Why a credit card shows a negative balance

A credit card that shows a negative balance is working as intended. In Pennyweight, the sign of a balance tells you which way the money points: what you own is positive, what you owe is negative. Once you know the rule, every balance and every transaction reads the same way. To see your balances first, read see your accounts and balances.

The rule for balances

• Assets are positive. Checking, savings and cash hold money you have, so their balances are above zero.
• Liabilities are negative. A credit card or a loan holds money you owe. A card with $1,200 on it shows a balance of -$1,200.
• Net worth adds them up. Because debts are already negative, adding every balance together subtracts what you owe from what you own.

This applies to cards and loans you link from a US bank too. Your bank reports a card balance as a positive amount owed, and Pennyweight turns it negative when the account is linked and whenever that balance is refreshed.

The rule for transactions

A transaction's amount is the change it makes to that account's balance.

• Money out is negative. A purchase from checking, or a charge on your card, lowers the balance.
• Money in is positive. A paycheck, a refund, or a payment toward your card raises the balance.

So a card payment shows up twice: negative in checking, where the money left, and positive on the card, where it brings the balance back toward zero. Both are moves between your own accounts. Transfers aren't spending explains when that pair counts as spending and how to keep it out.

A manual account's balance is its opening balance plus all of its transactions. See balance looks wrong after an import.

How to see it

1. Ask your AI to list your accounts and balances.
2. Ask it why a card or loan balance is negative.
3. Ask how much you owe in total. Your AI adds up what you owe on cards and loans.

What you'll see

For the first question, your AI finds the card and its balance, and explains that a negative balance on a card is the amount you owe. For the second, it lists each card and loan with the amount owed, then gives the total. A loan you made to someone else shows a positive balance, so it isn't part of what you owe: that person owes you.

Good to know

• Enter what you owe as a positive number. When you or your AI add a card or loan by hand, or set its opening balance, give the amount owed as a positive number. Pennyweight stores it as negative. A negative opening balance on a card or loan is refused, because it could mean either a debt or a credit on an overpaid card. See set or correct an opening balance.
• IOU balances come from their transactions. A person account (money you lent or borrowed) has no opening balance. Entries on it count as they are: when you lend, the amount is positive and the balance shows what they owe you. A repayment is negative. On money you borrowed, the balance is negative. A transaction from your own account that you attach to the person counts the other way, so $200 out of checking adds $200 to what they owe you. Track money you lent or borrowed walks through it.
• IOUs don't count as cash. Your cash total includes checking, savings and cash accounts only.
• Net worth sorts by sign, not account type. Any balance below zero counts under liabilities, even on a checking or cash account that's overdrawn. Any balance above zero counts under assets, including a card with a credit on it. Check your net worth covers the rest.
• More than one currency. Each account keeps its own currency, and its balance is never converted. If your accounts hold dollars and euros, your net worth, and your cash total across all your ledgers, come back per currency plus one total converted to your display currency at the latest exchange rate, with the rate's date. If no current rate is available, you get the per-currency figures only. See accounts and totals in more than one currency.