There are many dates on a credit card statement. A new credit card holder may get confused on various dates mentioned on the card statement. It is important for every card holder to check the relevant dates in order to make timely payment in respect of the credit card bill.

A credit card statement contains various details such as card holder’s name, address, nature of transactions, amount of each transaction and so on. While it is important for the card holder to check the transactions and corresponding amounts on the card statement, he/she should also focus on various dates appearing on the credit card statement.

Important dates available on credit card statement include billing dates and statement date.

Meaning of Billing Dates

Credit card statement is generated for a particular cycle. This is called billing cycle. Generally the period covered by each statement is one month. It is not necessary that the billing cycle will always start from the first day of the month and will end on the last day of the month. A billing cycle can start from 15th of a month and end on 14th of next month or it can even start on 20th of one month and end on 19th of next month. This billing cycle is decided by the credit card company and may vary for different card holders.

For Instance, a credit card holder may have a cycle of 15th to 14th of next month while another card holder may have a billing cycle of 1st to 30th of the same month. All the transactions performed by the credit card holder in the billing cycle will appear on the card statement. For Instance, if billing cycle for a card holder is 2nd to 1st of next month; all the transactions performed by him/her during this period will appear in the credit card statement. Billing cycle can also be called as Statement period. Start date and end date of the billing cycle represent billing dates on a credit card statement.

Meaning of Statement Date

Statement date on a credit card statement indicates the date on which card statement has been generated by the credit card company. This date should ideally be the last date of the credit card billing cycle. For Instance, for a billing cycle of 15th August 2011 to 14th September 2011, statement date would be 14th September 2011. It is from this date that the number of grace days for making the payment due on credit card is calculated. Statement date can be treated in the same way as an invoice date or a bill date since credit card statement is nothing but an invoice against which payment has to be made by the card holder.

A credit card holder should remember the fact that transactions for a month are covered in a credit card statement. Card holder’s focus should be more on the billing cycle in order to ensure that only relevant transactions are included in the card statement. Statement date can be used as a basis to estimate the date by which payment should be released by the card holder.