How to reconcile a credit card that has an ongoing billing dispute?
You could make an entry for the disputed charge as if you were going to lose the dispute, and a second entry that reverses the charge as if you were going to win the dispute.  You could then reconcile the account by including the first charge in the reconciliation and excluding the reversal until the issue has been resolved. What I would prefer is top open a new category charges under dispute and park the amount there. It can be made as an account as well in place of a income or expenses category. This way your account will reconcile and also you will be able to track the disputes.
Here's a simple answer: If your debit card has a visa or mc logo, it can be used as a 'credit card'.  In order to do so, you shouldn't enter the pin, instead choose 'credit' and sign for it. Unlike a credit card, you can't spend money you don't have but like a credit card, your purchase is protected by the credit card company (visa/mc) and gives you privileges like zero fraud liability and purchase disputes. http://www.moneycone.com/should-you-sign-for-a-debit-card-purchase-or-use-your-pin/ Credit card, without a doubt. The reason is dispute resolution. If you dispute a charge on debit card - the money has left your account already, and if the dispute was accepted - you'll get it back. If. Eventually. In the mean time your overdraft will be missing $$$. For credit cards, you can catch a fraud action before the money actually leaves your pocket and dispute it then. In this case the charge is set aside, and you will only be required to actually pay if the dispute is rejected. I.e.: The money stays in your pocket, until the business proves that the charge is legit. In both cases, if the dispute is justified (i.e.: there was indeed a fraud) neither you nor the bank will lose money at the bottom line, it's just who's got the money during the dispute resolution process (which may be lengthy) that matters. If you want to ensure that you stop paying interest, the best thing to do is to not use the card for a full billing cycle.  Calculating credit card interest with precision ahead of time is difficult, as how you use the card both in terms of how much and when is critical. "I think your confusion comes from the negative impact when a creditor writes off your bad credit and ceases attempting to collect it. ""Chargebacks"" as you call them are an attempt to undo fraudulent charges on your card, whether from stolen credit card info or from a merchant who is using shady business practices. For what it's worth, if you joined on December 20, January 20 seems like a reasonable date for the next billing cycle, with the December 31 date reflecting the fact that their system couldn't automatically bill you the day you joined. I also think it's reasonable for you to ask them to refund the bill for the second month if you do not plan to use their gym further. So the dispute seems like a reasonable one on both sides. Good luck." "This is not a normal occurrence, and you have every right to be annoyed, but the technical way it usually happens goes like this: What can happen is when the merchant incorrectly completes the transaction without referencing the pre-authorization transaction. The bank effectively doesn't ""know"" this is the same transaction, so they process it the same way they process any other purchase, and it has no effect on the pre-authorization and related held/pending transaction. As far as the bank knows, you purchased a second set of blinds in the store for $200 and are still waiting on the first order to come in, they have no idea the store screwed up. The reason this is possible is the purpose of the pre-auth in the first place is that it is a contractual agreement between the bank (credit card) and the merchant that the funds are available, will be available except under rare special circumstances, and thus they can go ahead and process the order. This lets the merchant be secure in the knowledge that they can collect their payment, but you aren't paying interest or monthly payments on something you haven't even gotten yet! This system works reasonably well for everyone - right up until someone screws up and fails to properly release a hold, makes a second transaction instead of properly referencing the first one, or the bank screws up their system and fails to correctly match referenced pre-authorization codes to purchases. The problem is that this should not be a normal occurrence, and the people you are speaking with to try to sort out the issue often do not have the authority or knowledge necessary to properly fix the issue, or its such a hassle for them that they hope you just go away and time fixes the issue on its own. The only sure-fire solution to this is: make sure you have so much extra credit line that this doesn't effect you and you can safely let it time out on its own, or stop doing business with this combination of merchant/payment that creates the problem. Back when my credit limits were being pushed, I would never pay at gas pumps because their hold polices were so weird and unpredictable, and I would only pre-pay inside or with cash to avoid the holds." You are talking to the wrong people.  Debt collectors are not intimidated by anything you say. Call and tell them that, before you pay the debt, they need to get the paperwork from the company to verify that you actually owe them the money and the amount.  You need copies of the original paperwork. This alone may resolve the issue.  If not, then call the client company and explain that THEIR debt collection agency is talking to the wrong person.  Explain why you are not that person. It may be necessary to tell them that your lawyer advised you that they will be personally held responsible for any damages that you may incur from this debt collector's actions.  The client is the one who needs to be intimidated. "File a John Doe lawsuit, ""plaintiff to be determined"", and then subpoena the relevant information from Mastercard.  John Doe doesn't countersue, so you're pretty safe doing this.  But it probably won't work.  Mastercard would quash your subpoena.  They will claim that you lack standing to sue anyone because you did not take a loss (which is a fair point).    They are after the people doing the hacking, and the security gaps which make the hacking possible.  And how those gaps arise among businesses just trying to do their best.  It's a hard problem.  And I've done the abuse wars professionally.  OpSec is a big deal.  You simply cannot reveal your methods or even much of your findings, because that will expose too much of your detection method.  The ugly fact is, the bad guys are not that far from winning, and catching them depends on them unwisely using the same known techniques over and over.  When you get a truly novel technique, it costs a fortune in engineering time to unravel what they did and build defenses against it.  If maybe 1% of attacks are this, it is manageable, but if it were 10%, you simply cannot staff an enforcement arm big enough - the trained staff don't exist to hire (unless you steal them from Visa, Amex, etc.)  So as much as you'd like to tell the public, believe me, I'd like to get some credit for what I've done -- they just can't say much or they educate the bad guys, and then have a much tougher problem later.  Sorry!  I know how frustrating it is! The credit card companies hammered out PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards).  This is a basic set of security rules and practices which should make hacking unlikely.  Compliance is achievable (not easy), and if you do it, you're off the hook.  That is one way Amy can be entirely not at fault.  Example deleted for length, but as a small business, you just can't be a PCI security expert.  You rely on the commitments of others to do a good job, like your bank and merchant account salesman.  There are so many ways this can go wrong that just aren't your fault.   As to the notion of saying ""it affected Amy's customers but it was Doofus the contractor's fault"", that doesn't work, the Internet lynch mob won't hear the details and will kill Amy's business. Then she's suing Mastercard for false light, a type of defamtion there the facts are true but are framed falsely.   And defamation has much more serious consequences in Europe.  Anyway, even a business not at fault has to pay for a PCI-DSS audit.  A business at fault has lots more problems, at the very least paying $50-90 per customer to replace their cards.  The simple fact is 80% of businesses in this situation go bankrupt at this point.   Usually fraudsters make automated attacks using scripts they got from others.  Only a few dozen attacks (on sites) succeed, and then they use other scripts to intercept payment data, which is all they want. They are cookie cutter scripts, and aren't customized for each site, and can't go after whatever personal data is particular to that site. So in most cases all they get is payment data. It's also likely that primary data, like a cloud drive, photo collection or medical records, are kept in completely separate systems with separate security, unlikely to hack both at once even if the hacker is willing to put lots and lots of engineering effort into it.  Most hackers are script kiddies, able to run scripts others provided but unable to hack on their own.   So it's likely that ""none was leaked"" is the reason they didn't give notification of private information leakage.  Lastly, they can't get what you didn't upload.  Site hacking is a well known phenomenon.  A person who is concerned with privacy is cautious to not put things online that are too risky.  It's also possible that this is blind guesswork on the part of Visa/MC, and they haven't positively identified any particular merchant, but are replacing your cards out of an abundance of caution." The hospital likely has a contract with your insurance company which makes them obligated to bill the insurance before billing you! I had a similar occurrence that was thrown out when my insurance company provided a copy of a contract with the hospital to the judge. So if there is an agreement they must file with the insurance in timely manner.