CFFrost

And people wonder how Incomm makes a profit? You think the average person buying these with cash to load into their prepaid card because they don't have a bank account is this organized? How often do you think they lose cards?

LSUFan

I do the same with mine, except I staple the receipt (making sure not to staple through the mag stripe). When I initially use the card I'll wrap the receipt around it and then when I get home I double check the card number between the receipt and card, staple, and throw in the used pile.

I probably should do something to track this, but too lazy I guess. As long as I get the BB load confirmation email and see the deposit online after I load I am happy.

mikeef

The other day, I spent two hours matching up all the columns in my spreadsheets because what my CC company was telling me that I had spent was $2,007.90 more than I had listed. I'm meticulous about these things, so I went through every account to which I had deposited my VRs and matched them up date by date, amount by amount. And sure enough, they were right. I had credited myself for a payment that I hadn't made. I was shocked, but relieved that the error was mine, not theirs. One of my own errors is easy to fix. Theirs? Not so much. And for this particular card, I really, really have no interest in getting a CSR on the line who can look at my spending.

Mike

jmccon2

Great discussion thread.

I used to be in finance, so pls forgive the geek speak....
I use Quicken to track all accounts - even the BB accounts. Here is an example of how I keep track:
1) buy 3 x $1K on my CC. Quicken downloads this activity (say $3030 for this example) and I make sure the charge is 'unassigned'
2) When the GCs come in - I load $1k to each of the 3 BB accounts
4) I go back into Quicken and assign the $3030 charge with $1K per BB account and $30 goes into the MF spends account.
5) Go online and reconcile the BB account to what I have in Quicken.

If my Quicken info does not match what is showing online for the CC and BB, then there is a problem.

jmccon2

I thought I was doing pretty good at keeping track of the balls in the air - but I have been completely missing the utilization %. How have people been able to do this. I've been thinking of some scenarios but none of them are ideal.
1) Check my CC account each day and if I see the charge hit, pay for it with my checking account. The problem with this is that even though I'm transferring the money from the same bank - it doesn't always post on that very day.
2) I cannot pay more than what the current balance is when transferring money from my bank - so I can't 'get ahead of the charge'

The only thing I can think of is to build up my BB account and then use Bill pay to send a check to my CC before I even charge anything. But doesn't this draw attention?

BTW, I have 2 checking accounts - one online and the other is a B&M.

rdover1

My method for what they're worth...
In general - load as soon as purchased. i.e. Unless it is a time limited offer (like the OM GC deal) I only buy what I can unload that day or so. Once confirmed as unloaded the card gets marked with a sharpie to show empty, date and where it went.

I keep a spreadsheet with tabs for;
Prepaid: Balance for each card, last reload date and next possible reload date (tells me how much float I'm accumulating and need to cash out)
All credit cards - app date, time between apps, sign-on bonus, requirements, bonus categories and accumulated spend etc.
Prepaid load dates - for things with a rolling clock for loads so I know when I can next load.
Cashback tracking - for things like TCB / UR mall purchases
Earnings rate worksheet - to track what different methods actually cost (i.e. $3 per $1k load at Target, $3+$1.25 / $400 ATM etc.)
In general I don't like to keep a balance over $3k on any one card and will pay it off well before the due date, sometimes multiple times a month. (I get paranoid about carrying too large a float and screwing up, so I work as hard if not harder at emptying the float as I do mfg spend).

I also use Mint to track total spending. You can connect most accounts (pretty much all the AMEX prepaid variants, even Paypal - but not GoBank).
I edit the spend category to 'transfer between accounts' for things like gift cards and VR and split the transaction to assign 'frequent flyer spend' to the portion that is the actual cost. So in the Target example where the load is $1,003 this shows as $1k transfer between accounts and $3 as FF spend. Costco ATM would be $400 transfer, $3 and $1.25 as FF.
Doing it this way allows me to separate my regular spend from mfg spend and allows a running tally of what this hobby is actually costing me. The 'transfer between accounts' category doesn't track as spending which would mess up any budgets you have if you don't use this approach. When I get say a TCB payout I also apply the FF spend category which then shows as a reduction in my FF spending. Same goes if I get a payout from selling gift cards or similar.

rdover1

AMEX will allow you to pay ahead if you're within a day or so of the pending converting over to confirmed. I just add my current balance to the pending amount in the amount to pay box.
using BB or GoBank you can push a payment which will credit to your account even if there is no balance so this is paying ahead.

In general all you need to do is clear the balance before the cycle closes not on an ongoing basis (unless you have a super low credit limit on the card).

Happy

I do the similar thing except I use the now sun-set Microsoft Money. I like Money much more than Quicken, been using it for 7 or 8 years now. Except I dont do downloads but do manual entries from day one I started using it. My records of balances in various accounts match with the banks and if the 2 sides dont, usually is because I made entry errors or forgot to make an entry.

Happy

Here is what I do, on both VR and the prepaid GCs - I used a sharpie and wrote down the date, bought with which CC, and loaded to which account, right after I finished the load. Then I wrapped the cards with the receipt and put it in the plastic bag neatly stack to each other (instead of just tossing them in a box or drawer.)

By writing on the card of the vital data, I can tell at a glance where the money has gone in case I made a mistake in doing my entries to the finance software I used to keep track of all our finances. I honestly dont know how others can manage without a finance software or at least a basic spreadsheet to keep track of things. I am so used to that (for the past decade) that I cannot do without the finance software.

PainCorp

BB and GoBank push the money to them, so I've been able to pre-pay that way...

It depends how much you're manufacturing. I have a simple plan which has worked for $25k in manufactured spend in 4 months. Any card that still has money stays in a "manufacturing" wallet. Once it's loaded, it does not go back in that wallet, EVER. Once I get home, confirm the load and that the card is empty, it then goes in the box after a note is written on it with load date, amount and source.

I also don't like spending $503 then paying off $500 immediately, seems suspicious to me, so I prefer to shuffle money around and use it to pay off other cards and use bank to pay off some of that card too.

yoyo

I still suggest load twice a month apart. That way if there is any external mistakes you would also catch it.

Nishant1

I find Yodlee Moneycenter free financial software better than Mint.com.

I realized usefulness of Yodlee over Mint is that I can create my own categories for tracking expenses. That way separate categories track manufacturing spending and real spending in other categories.

I have 28 credit cards of which there are 14 cards which offer me catergory bonus higher than 1.25% so even at 1.19% fee gift card purchase, I donot incur loss. For vanilla with 0.79 %, many more cards qualify.

Without Yodlee, I would have to spend atleast an hour a day whereas I spend 10 minutes before start of work to plan today's activities and 10 minutes at night.

For every one manufacturing spend, I try to add 4 to 5 real transactions for each card. It can be small items like lunch or USPS or parking payment or large items e.g. reimbursed Doctor fees etc.

mintcilantro

great feedback everyone.. I might have to get myself a quicken license and become a quicken whiz. The concept of accounts or buckets makes it easy to track.

I also tried this app called Account Tracker and it works pretty well. I like to log transactions right away and have the history available on my phone when I'm deciding what to do. If I was more organized I would make spreadsheets and plan in the morning but I'm not. I think I'm gonna use this app going forward.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/acco...325834957?mt=8

myndreamland

Now you guys have inspired me to create my own tracking system. I know that this might seem like an overkill (maybe not) but I want to learn Access anyway so I created a database to keep track of my manufactured spending.

Basically, it has 3 parts. The first part is for account info, which allows me to add new cards/accounts into my portfolio in the future. The second part is the "transaction entry", which is an Access form through which I would enter my spending info. I can input the date of purchase, type of manufactured spending, from which account, to which account and in what amount. A background table would collect all these info and further analyze them. For example, $3.95 is automatically added to a $500 VR to arrive at a total outflow of $503.95 and say 504 AA points. A special category allows me to manually adjusts the amount of points/miles/cashback if need be.



Finally, the "global balance" report helps me get an overview of how many points I have accumulated and any balance on any accounts that I need to take care of. The balances are 0 by default so anything different would pop out. There is also a field showing the total cost of this game.

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=hstcgy&s=5

I will add more features to this database in the future when I have more time and more skills. For now, so much for 4 nights

vagrants

I use Excel...old school...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...5663-mine.html

There is one master worksheet, which is a checking, that include the balances of each CCs and other checking accounts (by referencing so that I don't have to manually enter). And, each CC (worksheet) has own madness...notes on the CC, projected rewards/cashbacks, rewards/cashbacks received, where my purchases were made, etc.