I am a new user of KMM 4.61 and after many years am hoping to eliminate Quicken and Windows. As an American using US dollars, I setup my checking and savings accounts and used OFX to download transactions as I have done in Quicken. Everything works OK so far.

I then set up a Liability - Credit Card account. Let's say my starting balance is $100. Payments and Charges show in the correct columns but if I charge $20 it says my balance is $80 when I now owe $120.

On the home page, my net worth is positive from my checking and savings balances, but is then increased by the amount of my credit card debt. This too is backwards.

In a liability account, shouldn't a charge increase the (negative) balance and a payment reduce my balance?

Is this a setting I can change?
Am I using the wrong kind of account?

A positive balance in a credit card means you owe that much money.

When you entered the credit card starting balance, did you enter a positive or a negative number?

As my starting balance I entered a charge of $100, since I will never have a balance above zero on a credit card.

Rvinfo wrote:As my starting balance I entered a charge of $100, since I will never have a balance above zero on a credit card.

I found that if EVERY amount I enter into the liability account is a negative amount, my net worth is displayed correctly. This means that my net worth is reduced by the debt in the liability account, as it should be.

It also means that every payment is shown as a charge, and every charge shows in the payment column.

Correct me if I am wrong, but that doesn't seem to be the way a liability account is intended to work.

You need to enter positive values in your liabilities account. A positive amount means your debt increases by that amount.
That's how liability accounts work, as per double-entry accounting principles. Sorry, this is one of the places where that surfaces to user view.

Hei Ku,

I appreciate your prompt replies, but maybe I am not explaining the problem correctly. I had the same problem with KMM 4.6.0 but have not used any older versions.

When I enter a charge into the liability account for my credit card, it increases my net worth. This is not correct.

When I enter a charge into the liability account for my credit card, it decreases how much I owe. This is not correct.

If I use nothing but negative numbers, both of the above issues are reversed and Kmymoney balances are correct. Please try entering a charge into a liability account and see what effect it has on your net worth.

If spending money increases net worth we would all be rich!

Hi,


The balances of your liability accounts should appear in red on the home page (I have one that is black because I just paid it and the balance is zero). The amount of Total Assets, bottom of left column, is positive, and the amount of Total Liabilities, bottom of right column, is negative (red). The Net Worth is the sum of the two and is smaller than the Total Assets, all as it should.

I added a charge (positive) in one credit card account, and my Net Worth on the home page did go down. I am using 1.0.5.

Thanks, Zeb.

I had selected "do not show transactions prior to 11/01/2011" and it messed something up. I set it back to 1/1/1900, deleted all transactions, downloaded them again and so far so good.