You haven't told us why the reconciliation is a pain, nor where the credit card payments are linked but my guess is that someone linked the credit card customer payments directly to the bank account.

In a default chart of accounts with no modifications, the account 1080 has been set up for VISA Receivable (this number and name can and often is changed on setup but the concept should be followed). If you link the payments to go there, then on each Receipt, the deposit is not made to the bank, it is made to the holding or clearing account 1080. At the end of the day, the report from your machine or credit card merchant's website should match the amount received in this VISA account. This mimics reality. No money has yet to be deposited to your bank account, so don't show it in your bank account. Assume this amount for the total VISA sales is $1500.

When you see the deposit to your bank account, you can then do a general journal entry to post the amount over to the bank. One entry for $1500 should show up on the merchant's report, your bank account and your bank statement, and therefore you books. The discount is a different entry or different lines on the same journal entry if it is taken on the same day.

Ahh! I didn't realize that the default was to a clearing account. The person prior to me set it up to deposit to the our main bank account. The reason it is a pain is that when reconciling, on my bank account statement it just has the total that was deposited that day, and I have to then manually add up all the Visa/Mastercard receipts for that specific day. It also means that I don't 'receive payment' on Sage until the following day, which I don't like doing.

For example, a customer came in today and bought and paid $500 using a Visa. I then have to wait until tomorrow (when it is deposited into the bank account) before I can receive it using Sage.

Thank you! This was very helpful.

Glad my assumption was correct. Sage 50 allows you to work in reality as much as possible, so I always follow what the reality of the entries are, then follow that in the program. You received the money today, post it today. Deposit was tomorrow, or Friday, so post the deposit tomorrow or on Friday. The clearing accounts allow you to do it that way.