Here are a couple options to set up the credit card bookkeeping.

The first step is to set up online access to your credit card information.  Of course, keep tight security on the username and password.  Then based upon the volume of your credit card charges, access the data weekly or daily- get a jump on it before year end.  The information gets copied into Excel in a credit card charge download sheet.

The second step is to set up the conversion of the data.  This can involve two parts:

1. A vendor name conversion.  For example, all the Starbucks charges will likely have details about location.  I set up a process to convert the vendor detail into a common vendor name, Starbucks, so all Starbucks transactions can be grouped together.
2. An expense category.  Following our example, all the Starbucks charges might get grouped into Meals and Entertainment. 

The final step sets up the reporting.  A credit card charge database is set up that includes:

1. The downloaded data.
2. The vendor name.
3. The expense category.

Then I use a pivot table to create a summary report, which the client uses to book a monthly journal entry.  Clients will do this during the month, so at month end all they have to do is just download and convert the last couple days of transactions.  By doing it during the month, it is just one more way they speed up the month end process and help get their numbers together quicker.  It also gives them a view at the calendar month end, before final transactions, that they can use for doing the flash estimate of financial results on the first day after month end.

An even better process, if your software allows it, is to download charges directly into your accounting package and have it do the categorizing.  If that is not possible, this Excel process is much faster and provides better documentation than doing it manually.