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How to integrate with Amazon/Chase credit card? #28

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jeff47 opened this issue Aug 6, 2021 · 1 comment
Open

How to integrate with Amazon/Chase credit card? #28

jeff47 opened this issue Aug 6, 2021 · 1 comment

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@jeff47
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jeff47 commented Aug 6, 2021

We have an Amazon credit card that is used exclusively at Amazon. I'm not sure how to integrate this with the amazon-ynab-sync tool. If I set up a new cash account for the sync, it'll duplicate my charges I think with the ones showing up from the Amazon card. Is there a way to do this? I'd love to be able to categorize the charges on the card... right now I just lump them into a single "household" category.

@vjjft
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vjjft commented May 24, 2022

In case anyone comes across this issue:

I have used this utility to categorize Amazon purchases alongside a linked credit card account (Chase/Amazon or otherwise) with Amazon charges. The following description is detailed & long, but in practice the process is very quick and natural.

  • Start with a linked credit card account C with Amazon charges.
    • Categorize all Amazon charges on C as 'sync Amazon' (or similar)
    • Get the total amount X$ of those charges; either:
      • Select all of those transactions and see the total in the top right
      • Look in the budget at the net activity of 'sync Amazon'
  • Add an unlinked credit card account A to use with this tool.
    • Run amazon-ynab-sync with A as the YNAB account name
    • Categorize the Amazon items as relevant to your budget
  • Add an unlinked tracking asset account T
    • Add a pair of 'psuedo' transactions in T that net to 0$:
      • Inflow of X$: payee 'Charges on Credit Card'; category 'sync Amazon'
      • Outflow of X$: payee 'Payment: A'

At this point you should see that:

  • T has a 0$ balance
  • budget category 'sync Amazon' has 0$ assigned/activity/available
  • A has a near 0$ balance (small discrepancies will occur due to item transaction date vs charge posting date)
  • Any categories with a negative available amount still show as credit overspend as expected

Next:

  • Assign amounts to your budget categories, totaling Y$.
    • This results in A having Y$ available for 'payment'
  • Move the A payment amount Y$ to C
    • This represents the money assigned to the Amazon items being available for Y$ payment to C

At this point the Amazon item transactions have been substituted in for the Amazon charge transactions and can be accounted/budgeted for with zero net effect to any of: Income; Spending; Activity per category.

To maintain this:

  • repeat the steps and adjust/update the pseudo transactions in T and move payment from A to C
  • each month add a new pair of pseudo transactions in the tracking account.

When reviewing, verify that category 'sync Amazon' activity is 0$ and that the balance of T is 0$; if they aren't, adjust the pseudo transactions as needed to correct that.

Note: The above can be adapted to more than one credit card and more than one Amazon account, without adding more tracking accounts or categories.

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