Two credit cardholders, one account: how to manage your transactions

Having two credit cardholders in one account is common among business owners, couples, and families. The challenge with this set-up is identifying which transaction came from which credit cardholder. 

Thankfully, QuickBooks Online and other accounting software can help you manage your account and transactions. Many QuickBooks Online users would simply create a second bank feed for the secondary credit cardholder. While this may work in ensuring all transactions are downloaded into QuickBooks, it isn’t as effective in reconciling your monthly statements. 

Why? Instead of having just a single register for your statement, you now have two registers for your credit card, which can be quite confusing. 

Here’s a better option to help you reconcile your monthly statement. 

Step 1: Create a bank feed for each credit cardholder

Step 2: Make sure all transactions are posted from all bank feeds.

Step 3: When you get your statement, transfer all transactions from the secondary credit cardholder to the primary credit cardholder. Here’s how you can do it: 

• Log into the register of the secondary credit cardholder through the Char of Accounts. 
• Choose a transaction and click it.
• Unmatch it but do not close it. 
• Edit the credit card from the secondary cardholder to the primary holder. You’ll find this at the top part of the transaction that you opened. 
• After changing the credit card, save the changes, and close it. 
• Repeat the process for each transaction under the secondary credit cardholder until you’ve moved all transactions. 

Step 4: Check all unmatched transactions on the secondary cardholder’s bank feed and select “exclude” all. 

Step 5: Make sure the balance shows $0 on the secondary credit cardholder’s bank feed. Additionally, there shouldn’t be any more transactions in their bank feed. If there is, go back to step 3. 

Step 6: Now, you can easily reconcile your monthly statement.

It may seem like a long process. However, this workaround won’t take you more than a few minutes each month. 

Written by: Aileen – PracticePlus