Here is a scenario. I am paying a credit card bill by drawing a cheque on my savings bank account.

So, I open ledger. Go to the credit card account. Go to 'Payment' tab. But there is no provision for payment from another account.

Then I go to 'Transfer' tab. Enter a cheque number in Number field. Enter amount and enter the transaciton. On opening the ledger for the Savings bank account, this 'number' does not appear. In fact, I can enter any other number there.

I thought the same transaction must have the same number irrespective of the ledger in which it appears. (In GNU Cash, I remember, that was how it used to be!)

Is there a way out, so the same 'Number' appears in both the ledgers?

I think the problem is that, by definition, you cannot draw checks on a savings account. Try entering any transaction in a savings account: you cannot assign it a number. If you can draw checks on an account, that means it's not a savings account.

If you assign a check number to a transfer into a liability account, the number is not propagated back to the issuing account, but you can assign it manually there. However, I don't think this is sound practice: when you import your transactions from your bank's web site, that check will appear again as a withdrawal. I'm not sure if KMM will detect a match, since the type of transaction is not the same. Suppose now you imported your transactions from the credit card account: I guess it would appear as a payment, not a transfer. That's how you should enter it.

edit: in short : try following the rules: a savings account does not allow checking, and a check is not a transfer.

One more point: if this was a bank check (issued by the bank, not you) that you paid for from your savings account, you should still enter it as a withdrawal in the savings account and as a payment in the credit card account. In this case, since it's not your check, the number should not be relevant.

I did not get it.

Let me ask again.

I have an account with a bank. I have some money in that account. The bank has given me a cheque book --- printed cheque leaves with serial numbers. I use cheques to pay money to other parties. Let's call this Account A - type checking account. The last cheque I issed carried a number 123456. It was issued to some other person and is already entered in Kmymoney.

I also have a credit card account. The issuer sends me monthly credit card statements. Telling me how much do I owe them. I pay these bills by cheques on Account A.

So, I got my credit card statement. And I am now making the payment using cheque number 123457.

I open the ledger for the credit card account. Verify that the bill is correct and write the cheque out.

How do I enter this? Go to payment tab on the credit card account -> What do I choose? From or Pay to? No matter what I choose, I do not get to see Account A here. So, I create a new entity called Account A and tab to the next field, Category.

Here, I choose Account A. AND the tab changes to Transfer.

I go to number expecting to find 123457 there (I have setup auto increment numbers there). But no luck. In fact, I can enter 123456 here and it happily accepts!

So, what is happening??

OK. So, this is a regular check from a checking account. Your credit card company will enter this as a payment, and you should also enter it in KMM as a payment. A payment has an associated payee and associated category; not an associated account. So, you defined a new payee, "account A." As long as you know that this is just the name of the person making the payment, not the account making the payment.

A transfer in KMM will create two transactions: one in the issuing account, and one in the receiving account.

This operation is not a transfer, and that is why KMM cannot connect the withdrawal from the checking account and the payment to the credit card account. After all, nothing guarantees that check 123457 deposited to the latter is the same as check 123457 drawn on the former.

If you enter the withdrawal manually in your checking account (i.e. not from a downloaded bank statement), you also need to enter the check number. Since this operation is not a transfer either (it's a withdrawal), there is no way to connect it to the credit account.

That said, I download and import both my checking transactions and my credit card transactions. I pay my credit card online through a bank transfer. KMM does detect the connection, and flags them as matching.