Credit Card bill, end of the year

Good day to you, akmurray. 

I know how crucial it is to close your books to guarantee that everything continues as intended and to avoid any unintentional modifications that might have an impact on your financial reporting. Let me share some insights to help you achieve it in QuickBooks Online (QBO).

In QBO, closing your previous fiscal year books and preparing for the new one is very essential. This helps you identify whether all your financial transactions are balanced and prepare your business for the coming year. That said, you can follow the guidelines in this article on how to close your books properly: Year-end guide for QuickBooks Online.

Regarding your concern, you can simply follow how the transactions appear in your credit card statement when reconciling them. This is because QuickBooks should have a record of transactions similar to what your actual credit card shows.

Once done with the reconciliation process and reviewing your financial data, you can close your books to prevent changes to past transactions. Here's how:

1. Go to Settings and select Accounts and settings.
2. From the Advanced tab, click Edit ✎ in the Accounting section.
3. Turn on the Close the books switch.
4. Enter a closing date.
5. Choose the Allow changes after viewing a warning and entering a password option from the drop-down menu if you want to require a password before editing your closed books.
6. Select Save and then Done.

For more details about the process, please refer to this article: Close your books in QuickBooks Online.

When you're ready to pay the credit card bills, you can record the necessary transactions as indicated in the statement.

Additionally, here's a handy article for changing the closing date or recovering a forgotten password for your locked books:: Edit your closed books in QuickBooks Online.

Feel free to get in touch with us if there's any help you need. As always, we're always right here to address you if you have any questions about closing your books. Have a great day ahead.

@akmurray  RE: The closing date on my credit card is in middle of the month. So I will pay my credit card in mid Jan 2024 with charges that are from Dec 2023. Do I worry about this or just let the expenses for Dec post in Jan?

This isn't an issue if you create and use a Credit Card account, which operates like a bank account, only in reverse - when you charge something, the balance of the card goes down, unlike when you write a check where the bank balance goes down.

When using a Credit Card type  account, charges are individually entered on the dates they happen and so the statement date/payment dates don't matter.