for an additional journal so that you can choose separate cash and accrual journals. In the accrual-basis journal dropdown, you must choose an accrual journal. The same also applies for the cash journal. This applies only to credit cards and not to debit cards.

Finance charges account and Other fees account

Other fees account is used only for credit card reconciliation, and does not apply to debit cards.

During reconciliation, you can enter finance charges and other fees. Typically, you want to always post these expenses to the same account. Thus you can choose a default account for them here so that you can track them separately, and not have to specify their account manually during reconciliation. However, this is not a required field, and you can enter the account manually during reconciliation. You can also override a default account that you do set here later when you enter these transactions in the reconciliation process.

Default department and Default location (location is required for multi-entity shared companies and Enterprisecompanies that have selected the Enforce Balance Sheet by Location feature).

If your company uses them, you can select a department and/or location combination here to enforce this combination whenever an Accounts Payable transaction occurs that draws on this bank account, as compared to any combination that has been selected in Accounts Payable. If your company does not use departments and/or locations, these fields are not displayed.

For example, you pay a bill in Accounts Payable. The bill has an expense account, and the Accounts Payable application also has an offset account. That offset account can have a department and/or location specified for it in the Configure Accounts Payable page (go to Accounts Payable > All > Setup > Configuration). However, you do not want that department and/or location used for transactions involving this account. Consequently, you can assign a department and/or location here. When you make a payment with funds drawn on this account for a bill in Accounts Payable, then the credit card account side of the transaction (the liability account), is tagged with the department and/or location assigned here, regardless of what you choose in Accounts Payable.

In addition, if the Enforce Balance Sheet by Location feature is enabled, the location becomes required.

Disable inter-entity transfers

This option is displayed for multi-entity shared companies when inter-entity transfers are enabled globally (from the top-level company go to Company > All > More > Subscriptions and selectMulti-Entity Management, then select Configure). You can exclude this account from inter-entity transfers even if you have globally enabled IET for the entire multi-entity shared structure of companies.

Vendor ID

This field is used only for credit cards. This is where you make the association to a vendor in AP so that you can pay off the credit card.

You enter credit card transactions in the Cash Management application, but pay off the credit card as you would pay off any other bill in the Accounts Payable application. But to be able to pay this bill in Accounts Payable, you must create a vendor in Accounts Payable for this purpose. Typically, you select New, and then create a new vendor specifically for this credit card. All credit card transactions (charges and payments) then go to the ledger of the vendor. In effect, charges are totaled to become a bill from that vendor. When you pay off the charges, you do so by paying that vendor in Accounts Payable.