Karen, VISA is just a payment network. They are not a credit card company. They don’t issue cards, or extend credit to anyone. Banks do that part and VISA allows them to use the VISA brand on the bank’s cards. (which means payments will go through the VISA network) Those cards can come in many forms. You’re probably most familiar with the credit type associated with the brand, but branded debit cards have been around since at least the early 90s. (I had one in ’92) Branded gift/pre-paid cards are also now ubiquitous and are available at nearly any retailer, grocery store and convenience store. MasterCard and AMEX also have branded cards. I’m not aware of Discover having any cards other than the credit type. (also VISA/MasterCard is pretty much the same company now)
On that note, here’s how you handle each type: Credit - create a Credit Card type account. (you can just use a plain liability account if you like, but GnuCash has a Credit Card type for you) Debit - nothing special. It is merely a means to access your checking/savings/money-market/other account, so just create one GnuCash account for each real-world account. The fact that the account has an associated card doesn’t affect this. Gift/Pre-paid - Create a Current Asset account, potentially one for each card. I have mine set up as Assets:Current Assets:Prepaid Expenses:Gift Cards & Pre-paid Cards, and then under that various purposes like ‘restaurants’, ‘groceries’, ‘shops’, ‘movies’, et cetera, with an account under each of those for each individual card. (so I can track the remaining balance easily) Some people lump all their pre-paid cards together since they are usually not reloaded (though you can) and discarded when empty. I don’t mind having them separate, not just because I don’t usually spend them all in one shot and like to see the balance at a glance, but also because I have several that are received as recurring gifts so the GnuCash account tends to hang around for many years. Regards, Adrien _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
