S/O - Credit Card receipts, do you reconcile/monitor those with your statement?

[Bambam]

Do you keep all your CC receipts and check them off against your credit card statement? Online? Or when you get a paper bill (assuming you do)? Do you track the debits/credits in Quicken or some other program? 

I know the places we typically use our credit card, so anything outside that or outside our normal charge is something I notice when I review our bill. 

But, quite frankly, if someone had our card number and used it at our regular stores for reasonable amounts on an infrequent basis, I'm not sure I would notice.  Trying to figure out the easiest/quickest way to check this. 

So far, I don't think it has been a problem only because when we've had numbers stolen, people seem to go to expensive stores and buy expensive stuff, so I'm assuming they aren't interested in just spending $47 at Target and $85 at the grocery store once a month. 

[regentrude]

We don't. DH monitors the statements and will sometimes ask me what a transaction is when he doesn't recognize the vendor. We wouldn't notice a fraudulent $47.58 bill from Aldi or Kroger or $25.97 from the gas station up the street, but anything above $100 and anything from an unusual company would trigger scrutiny. 

We try to pay absolutely everything by credit card to earn the miles, so there are dozens and dozens of receipts. As long as the transaction looks reasonable and fits within our normal spending pattern, we accept it as correct.

Edited November 21, 2023 by regentrude

[QueenCat]

We use Quicken to download and reconcile. I don't keep receipts anymore. We use our cc whenever possible to earn hotel points, so there would be way too many receipts to keep up with.

[Pawz4me]

We use Quicken, but we do keep paper receipts for a few months. We have a very simple storage system--a shoe box with a slit cut in the lid. When it gets full we pull some off the bottom and trash them. Sometimes it's easier to grab a paper receipt for a return.

Mainly we just check our credit card and banking apps once a day to make sure everything is legit. Since we do it on the daily it should be relatively easy to catch anything. And it takes a minute or two, often less.

[TheReader]

We don't, but we have alerts set up so that we get a notice immediately of: 

-all transactions at gas stations
-all transactions online
-all transactions over I think $1 (because a lot of times, a fraud will start with a tiny little test charge)

We've had our cards compromised a couple of times, and after the first time, DH set up all of these alerts. So he gets it in real time, and can immediately follow up. 

[elegantlion]

I write down everything I spend in my planner. I do this more to keep to my budget than reconciling. I also use credit cards for 99% of purchases. I will double check everything when I pay my credit card or add items to my budget ledger- which is about every week or two (that's also for budgeting purposes more than any great financial strategy.) 

I keep receipts in an envelope by month and will shred them after about 6-8 months, depending upon when I get to it. 

[marbel]

Yep, alerts. I get text alerts usually before I'm out of the store. My husband tells me if he's using the card, or I text him when I see the alert. Super simple.

[KatieJ]

We enter then into quicken then toss the paper receipt unless we need it for tax purposes. 
I did find fraud twice on my CC. Supposedly I had rented VRBO for 3 nights at two different places…in Russia. It happened twice about a year apart. It was just wonky .

[cintinative]

34 minutes ago, KatieJ said:

We enter then into quicken then toss the paper receipt unless we need it for tax purposes. 

This, and we have found fraud on my husband's CC more frequently than I would like. He has to order tech stuff for work regularly and so I often have to ask when something shows up on Quicken if it is really him.  A couple times it wasn't.

[ScoutTN]

Yes!

[ScoutTN]

41 minutes ago, KatieJ said:

We enter then into quicken then toss the paper receipt unless we need it for tax purposes. 
I did find fraud twice on my CC. Supposedly I had rented VRBO for 3 nights at two different places…in Russia. It happened twice about a year apart. It was just wonky .

This, though we use YNAB

[TexasProud]

Yes, I do. 

[Heartstrings]

Never once ever.  I can see things post online on the occasion that we use the CC.  I hate receipts and throw them away as quickly as possible.   I can’t see a reason for doing that besides busy work.   What exactly is the purpose?

 I can spot fraud pretty quickly just by scanning the statements.  I found a charge from Bed, Bath and Beyond once and knew it was fraud because we literally never shop there, not since I was a small child with my parents.  Of course I drilled my husband about a potential mistress pretty hard first….🤣.  
 

The only thing I give that level of detail to is medical bills and EOBs.  

Edited November 21, 2023 by Heartstrings

[Bootsie]

We do not keep all of our receipts and very each and every transaction.  Many of our transaactions are for payments where we don't get a physical receipt.  We do have alerts set for large purchases and a threhehold balance level.  We look at our statements to make sure that we recognize the charges.  To maximize miles, and so that we both get free bags when we fly separately, we each have a card that we use which minimizes my having to ask DH if he made X charge at Y, or his having to ask me; we generally recognize where/when we made purchases.  

[SKL]

In general, I don't save receipts.  Exceptions:  health expenditures, gift card purchases (in case the cards don't work), purchases for nonprofits that I'm going to claim as a tax deduction, and receipts for items I may need to return or for which I will seek reimbursement.

I review my credit card transactions online at least monthly.

I don't have a lot of purchases.  I have 2 cards - a Discover because the benefits are better, and a Visa that I originally got because some places wouldn't take Discover.  Now, I mainly use the Visa to lend to my kids for occasional authorized purchases.

The majority of my Discover purchases are Amazon orders, auto-debits, healthcare transactions, and online donations.  I'm not much of a shopper, so when I do shop in person, I will remember that.  So I pretty much recognize every purchase even if I only review the credit card transactions monthly.

[73349]

When I make a transaction, I enter it in YNAB; I snap a photo of the amount being charged instead of accepting a paper receipt when possible. Then about twice a week, I log on to my online banking and reconcile.

I also use Privacy to make it harder to misuse my card information from online purchases. If you steal my card number when I'm shopping at whatever.com, okay, I hope you plan to use it at whatever.com, because it won't work at any other merchant. The charge will get rejected.

[history-fan]

We signed up for text alerts and get them within seconds of a purchase of over one dollar. It has helped us several times 3-4 at least when fraud charges were made. It makes it so much easier to alert the company right away within 24 hours.

[TexasProud]

Wanted to add that I keep receipts and attach them to the statements because my husband returns a lot of stuff, sometimes weeks after he bought it and is always asking me for the receipt.  🙂  Just makes my life easier. I can find them within a minute or two. 

[historically accurate]

I use YNAB, which I do a quick check of every morning since our finances are really tight. Hopefully, I catch everything quickly.

We use 3 credit cards:

• Amazon - only used at Amazon, not even in our wallets, so if a transaction isn't Amazon, super easy to catch
• Discover - this one has a couple of medical bill autopays on it, and DDs use this one to purchase things they reimburse us for
• Walmart Mastercard - this one is our "everyday" card; it's issued by Capital One which is our main bank, so I check this one daily along with my quick checking account/YNAB overview

I use the 2 banker's spike method for receipt control. I stab the receipt on a spike and when it's full, I start on the second. When the second is full, I throw away spike #1's receipts and repeat. I will admit I am not as good about it as I used to be - we miss receipts sometimes nowadays. The store apps or the store being able to look it up by credit card number is making this receipt process obsolete. DH was buying and returning a lot of car parts for a while that having the receipts saved us at some local store recently though.  

 

[Hannah]

On 11/21/2023 at 4:36 PM, marbel said:

Yep, alerts. I get text alerts usually before I'm out of the store. My husband tells me if he's using the card, or I text him when I see the alert. Super simple.

 

On 11/21/2023 at 8:39 PM, history-fan said:

We signed up for text alerts and get them within seconds of a purchase of over one dollar. It has helped us several times 3-4 at least when fraud charges were made. It makes it so much easier to alert the company right away within 24 hours.

This is what we do as well. 

[catz]

We don’t keep every paper receipt.  I do file online receipts.  And we review every month.   Our credit cards catch fraud faster than us it seems.  

Edited November 24, 2023 by catz

[Bambam]

Thanks, everyone, for the input. I hadn't thought of setting up alerts for the CC although I have them set up for our bank accounts - that is an excellent idea, so I set those up to start! 

 

[Toocrazy!!]

Alerts here as well. For every transaction. We charge everything and have had several fraud attempts in the last couple years. Then I do look online before I pay the bill just to double check. Also, refunds don’t come through as text alerts, so I do verify those online to make sure my returns were posted. 

[Halftime Hope]

We download into quicken and verify there. We've caught fraudulent charges several times, so we verify.

[theelfqueen]

We go over every purchase and reconcile to our budget every week and charge basically everything to our card for rewards and tracking purposes . If they were a few dollars off I  might not catch it. If there were extra charges, we definitely would. I dont keep receipts but we do mostly make purchases online (grocery app, Amazon, fast food apps, etc) so they're usually easy to find. 

Edited November 24, 2023 by theelfqueen