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How to cancel a credit card Without hurting your credit scoreProvided you have considered these issues and have another credit card you can make charges on, you are ready to cancel your credit card. Closing an account the right way takes a little time, patience and organization. Use the following steps (and this would be a good time to print out the Credit Cards - Compare Credit Card Offers at CreditCards.com “Cancel a credit card worksheet”).1. Know who to contact.To begin the process of closing the account, gather and write down the customer service number and the mailing address you’ll need. The customer service number is on your credit card, monthly statement and the issuer’s website; the mailing address is also on the website and the monthly statement.2. Remember to redeem rewards.In the case of rewards cards, it is common to lose some accrued rewards when a card is closed, and this may be unavoidable. But with planning, it should be possible to minimize the loss. Check the rewards balance and redemption procedures on the issuer’s website. If you are unable to apply them to travel or merchandise, you may be able to take accumulated miles or points as a statement credit.Knowing the rules for redemption will allow you to plan how to capture built-up rewards before you cancel the card.3. Pay down your balance in full.Pay off your credit card in full or, if you can find a balance transfer card with better terms, transfer the balance. You can’t completely close a card until the balance is paid.If you don’t want any more charges accrued to the card until the balance is paid, you can contact the issuer and ask that the card be frozen until the balance is cleared and the card closed.If you normally carry a balance from one month to another, you will need to pay the full statement balance two months in a row to wipe out the balance and stop further interest charges from accruing.4. Deliver the news.Once you reach the bank’s customer service representative, confirm that the balance on your credit card is zero. Do not assume that the balance is zero because you paid the total amount on your most recent bill. Interest may have continued to accumulate between the time the issuer sent the bill and your payment was made (that “leftover” amount is called residual interest).Once you’re certain the balance is zero, inform them that you are canceling the card. While some credit card companies will allow you to cancel without even speaking to a representative, others may be less obliging.If you are met with resistance, hold firm. It is your right to close the account. Tell the rep you want it noted that the account is being closed at your request.Ask for a name and address you can write to with a notice of your card cancellation and note this along with the call details, including date, time and a way to identify the representative you spoke to.If you are met with resistance, hold firm. It is your right to close the account.5. Send a letter.For added insurance (in case the customer service rep makes a mistake), write a short cancellation letter to the card issuer. Request written confirmation of the account’s closure.The letter should include your name, address, phone number and account number, and details from your earlier phone call. Also, state that you want your credit report to reflect that the account was “closed at the consumer’s request.”Along with the letter, include the check number (or a copy of the canceled check or other payment verification) that you used to pay off your account balance.Make a copy of the letter for your records. Send the letter via certified mail or with return receipt requested, so you can prove the company received your letter.6. Be patient.Then sit tight. Getting the card canceled may take a month or more. After that time, take a look at a copy of your credit report to make sure the account is marked as “closed.”You can pull a free copy of your credit report once a year from each of the top three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can also get a free credit score and report from Bankrate.If the account appears open, repeat the process: Call the customer service number to report the mistake, follow up with a letter by certified mail (including a copy of your original letter requesting that the account be closed) and then check your credit report again.If that fails, you can file a dispute through one of the three credit bureaus (they are required to notify the others). And if that doesn’t work, you can file a dispute with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.7. Take notes.As you go through the process of canceling your credit card, you may want to keep thorough notes on who you spoke to, what they said and when. That way, if anything goes wrong, you will have all the facts recorded.When you get a return receipt from your certified mail, put it with the log you are keeping and note the date the receipt comes in.“Usually it’s not a lasting impact,” says Griffin.8. Properly dispose of your card after confirming cancellation.After documenting the cancellation process and making sure that your credit report reflects the closed account, you are finally free to discard your credit card. There are numerous ways of destroying of your plastic (or metal), but you’ll need to pick a disposal method that leaves your information completely unrecoverable from identity thieves. 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I love this question! Lots of great stuff, if you look at it carefully….“to deal with” meaning, “how do I handle it!”You want to handle it with care. It’s the summary balances of all the accounts and it can tell you a lot. You are probably going to have to make some adjusting entries, and the trial balance will lead you to many of them.“best method” meaning, “what should I do?”Here we want to be methodical. First off, check to see if the thing balances, i.e. debits equal credits. Don’t be fooled by programs like QuickBooks, which force the difference into an imaginary account like “opening balance equity.” (BTW, that should always be zero). Even the best accounting programs can fall out of balance. Got to check that first. If it is out of balance, wow, there is so much potential work to do… can’t live with an out of balance trial balance!Second, methodically go down the balance sheet. Start with cash. The amount in the trial balance is probably wrong. Did you do a bank reconciliation? Do you have the adjustments for things like outstanding checks, bank fees, interest, etc? If all you did was download the bank data into your accounting program and push a button, you’ve got work to do.You’ll get the bank balance correct, then look at the investment accounts (savings accounts, etc) and adjust for interest earned, etc. Follow the balance sheet down to accounts receivable. Do you have an aging? Does it balance to the control figure on the trial balance ( yes, sometimes QuickBooks and similar programs are off… and you need to know why). Then, go down to inventory. Where did that figure come from? Has it been adjusted? Did you take inventory or estimate it using the retail method or gross profit method? Pause and consider that figure for a while. Then go to prepaids… do they look OK? What’s in the other current assets… loans to employees? Are these things properly valued?Then we get to property, plant and equipment. You need to look at the depreciation schedule. Oops, forgot to record depreciation? Wait a minute, are all those assets still around? Should we adjust for things scrapped but not recorded on the books?Finally, we have other assets. What’s there, and is it correct? Oftentimes other assets ends up a dumping ground for “get-around-to-its.” Now is the time to clean it out.Done with the assets, now to the liabilities. Repeat the same methodology for each account. What is this figure? Where does it come from? How can it be “tied” or verified to some other data, like a statement from vendors, a loan statement, etc. Look out for accruals… things that haven’t been recorded.Finally, we come to the equity. For most companies, things don’t change much in those accounts, but there are exceptions. Just take a careful look to see if everything looks OK.Now on to the income accounts. Sales and sales offset accounts should tie to registers (subsidiary ledgers in the old paper days). Look to see if sales returns looks reasonable. Sometimes in modern systems, returns get netted against sales at the recording point, and that distorts the numbers. You want sales returns to be a separate figure so you can analyze it. The same goes for sales discounts, coupon discounts, etc. You may wish to look at your sales register and break out sales by line, location or other meaningful way. Lumping everything into one revenue account is, well, simple but stupid.Next, look at cost of sales. This is where you really have to sharpen your mechanical pencil (joke) and pay attention. If you are in a service business, you should still have a “cost of sales” but it’s more like “project costs” or “cost of providing services.” Here some careful ratio analysis and comparison to trends makes a lot of sense. Do you have any way of measuring waste and loss? OK, so all of this analysis borders on cost accounting, but it’s part of what you should do when looking at a trial balance, skeptically.Next, we get to the operating expenses. Here a horizontal analysis (comparing amounts over time) becomes very helpful. You want to focus on each account briefly, thinking about what’s in that account. Is there any way to verify it’s accuracy? A quick antidote may help. We had a trial balance which contained a lot of “contractor expenses” in G&A. I wondered why. Shouldn’t that be a part of cost of operations or project costs? Turned out the owner was running his home cleaning service and baby sitter through the company books under this account. A brief discussion of tax fraud cured that problem.Don’t be afraid to dig into the detail and spot check accounts. What is in “internet services” or “advertising?” What got put in “bad debts?” If you spend a little time being an “armchair detective” you can uncover amazing information, unearth stupid bookkeeping errors, and ensure that the books are really correct. Some areas I love to look at include: depreciation, amortization, taxes, payroll, repairs, maintenance, miscellaneous and professional services.Now you are at the end of the trial balance. You’ve got a lot of things that need to be tweaked to make the accounts accurate. Post those entries, then compare the results, in the form of a new trial balance ( the “adjusted” trial balance”) to the original one, to ensure that what you did worked out OK.I always document the work that I did on each account, and I mark up the original trial balance with notes and references. In other words, I have a well documented trail as to where I went and what I did. On top is the adjusted trial balance. Next is the original trial balance, followed by all my worksheets, notes, etc. All done in paper. I then scan the whole mess and keep it by month. Anyone, anytime can see what I did, how I did it, and follow it.Once you get into this routine, you can do it quickly and efficiently. Once you are done, you have completed about half the work you need to do for a monthly analysis package.When the financials are run, you can now easily create a backup set of workpapers which support each number on the financial statements. You can also use your work to start on the analysis process, wherein you prepare the ratios necessary to interpret the financials, the vertical analysis ( each number as a percentage of a total) and horizontal analysis ( comparing figures over time). You also now have a good idea what’s in the numbers, so comparing to industry standards or norms will make more sense ( you can adjust as necessary to avoid distortions).Wow! You have a great grasp of what went on in the business. You can now confidently present those financials, knowing where they came from, what they contain, and most importantly, what they mean. You are a great accountant!For more information about bookkeeping, accounting, and financial analysis processes, check out CEAnow.org.

Reconciliation is a process whereby you compare the control accounts in your books to actual records.For example, if your books state that you have a bank account number A and it has a debit balance of $10,000, you need to verify this number against your actual bank statement account number A (which is issued by your bank). If the numbers are different, say you bank states that you have only $8,000 instead of $10,000, then you have to check further for the $2,000 difference. This process is called reconciliation.Usually, in a reconciliation process, you will prepare a worksheet that shows the working of your reconciliation.Following the above example, you could have a worksheet in the following format:Closing Balance of your bank Account A as at 31st Mar 20xxLess: Cash receipts recorded in book but has yet to be reflected in the bank actual accountAdd: Payments recorded in book but has yet to be reflected in the bank actual accountClosing Balance of your book bank Account A as at 31st Mar 20xxYou will need to conduct reconciliation on all your other control accounts such as Account Receivable control, Accounts Payable control, Fixed Asset control, Inventory control, and so on.If your reconciliations are properly worked out and explained correctly, then your books are all in order and well recorded.