This unofficial FAQ for the microsoft.public.money newsgroup is offered as a public service in hopes that newsgroup readers will quickly find answers to the most commonly asked questions in the newsgroup.
The FAQ is hosted on the web at http://umpmfaq.info.
Text and HTML versions are available at the FAQ web site. As an alternative, I endeavor to post a pointer to the web-hosted FAQ in the newsgroup weekly. Frequent readers of the newsgroup are encouraged to post links to the FAQ in replies to other posters who may find it helpful. Specific questions can be linked to, using key numbers for the questions which can be identified from the URL of any hyperlink to a question in the question listings or in the HTML version, in one of two ways (replace xxx with the question key number):
(in traditional full FAQ page):
http://umpmfaq.info/faq#Qxxx
(in new single entry page):
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=xxx
Note that http://www.umpmfaq.info redirects to http://umpmfaq.info.
While I have tested the site reasonably thoroughly, visitors may still see problems. If you do, please report them.
Corrections and submittals are welcome, but I reserve absolute right to edit and/or ignore these submittals for whatever reason including judgments about the question's status as a FAQ. I will give credit where appropriate and expect no less in return if you feel compelled to quote the FAQ. In addition, suggestions and submittals of new pages dedicated to specific topics and additional reference links are solicited. (Some things that come to mind include a "Just for Beginners" page and a "401k" page.)
Of necessity, the scope of the FAQ is limited. Issues unique to non-US localized versions are generally not treated, nor are some Money features covered as well as others. In particular, I do not use any of the network bill pay and statement features and am relatively unfamiliar with features for stock options and have treated few related issues here out of ignorance. I also don't use the frequent flier features and will skip the grocery coupon tracker feature if and when it's added to Microsoft Money. Also, I haven't treated any issues peculiar to the Essential (hereafter MEss) and Home & Business versions since I've never used either for more than five minutes, don't follow postings about them, and cannot judge good FAQs and answers for them from bad ones. The M05 major rewrite (applicable to M05 through 7) added Essential modes (apparently Microsoft's Money team likes Essential stuff) and I'm not at all familiar with those, either. By all means, post questions that are not treated in the FAQ to the newsgroup. Other regular posters there are more familiar with lots of this stuff than I am.
In this edition: No questions were added or updated, but the related versions of many questions were corrected to include M+. This update also has a number of changes under the covers to enable a "switch" to be thrown someday soon and the whole site--and my offline development environment--to migrate from an old host here and PHP4/MySQL4 on the server to newer stuff all around. (27 May 2008)
Generated from database Wednesday, 28 May 2008.
Q) Are there any recommendations for assuring short- and long-term "survivability" of my Money data?
A) There are a number of Q&A that deal with specific backup issues. (E.g., "You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error reading. What do I do?", "Can a new version of Money open my old version data file/backup file/backup diskette(s)?", "I just reinstalled M98--it can't read my data backup floppies. Now what?", and "How do I backup to CD-RW? CD-R?") None of these treat the subject in a general way. So, here goes:
The following general practices always apply:
Always test backups to be sure they really are.
Never depend on just one backup or form of backup as your only backup.
Always have multiple generations of backup in case you backed up a problem and didn't know it.
Never trust any media to provide "archival storage". Cheap media are worse. Trying to save on backup media is not wise. Even if the media lasts, the devices that can read this media may not.
Storing a backup across multiple media (e.g., spanning multiple floppies) reduces the availability of a good copy.
Depending on what risk you are trying to protect against, an offsite backup storage location may be a good idea.
Within these, some specific advice for Money:
The Money backup routine is not foolproof. Backing up the data file outside of Money seems slightly more reliable.
Removing password protection before making your backup is probably a good idea. This is true for two reasons: 1) you may forget what your password was when you made the backup--particularly if you follow "best practices" about changing your password periodically--but see also "Help! I've lost my password. Now what do I do?" 2) there is no assurance that Microsoft will perpetually support a given online authentication format or stored credential data format. (This is applicable to those using Passport/WindowsLive ID/whatever they call it into the future.) If you don't remove the password before taking your backup copy, at least record what the password was at the time and store it with the backup. The importance of removing/tracking your password is in direct proportion to the length of time you contemplate your backup is protecting you into the future.
Keep track of what version of Money wrote the data file/backup you are storing. Money has generally been pretty good about opening/restoring files made with older versions--and doing the necessary upgrade, but there is no guarantee that this will always be so. Indeed, there have already been breaks where getting from Money version A to C requires an intermediate upgrade to the Money version B data format using Money version B. Money has never provided a file format for data or backups that an older version of Money could read, so if you save, say, a Money 2007 file format but at some point in the future only have a copy of Money 2006, you will be out of luck. This issue is also more important the longer you want a backup to be good for and the number of versions back the file was written with.
A corollary to the previous item is that you may want to consider keeping/or need to keep copies of the original application installation medium. (This means your Money application installation CD or a copy of the installation image if you bought online. Note that since OEM versions tend to be tied to specific hardware, saving, say Money04 for Dell Model XYZ may prove useless at that point into the future when you need it and your Dell XYZ has been since been shredded into little nuggets to be recycled.) Note that this also assumes that you will have a system that supports installing and running this application at whatever point into the future you need to look at your backup data. Depending on the time horizon you are considering, it's not all that hard to imagine that, say, WindowsDominator x128 MegaUltimate edition won't actually run Money97.
(Note that there are also caveats to even this last recommendation: 1) Money files won't cross localization/language barriers. If the file was written with M05 for UK past performance indicates it is highly unlikely that M10 US will read it, no matter what. Present trends suggest that the future of Money holds fewer localized versions than they've had in the past so if you are using a non-US version you must take this into account. 2) Keeping the installation CD alone may prove insufficient. One case where this is true is M05: the first and only mega-service update broke file compatibility with the CD version of the application. This might not be so bad if you could just, say, go and download the update file and store it yourself and install it yourself. But you can't because Microsoft's service delivery strategy for Money precludes it--the only way to update Money is to use its Internet Updates feature. Worse still, their present policy of terminating Internet Update service and removing data associated with End-of-Life versions means that a file written with M05.1 will likely be so many useless semi-random numbers in 2010 if all you have is the M05 installation CD.)
Which brings us to the final recommendation: At some point, accessing the information in your data may prove more important than how you do it and not all of the information may be equally important. Given the last several considerations, it may be prudent to periodically save a subset of the information in your Money data file to independent, non-Money-specific file formats. There are quite a number of ways to tackle this including MoneyLink and QIF exports, none of which gets all of the information Money stores, but the best way seems to be using customized reports and then exporting these reports to some portable format like .CSV or XML. Here are some report recommendations along those lines:
"Account balances With details" customized:
Rows & Columns: select all except Abbreviation
Account: all including closed accounts"Investment transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all, Group by: none
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Investment: select all
Activity: select all
Details status: reconciled & unreconciled"Loan amortization" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all except interest amount, paid from account, other fees amount, principal balance; Subototal by: none; Include transactions from: account register; Show splits; omit opening balance
Chart: View as report
Date range: all
Account: (one report/output file per Loan Account)"Scheduled bills" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Include transactions: all; Show splits
Date range: all
Account: all including closed accounts
Payee: all; include transactions with no payeeCurrency-specific versions of "Account transactions" customized:
Rows & Columns: Include fields all; Subtotal by: none; Running balance: none; Show splits
Date range: all
Account: (one report/data file per each currency; select all accounts in that currency including closed accounts)
Category: all; Show sub categories; Include unassigned income; Include unassigned expense
Payee: all; include transactions with no payee
Details type: all; status: reconciled & unreconciled
(classifications): select all; show subclassificationsNote that even this will leave lots of information behind including, but not limited to, Account/Category/(classification)/Payee/Investment details, Budget and DRP details, bill information beyond the next item in a bill series like end date/number and any edited series members beyond the first one. If there is any of this that you really want to protect, you will have to identify other means of doing so. Granted these methods are much less than ideal. But they also might prove a whole lot better than nothing at some point in the future.
Q) Can I do this, that, or the other with Money? Can the latest version of Money do this, that, or the other?
A) Maybe. Maybe not. Sometimes these posts are general enough to get good answers from people who have attempted what you want to do. Other times, the requirement is so specific that nobody knows or nobody really understands what you want to do. In these cases, the best thing to do is download the trial version that is available and find out for yourself.
Two caveats about the trial version:
1) Read and heed the messages it brings up about what it will do to upgrade your data file from the previous version, if you have one.
2) If you like the trial version, don't even think of upgrading it to a full license with the menu choice to do so online. Go to the store and buy a copy with a CD like normal folks. You will save a huge amount of grief for yourself later on when you have to reinstall or move it to a new computer or whatever if you do so.
References:
Microsoft Money Trial (US version)
Q) Help! I've lost my password. Now what do I do?
A) Passwords are there for a reason. When you forget them, you've discovered the reason. It's to make it harder for people who don't know the password to get at your data. That is why you used a password in the first place, isn't it?
If you use Passport authentication to control access to your Money file, just use the Passport lost password tools at the Passport site. (This is probably the best reason for integration of Passport authentication with Money.)
If you just used a file password, there are services and a number of software tools that do password recovery.
See also "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport and file passwords as access authentication schemes for Money.
References:
Money password recovery
Passport lost password help
Q) How can I prevent getting duplicate entries of Transfer transactions when importing accounts via .QIF?
A) When importing multiple related accounts that have transfers amongst the accounts via .QIF, it is imperative to select and import all the exported account files at the same time. To do this, hold down the CTRL key and select each file to be imported.
Q) How do I categorize multiple items all deposited at once? What about several paychecks?
A) For things besides paychecks, the category part is easy. You use the split. But the tougher part is if you want to list all of the payees. A Money transaction allows one Payee, no matter how many splits. This makes it hard to list ten payees for ten checks in one split transaction.
Some choices:
1a) Ignore the payees and put all the deposited items in one split transaction.
1b) Put the payees in the memo(s) and make the Payee something like (various).2) "Deposit" all the checks in separate transactions to some Money account that is not the real-world Bank account. If you have a pocket change account, for instance, this is a good place to do it. Then do a single transfer of the total amount to the actual Money account where these are deposited.
3) Ignore the fact that you deposited them in one deposit and create multiple Money transactions. This makes it slightly more difficult to reconcile vs. the bank statement since you have to remember that all of these small deposits in Money add up to that large deposit on the statement.
Re. #1, since a Money Paycheck is a special type of split, if one of the items deposited is a paycheck and you do full accounting in a Paycheck transaction, adding other checks to this deposits probably causes more confusion than it is worth. But you could do it. Just add them to the after tax tab. You can combine multiple paychecks in one paycheck transaction, but there are various reasons you probably don’t want to do this: First, it will be hard to reconcile all of the paycheck information from your stubs with one paycheck transaction. Second, the Money Tax Estimator assigns meaning to the first entry on the wages tab--this is the amount from which the “Before Tax” amounts are deducted--and you should watch Tax Estimator very carefully to make sure its results are sane if you are trying to combine paychecks into one transaction.
#3 causes grief for those who download transaction data.
Q) How do I find out about the free credit reports/bill pay/financial consultation/tax filing?
[Relevant to Money2003 (v.11) and up]
A) Once you have purchased and installed an applicable version, go to the task based home page. (There's a link in the left column--below the "So and So's Money Home Page" tripe--of the view oriented "Main Home Page" home pages.)
Once there, select the "Tell me more" link in the Financial Services section at the top.
An alternate, probably easier, way is to go to Help|Financial Services.
M05 moved this kind of stuff all around. In M05 one way (there may be others) is [Windows menu:] Tools|Financial Services.
Q) How do I make Money work for other WinNT/Win2k/XP Pro users?
A) Money does not deal well with the NT multi-user security model. It has to be reinstalled for each account and each account has to run as a member of Administrators group. (Per Cal Learner, this latter limitation is removed in M02.) There is an MSKB entry on the subject. There are some partial workarounds and there was a registry hack that solved some of the issues for non-Administrator users. I won't quote the registry hack here--if you are good enough to be mucking in the registry, you can certainly find it in groups.google.com.
References:
groups.google.com
MSKB: Q273815 Money does not work and play well with NT/2K/XP security
Q) I just got married/divorced/re-married. How do I change the names that show up on the Money home page?
A) Go to Accounts & Bills|Account Setup|Update personal information. Granted, it does seem odd that setting up all of Money doesn't really seem like a subset of setting up an account, but this is where these settings are hidden. M05 eliminated the personalization from the home page and the path to enter the personal information. Good riddance!
Q) I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed to, now I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?
A) Depending on version, go to File|Password Manager or File|Login Lockbox and remove the Passport.
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication scheme for Money.
Q) I'm using Windows XP and want to have two users access the same Money file. What's the easiest way to do this?
A) Open "My Documents" under Windows Explorer. Find your Money file and drag it to "Shared Documents" under My Computer. Now all users can access the same money file in the "Shared Documents."
M05 refers to a feature they call "file sharing." It isn't. It's just a way of adding multiple Passports to allow access to the subset of data that is copied from the local file to MSN web servers and made available via the web interface.
Thanks to Chris for the original answer.
Q) Is there a way to mark several hundred old transactions as reconciled in one step?
A) There is no one step way to do this. The best way to do this is to set the view to show only unreconciled transactions sorted by date, select the earliest transaction you want to mark, hold down Ctrl+Shift. Hit M. You can hit M repeatedly or just hold it down to auto-repeat. Transactions will disappear--to reconciled status--pretty quickly, limited only by Money's performance on your computer.
Q) Money opens with my old email address. How do I tell it about my new one?
A) This indicates that your Money data file is set to authenticate access via Passport. So, what’s wrong here is that you need to update your Passport account and then update the Passport used with your Money data file.
First, login to your data file using the old email address. (If you've already changed the name at Passport and not in Money, you may have to login using the offline mode.)
If you go into File|Password Manager (File|Login Lockbox on versions before M04), on the File Password Settings tab, you should see Passport sign-in is enabled for… and Change… Click on Change…Select Disable Money's Passport features. Click on Next. Click on the Disable this Passport for use in Money check box. Click Finish. Click OK to have no passwords at all.
Exit Money.
Now, you have to change your Passport by browsing to the Passport web site. Select View or Edit your profile, sign in, under the old email address that is the Passport account name, click the link "I need to change this." Follow along from there.
Restart Money.
You should get this really annoying screen about setting up sign in security.
At this point, consider whether you need a Passport associated with your Money data file at all. See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on why you might or might not want to do this. If you conclude you don’t need it, just say no to the sign in security screen. If you feel you must associate your file with a Passport, continue on.
Select Yes; Yes, I want to use a Passport; Use an existing Passport. Click Next. Enter the new email address/Passport sign-in name and its password. Click Next.
Q) What if I don't want to use Money with Passport authentication?
A) When you install Money or create a new data file in versions prior to M05, you can "just say no" when it asks you to sign up for Passport. If you do this the first several times you start the application or open the file, it will give up asking.
M05 stopped trying to nag you into adding Passport authentication to your file. If you are determined to Just Say No, you won't get nagged. On the other hand, if you are new to Money and setting up a file for the first time, the new process would make you believe that not authenticating access to your Money file with a Passport (or a file password at least) is unnatural and immoral. It's neither.
Here's how to avoid the Passport/file password "requirement" in M05:
After File|New:
- Page: Thank you for using… (click Next)
- Page: Help protect your online Privacy and Security. (It says this in BIG TYPE--and who could argue with that? If you don't use a Passport, your data will be public and unsecured it seems to imply.) Passport has all kinds of issues not the least of which is we ship your data off to our servers. (It says this in little type in a scroll box that doesn't mention the problems you can have accessing your own data if Microsoft has a problem with the Money Passport servers) (click Decline)
- Dialog Box: Are you sure you really want to do such a stupid thing (click Yes)
- Page: A file password is a good thing (BIG TYPE again) don't forget it (little type) (click the I don't want check box, then Next)
- Page: To setup accounts you'll need the name of your primary bank and your online sign-in information from your bank (here you can click Skip Account Setup unless you want more of the hand-holding) (By the way, this isn't true, either. You can just select "not in list" as the financial institution and nothing bad will happen and Money will be highly functional and will work the way some of us have happily used it for a decade.)If you already setup to use Passport authentication and have now changed your mind, see "I setup a Passport for access to my file because I thought I needed to, now I realize Passport is evil. How do I get rid of it?"
See "Why do I have to use Passport authentication with Money?" for more information on the good, bad, and ugly of Passport as an access authentication scheme for Money.
Q) What is the -s option? What is the Super Salvage utility?
A) These (and the File|Money File Repair menu choice added by M04) are the file repair tools.
See "I think my file has been corrupted. How do I tell? What do I do then?" for more information on these tools.
References:
MSKB: 182608 How to resolve file inconsistencies
Q) How can I note that, say, Automobile : Gasoline expenses applied to a specific car?
A) Sometimes Money users want to be able to differentiate like income or expenses between different objectives. Examples include determining how much is spent on which of your automobiles and what rental income is associated with which rental properties.
Some people think that expanding the categories list is the obvious way to do this. E.g., Automobile : '05 Accord Gasoline. The problem with this approach is that it doesn't scale well. Add another car? Double up the categories by adding Automobile : '06 SL550 Gasoline. Want to track insurance and taxes? Add Insurance : '05 Accord Auto and Taxes : '05 Accord Personal Property. It just gets worse…
Luckily, Money provides an alternate approach called "classification". A classification is a set of two-level tagging just like, but parallel to, Category, with its own name like "Class" or "Tax Applicability". Money allows two degrees of classification. Thus, a given expense can be Category Automobile : Gasoline, and Class My Autos : '05 Accord, and Tax Applicability Tax Year 2006 : Reimbursable Job Expense, all at the same time. This allows you to dice and slice the data readily into all Automobile : Gasoline expenses or all My Autos : '05 Accord expenses or any intersecting set (Automobile : Gasoline for just My Autos : '05 Accord). You can also do things like classify Insurance : Automobile or Taxes : License Plate Ad Valorem Tax to a My Autos : '06 SL550. Most Money reports allow the report to select specific classifications just like they allow selecting specific categories.
What are the downsides? It's more data to collect, but you needn't classify every transaction, just those you'd like to be able to select this way. The classification isn't supported by things like the "guessing" of categories by Payee name when downloading or hand entering transactions. You can't schedule classification of the elements of a Loan Payment, though you can edit a Loan Payment transaction--or fix it when you select Enter in Register--to include classification in the elements. (See "Why can't I schedule a Loan Payment with pre-assigned classification?" for more.) Classification isn't supported in Find and Replace. (Still. How hard could it be, Money team?) It make the two-line register view a three- or four-line proposition. You can't get classification data out to Excel via MoneyLink.
How to get started with Classification? It varies slightly by version and the Help pages should provide definitive advice. In general, find your way to a Categories & Payees screen. In the View section, you will see choices Classification 1 and Classification 2, assuming you haven't setup Classification already. Click on the first one and it will let you name and Enable the first classification set. Once enabled, each transaction entry form or register entry will let you enter the two levels of your classification 1 just as you do with Categories.
You might also want to use classification for things like Vacation : Hawaii 2004, Cell Phone : (888)555-1212, Computer : Desktop IV, Other : Daughter gets married, Property : 123 Republican Circle and so forth.
Q) How do I setup a money market account as a checking account?
A) If you aren't downloading the information from your investment company into Money, you can set it up and manage it as a checking account.
If you are downloading the information, Money will likely insist that the money market account is an investment in an investment account. This will make it harder to manage like a checking account. There is no good solution.
Q) I've entered charges in my credit card account, when I pay the bill aren't I spending twice? Is my card a category or account?
A) These, and many other fundamentally related questions, are frequently asked by people new to personal finance software and formalized accounting methods.
There are two ways to approach this whole issue. Let's describe the more useful, and generally preferred, way first: You setup Accounts, not Categories, for the tools you use to spend money. I.e., setup accounts for your checking account and your credit card account(s).
When you spend on the cards, you record transactions in the credit card account for WHY you spent the money. E.g., $50 to MCI WorldCom for category:subcategory "Utilities:Long Distance."
When you pay the credit card bills, you "Transfer" money from, say, your Checking Account to your Visa Account. Paying a bill like this is not an expense. It's just taking money you have and applying it to expenses (i.e., liabilities) you already incurred--hence the transfer. The special category "Credit Card Payment" is just a less confusing (but less insightful) way to say "Transfer" and it behaves exactly the same except you can't create a scheduled "Credit Card Payment" but you can create a scheduled "Transfer" and it works exactly the same. M05 came along and added a new Expense Category "Credit Card Payments/Transfer" just to mess with anybody who is just starting to understand this stuff. As Cal Learner--MVP recommended, the best thing to do is probably to delete this category. It just causes confusion.
The second way, if you are not ready to dive in just yet, is to categorize the entire payment to the credit card as "Miscellaneous" and not worry about what, in turn, the credit card charges were for. In this scenario you don't even have to setup the credit card as a separate Account. If you really want to use Money to understand where the money comes from and goes to, don't do it this way; it masks what you are really spending the money for.
Money provides an intermediate path that can be simple to start while you are getting up and running and can easily morph into the recommended method. When you create the account, tell it you want to "AutoBalance" the account. (This is the same as the radio buttons "Account tracking: I want to track individual charges/Just track the amount I owe" on the Account Details page.) When AutoBalance is enabled, a "Credit Card Payment:[credit card account]" or the more normative "Transfer:[credit card account]" will popup a dialog box to balance the account. It will also do automagically what was outlined above as a manual task: it will enter an account adjustment transaction to expense the entire balance as "Miscellaneous."
There is much more on this in Help, the Help videos, Audio Help, and the book that came with Money. Also look at the sample file. The key hurdles for many people to cross are that: 1) Accounts are HOW you spend/receive money and are where individual expense and income transactions are recorded. 2) Categories and Subcategories are WHY you spend/receive money and are recorded as transactions in accounts. 3) Transfer is how you move Money from one account (say a cash account of which checking is one type) to another (say a liability account of which credit card is one type).
Q) My Credit Card Payments don't show up in Spending Reports--how come?
A) See the answer to the question "I've entered charges in my credit card account, when I pay the bill aren't I spending twice? Is my card a category or account?"
Q) When should I create an Account instead of a Payee? Aren't Payees just Accounts? Or is my Payee really a Category?
A) An Account in Money allows recording of transactions with credits and debits to a balance carried forward. Accounts are places to group transactions that frequently reflect some of your real world accounts like checking, savings, and revolving credit card accounts.
Payees are people or institutions you interact with financially. The simplest example is the name you put in a Pay To on a check. That's always a payee. Your employer who pays you is technically a Payer, but Money always calls Payers Payees. A Payee in Money is a name with optional attributes like address information, phone numbers and account numbers. Payees are typically used to record information about people and businesses you regularly pay or receive money from. Examples might include a grocery store, a utility company, an ISP and so on.
Not all Payees you enter transactions for need to be Payees explicitly listed on the Payees page. (Accounts & Bills|Categories & Payees|Payees in M02.) See answer to question "Why do I have to create an entry in the Payees every time I spend money somewhere new?" for more information.
Sometimes you have accounts that are associated with a Payee and maybe this is also an Account in Money, but by no means always. The determining factor tends to be whether the account you have with a Payee involves its own transactions and a standing balance from month to month. Credit cards are almost always best treated as Money Accounts. Accounts like the account your plumber has for you and the accounts you have with your utility companies rarely need their own Money Accounts.
The name of a Payee and an Account in Money are occasionally the same.
Categories are ways to assign income and expense to, for lack of a better word, reasons for the income or expense. Categories could include Wage & Salary:Bonus, Food:Groceries, Utilities:Garbage Pickup.
Examples:
I charge $55.00 for Category "Food:Groceries" to my Discover credit card account. I enter a transaction for $55.00 for Food:Groceries in my Money "Discover" Account, which is a Money Account of type "Credit Card." I pay the Payee "Discover" $1,234.56 for the Food:Groceries, among other things, by entering another, separate, transaction in my "Checking" Account in Money using the Special Category "Transfer:Discover" which moves money from one Account to the other.
I pay my Payee "Xcel Energy" for $123.45 of Category "Utilities:Gas" and $65.43 of Category "Utilities Electricity" by entering a split transaction in my Money "Checking" Account. I include my account number for my Xcel Energy account (which is not a Money Account) in the Memo field of the check.
Q) Why don't my car Loan Payments show up as an expense in monthly expense reports?
A) The short answer is that the loan payments really aren't expenses--only the interest portion is an expense. The expense happened when you bought the car. The expense continues to happen as you pay the interest each month for the money you are still borrowing to pay for the car.
If you really want the payment to look like an expense every month, then do not setup a loan account in Money and use an expense category like Automobile:Payments. You may have to create this category.
Money (per standard accounting and personal finance management practice) tries to manage cash flow (like the principal component of your loan payments) as a separate issue from income and expense (like buying the car and paying rent on the money you borrowed to buy the car). It takes some getting used to but it is a much better approach to managing your money since it recognizes expenses when they occur and doesn't let simple cash flow mask where you are really spending money.
See also the answer to "My Credit Card Payments don't show up in Spending Reports--how come?"
Q) Can a new version of Money open my old version data file/backup file/backup diskette(s)?
A) The newest version of Money is designed to open and upgrade older version Money data files, backup files, and backup diskettes for all older versions of Money, with caveats as noted below.
1) Upgrades are not supported across different localizations of Money. E.g., M99 for UK will not upgrade to M04 US. For more information, see "Why do I get the 'incompatible versions' message when upgrading my data file?".
2) Beginning with M03, a significant number of users have had problems with the upgrade process. For more information, see "I thought Money files were supposed to be upward compatible. How come Money[new] crashes when upgrading my Money[old] data file?".
3) Be sure you have a good backup file/set of backup diskettes. For more information, see "You must help me! My only floppy backup has a data error reading. What do I do?".
Q) Can I access my file on my desktop over my home network from my laptop?
A) It works fine IF you assure that only one machine has the file open at a time. This includes subtle things like MoneySide and MoneyExpress. My only file corruption in the last three of four years came from inadvertently opening Money and working in the data file on the WiFi laptop when the desktop machine also had the file open. Whatever else, have a backup strategy.
Setting up a network and opening/accessing file shares is beyond the scope of this newsgroup. You might want to consult one of the operating system specific newsgroups if that is the kind of help you are looking for.
M05 refers to a feature they call "file sharing". It isn't. It's just a way of adding multiple Passports to allow access to the subset of data that is copied from the local file to MSN web servers and made available via the web interface
Q) How do I backup to CD-RW? CD-R?
A) First, remember that a CD-R, CD-RW, or any of the various forms of writable DVD is not a general purpose random access storage device and needs software to begin to pretend to be.
(Such software is referred to as "packet writing" software and includes things like DirectCD or Drag-to-Disc from Easy Media (Coaster) Creator by Roxio and InCD from Nero. That having been said, the poor reliability many people experience with packet writing software in general and DirectCD in specific suggests it is a very poor choice for backing up critical data like your Money file. At less than a dime per media in quantities of 100, burning a CD-R with a copy of your Money data file seems like a better choice.)
Like any file, your .MNY data file can be stored on writable optical media the same way you put other files on them. For instance, if you use WinXP, you can backup to the hard disk mirror created by WinXP and then burn a CD after you've exited Money. If you like Nero, go ahead and burn a CD with your Money data file and don't drag Money into the problem at all. Etc.
Second, don't expect the "backup to floppy" choice to offer up your writeable CD. Is the writeable CD a floppy? No, it is not. Why would Money think it is? Newer versions (M04?) say "Removable." But they still don't recognize devices that do not have normal FAT/NTFS file systems--i.e., CD/DVD writeable.
When a WinXP follow-on product supports the Mt. Rainier technology, and when you have hardware that also supports Mt. Rainier, then maybe Money will be a little savvier about writable CDs.
Read the referenced MSKB for information about using the backup methods in Money to backup to writeable CDs.
M06 updated the backup tools--the first time in many versions that backup functionality has been improved--and provided direct access to writable optical devices that the operating system knows how to deal with. Perhaps this was because they broke the floppy disk backups so severely in M05?
Reference courtesy of Glyn Simpson, Microsoft MVP - Money
References:
MSKB: Q265130 backup to writeable CDs
Q) How do I move accounts from one Money file to another?
A) The only way to do this is File|Export and Import via QIF files. Beware that duplicate account names ("Checking") in the exporting and importing account will cause problems and one or the other account should be renamed before you do the export/import. Also beware that transfers between accounts to be moved will necessitate importing all interlinked QIF files simultaneously. Finally, QIF export/import will NOT move things like bills associated with the account or account detail information.
Because of all of these limitations, make sure to work in copies of the target file before you get this all tuned to produce acceptable results.
Q) How do I start over with a new data file?
A) There are two ways to do this. File|New… is an old favorite. You can also delete, rename, or move your data file so that Money cannot find it when you start Money--Money will then offer to create a new file. Answer derived from one posted by Cal Learner, MVP.
A) You don't. The only ways to undo the effects of archiving are to go to the archive file and enter/import newer transactions or to export the transactions from the archive file and import them into your current file. Both involve going through the .QIF export/import process. Neither is trouble-free. See the MSKB for Microsoft's approach.
Archiving will shrink your file size somewhat. There have been some reports that archiving helps performance problems. That's about all it does. On the down side, in addition to not providing any way to put the archived data back in the ongoing data file, archiving will not remove old investment account activity and related transfer transactions. In some versions, archiving seems to have many problems adjusting the account beginning balance for removed transactions.
For these reasons, many of us do not recommend archiving and do not do it ourselves. If you start recording all kinds of interesting memo data (like serial numbers for your toys, warranty lengths, the genus and species of plants you bought for your garden and so on) you, too, will not want to archive.
If you archived recently enough, you can use the archive file you created in place of the file that Archive removed transactions from. It has all of the transactions in your entire Money file as of the date you archived, not just ones before the archive date. This is another result of the rather odd design for archiving.
References:
MSKB: 133485 How to un-archive
Q) I just archived. But there are many transactions left from before the archive date. Why?
A) The more you know about archiving; the less likely you are to do it. All pain. Precious little gain. I do not recommend archiving. YMMV.
First, there is little reason to archive--as you've found out, by design the impact is limited--and some reasons not to--primarily that you can't go back at all easily once you've archived and your archive file will overlap the file you use going forward since it's just a backup prior to removing transactions. If, like many of us, you record all manner of useful data like the serial numbers of your toys and when you bought a battery for the car last, taking this data out of your main data file is not something you'll want to do.
Second, archiving does not remove all transactions. Transactions related to investment buys/sells and, hence, capital gains, for instance, are not archived.
Third, there is little evidence that archiving has a significant impact on performance, especially given the limitations on what data it actually removes.
Fourth, hard disks are selling for less then $0.75/GB and the smallest 2.5" laptop drives being manufactured today are typically 10GB in size. Very few people have data files bigger than, say, 50 MB. That makes 200 extremely large Money data files you can store on the smallest hard disk being manufactured today. (Capacities and costs as of 11/24/2004. The trend of larger disks costing less money will no doubt continue. This answer may or may not be updated accordingly.)
There are a number of MSKB articles on the subject of limitations of archiving. On-line help even describes it pretty well. Also, see the question "How do I un-archive?"
References:
MSKB: 191537 How archiving really works II
MSKB: 306825 How archiving really works III
MSKB: 77462 How archiving really works
Q) I just bought a new computer with the current Money pre-installed. How do I transfer my data from the old version/old machine?
A) Go find your Money data file and copy it to the new machine. Your file will be named *.mny, so if you do not know where it is, you can search for it. Likewise, going into File|Open should enable you to see where the current file is located.
The best ways to move the file are to burn a CD, use something like a network or laplink, use some diskette copy or backup/restore routine that can span multiple diskettes, or consider this an excuse to buy one of those neato new USB memory keys. Second best is to use the Money backup to floppy capability to backup on the old version/old machine and restore on the new version/new machine. BUT BE SURE NOT TO TRASH THE OLD COPY 'TIL YOU HAVE THE NEW COPY RUNNING! Sometimes data errors and so forth occur--you'd be surprised how many people get here when their ONLY backup copy is trashed and want to know how to recover.
When you first open the data file from the old version, Money will rename your existing file and create a new file from the data in the old one except upgraded to the current file format.
When you start the new version of Money on the new machine, be sure to tell it to skip Passport. If you find you need it later, you can go add it.
If you use Money backup/restore, you might just want to first go open the sample data file, so it will skip lots of non-pertinent steps like the interview. Then you can restore the old copy from floppies using the Money File|Restore menu choice.
Also, be sure to copy your Tools|Options settings by hand since many of them are NOT stored in the data file. You will also have to redo printer setups.
This discussion assumes that the old system and new system both use the same region settings and both old and new versions of Money are the same localization (e.g., Money US or Money UK.) If either of these assumptions is violated, it may not be possible to do what you want.
Q) I just reinstalled M98--it can't read my data backup floppies. Now what?
[Relevant to Money98 (v.6)]
A) Money98 originally didn't know how to do a multi-diskette backup. (This was bizarre since M98 was the first version where data file size grew by an order of magnitude.) If you made a Money98 diskette-spanning backup using Money98, you must have installed the patch that provided this functionality and now the patch is lost. (The outcry over the lack of spanning backup and the suddenly huge data files--small by the standards of current versions--led to release of the patch.) You will need to get it and reinstall it to read your diskette-spanning backup. Once installed, you will need to look not under the File menu but under Tools|Multi-disk backup. You can also see the MSKB item for more information.
Possibly a better course would be to consider migrating to a newer version of Money. The never version will know how to read the format written by the M98 diskette-spanning backup patch.
Thanks to Bonnie Synhorst for this answer; the MSKB link was provided by Kimberly Renna-Griego, MVP.
References:
Money98 diskette-spanning backup patch (get file mdbr1.exe)
MSKB: Q179397 M98 Diskette-spanning backup/restore
Q) What is this .LRD file with the same name as my Money data file? Should I worry about it?
A) It's a record-locking file used for internal purposes by the database engine Money uses. It opens when you open a Money file and disappears when you close it normally. You may see one left around if Money "abnormally ends" or ABENDs. (That's IBM talk for "crashes.") It means nothing to the user. You can safely ignore it.
It will also be there when Money Express is open in the background.
If you sign-in to Money with "Use Money's online features that require .NET Passport," then 2 or 3 (depending upon version) Money background processes are spawned. These background processes, mis.exe, misuser.exe (Money 2003-4 only) and mnyschdl.exe, are spawned and continue to run even after closing your Money file and exiting Money itself (msmoney.exe), whether or not Money Express is enabled. If you have enabled Background Banking as well, one or more of these background processes will be periodically locking your primary Money file. The list changes slightly for M05, but the basic issue is still the same: depending on what you enable in Money, your Money data file may still be in use, and the .LRD file still relevant, when you are not actually using Money.
Additional information about situations that will create the lock file borrowed from an answer by Brent Neville who has also provided updates.
Q) What should I do to close the year in my data file? Should I archive?
A) Lots of people want to do something to "close" out a year's worth of data in Money. There isn't really any need to do anything. Money will happily carry on from here. Any need to look at data by year is best accomplished with customized reports. But you may also want to make a "snapshot" of the data to file with your taxes or similar records for the year. Lots of people think, reasonably enough, that Money's Archive or Backup functions are somehow useful for this. Perhaps not.
Understand that:
A Backup is supposed to be a file that enables you to Restore a file exactly as your data file was at the point in time where the backup was performed. Money's backup cannot always achieve this.
An Archive is a copy of your entire data file at a given point in time but just before the archiving function destructively and irreversibly removes a bunch of data from, and modifies other data in, the main data file you intend to use going forward. I do not recommend archiving. All pain. No gain.
If you want to have a high-probability-of-recoverability of your Money data as far into the future as my crystal ball can see, there are two things I recommend:
1) Make a copy (not a Money File|Backup, just a Windows Explorer File Copy) of the .MNY file as it now exists, and burn it onto a CD-R or two. Use the quality media for this. (The $0.02 per disc white label media may be great for your MP3s, but this is serious data we are talking about here.) Turn off all of the esoteric burning format options. (The system that you need to read this on may not have been invented yet so it is best to stay mainstream.) Test the CD-R(s) in at least one, if not several, other machines to make sure you can read the file back correctly. (The burner that burned the CD may be the only drive in the world that can actually read it.) Label the CD-R(s) with the exact version of Money that wrote the file, as displayed in Help|About. (This will be something like 14.0.115.1105.) File at least one of the CD-Rs in your safe deposit box or other off-site location. This will be usable as long as you can run the noted Money version or a future Money version that supports that file format. Money File|Backup should provide a 100% path back to the original data file. For all too many people it does not seem to do this.
2) Create two favorite reports. One is Account Transactions for all accounts and the other is Investment Transactions for all accounts including closed accounts. Customize them to the date range for all of the year you want to capture and set all of the flags for every column to appear. Clear any other customization that filters out data. Spot check the resulting reports to confirm that you haven't accidentally left anything out. Then do one or more of the following: a) print to paper, b) print to .PDF or Microsoft Office Imaging files, c) "Export to Excel" .CSV (comma separated value) format files. (.CSV files can be read by Excel but they can also be read with Notepad or any other text editor and are easy for even savvy 12 year olds to write programs to parse back into more usable forms.) If you make the files, follow guidance above for what to do with them. If you print the reports, save a copy with, say, your tax returns and associated data. These will be usable for access to the data--but not by Money--in the event some point in the future arrives and there is no Money version that can read the data file from #1. It will not get all of the data (quotes, payee addresses, loan terms, account details like account numbers, comments, and credit limit are all lost this way) but it's about as good as Money will let you get.
Q) When I archive, Money complains that my floppy disk is full. How can this possibly be?
A) The archive file is a copy of your entire data file made before any transactions are removed. Archiving knows nothing about compressing data files nor does it know about spanning multiple floppies with large files. (Just because Money backup to floppy knows how to do both of these things, don't think that archive does. It doesn't.) Given these facts and the fact that virtually every data file created by Money is larger than 1.44MB, it should be obvious that unless you have that rare data file that will fit on a floppy, the message you are getting is just Money telling you a fact of life.
Q) Where is Money hiding my data from me? In the registry? In the ether?
A) This question comes up over and over again in many disguised forms. Examples include "How do I just start completely over?," "I want to move my data to a new computer but can’t figure out where it is on the old one, what do I do?," and the ever popular "How do I backup my Money data to a CD-R instead of a floppy?"
Money is a file-oriented program. It stores your data in .MNY data files just like Word uses .DOC files, Excel uses .XLS files, Notepad uses .TXT files, and Access uses .MDB files. These files are all just data files that can be moved, copied, deleted, renamed, shared over the network, or burned to CDs, no matter what application originally created them. Perhaps part of the problem here is that Money users generally use the same single data file for months or years at a time--and Money always opens the last file they used--so they may not even remember that their data is in a file named what they told Money to name it and stored where they told Money to store it. Take note: there is a File|Open choice in Money, just like in Word. Money also has a File|New choice, just like Word.
There are some additional considerations:
1) While Money stores all of your account and transaction data in the data file you designated when you first setup the file, it stores your Tools|Options settings in the registry. The Tools|Options settings are the only thing that you ever put into Money that is not stored in a .MNY data file. This can be an issue when you reload your system or move your data file to a new system but the Tools|Options settings get lost. Particularly painful is when printer alignment settings for printing checks get lost. Write them down before replacing your system or reinstalling the application.
2) It is generally considered a "best practice" to store your .MNY files in the My Documents folder tree, not somewhere in the Program Files folder tree. All of the reasons for this are beyond the scope of the FAQ, but think of it this way: it's like throwing your coat in the back seat of the car vs. under the hood. The back seat is your space--under the hood isn't.
3) Money can have your file open for access--and so can MoneyExpress and MoneySide. You should always avoid doing anything to the data file (like copying it to a CD-R as a backup or opening it over the network or from a different user profile) when the file is already opened since this can cause data file corruption problems. An .LRD file in the same folder with the same name is usually an indication that something has the data file open.
4) Starting the Money application directly--as opposed to opening a .MNY file from the Windows file explorer--results in Money trying to open the last .MNY file you used from the exact same location. If, say, you've moved your data file, this will result in a "file not found" type of error. This message does not mean that Money lost your data--it means that you've hidden your data from Money. Go find your data file using the Windows file explorer and r-click Open it or double click on it. After doing this, Money will now know where your file is located.
5) Because your Money file is just a file, you can burn it to CD or whatever else you want to do with it, just like any other data file. Money really doesn't care. Likewise, whatever you do with the file is at your risk, not Money's.
6) If you don't remember where you told Money to put your file or what you told Money to name it, here are some ways to find out:
- Search your system's disks for files of type Microsoft Money File (files using the extension .MNY).
- The Money title bar shows the name of your file, as in "MyDataFileNameIsHere – Microsoft Money" when you are using Money.
- The Most Recently Used choices numbered 1 through 4 at the bottom of Money's file menu are the four most recently opened Money data files
- If, with your file open, you go to Money's File|Open dialog it will show you the directory (folder, if you prefer) where your data file is located as this is the place it will start looking. If there is any doubt where this is, pull down the little arrow next to the "Look In" pull-down.7) Because your Money data file is your data file, you are responsible for protecting it as you would any other file with important data in it: this means backing it up, keeping copies before reloading your machine, and so on.
8) Money File|Backup creates files that are not identical copies of the original file. For reasons unknown, occasionally this difference is relevant. If you really have to be sure you have your data--like when migrating to a new system or reformatting your present hard disk--it's a very good idea to have both the Money backup .MBF file and the real .MNY data file both copied onto, say, a writable CD or, better, several writable CDs, which you have tested in alternate machines from the one that wrote the CD, before destroying the original. The best method, if possible, is to get the new installation working before destroying the original.
Q) I imported a statement to the wrong account. Now Money wants to keep repeating this mistake. How do I undo this?
A) The basic approach is to delete the financial institution associated with the account and then specify the financial institution for the account a second time. For more details, there are several MSKB items that may help. The links are courtesy of Mark and Cal Learner--MVP.
References:
MSKB: 327241 Statement imported to wrong account
MSKB: 822390 OFX statements downloaded to wrong account
Q) If downloaded data is so much trouble, why even use Money? Or, why use Money if you have type in all of the transaction data?
A) Many recent posters in the newsgroup seem to view downloading transaction data as the only value-add Money provides or as fundamental to any use of the product. This is unfortunate. Perhaps they don't understand that transaction data actually can be entered by hand?
IF all you use Money for is to keep a register, THEN it seems true that downloading data will save a lot of labor--assuming it goes trouble free and the downloading never fails and your payees always match and so on. But if all you use Money for is to keep a register that matches, by definition, the data you download from your bank--or your bank's website if Yodlee is involved, what's the point? Why not just log into your bank's web site, look at the data, and press on? What value did Money really add?
IF, on the other hand, you use Money to manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc. costs, estimate taxes and so forth, THEN a) the quality and consistency of transaction data matters and dependence on downloaded data may not be entirely compatible with this objective, and b) the amount of time and effort spent doing manual transaction entry is a small fraction of total time spent using Money at worst and is no more and maybe less than the time spent keeping the download thing working and making up for all of the things it can't do at best or screws up at worst. Examples of things the best downloaded data just can't do are split a paycheck deposit into its constituent parts, classify transactions for vehicle or property or similar, or enter the splits for things like an expense at the grocery being part Food:Groceries, part Miscellaneous:Supplies, and part Transfer:Pocket Change. As for the "at worst" side of transaction download, just read the newsgroup for a week. Many weeks more than half the posts or more have something to do with problems with downloaded transaction data. Imagine if half of the posts in the Word newsgroup had to do with typing text into the thing.
Some posters even say thing like "[if you don't download data,] what's the purpose of using Money instead of, say, Excel? [Excel] actually may be a [better] solution considering all the Money limitations with transaction reconciliation, online updates, and so on." This suggests in some circular way that downloaded transaction data is the singular way to make Money work and the limitations with downloaded transaction data reduce Money to the level of Excel in terms of solving the problems at hand. It's like saying if the heated seat in the car isn't working well, just walk instead.
The problems with downloaded transaction data are just that. There is NO function in Money (e.g., manage a budget, forecast cash flow, track asset value, manage investments, track asset values, track property/job/vehicle/vacation/etc costs, estimate taxes) that is one iota easier, or better, or more capable, or enabled uniquely by downloaded transaction data except for downloading transaction data itself. In fact, all of those other functions are TRANSPARENT to how the transaction data actually gets there. Worse, many of them are only as good as the data they process. If you enter the data, you get it right; if you let your bank and Yodlee manage this data, you get what you get.
Maybe what we really need is two Money product lines: Money View, an AOL-like web-only service. Make it just M05 Essential *. The user of this product just wants a passive approach that provides value by aggregating data ala Yodlee, delivering relevant info--aka targeted ads, and sparing effort and typing. The second, Money Management, is the traditional Money product where the users are actually expecting to put some effort into the whole thing and wants to use the data to perform analysis and planning and so forth. Sadly, the first user seems to be the Money "target market."
Q) Money says my PIN for getting my account activity must be six digits. It’s four and works fine on their web site. What gives?
A) The Money online statement PIN/password for a given bank is frequently different than the ATM PIN/web site password for the exact same bank. Money is likely just quoting/enforcing the restrictions that the bank has told it to in the online protocols. Contact the bank's customer service to find out for sure.
Q) My bank offers several formats of file for downland and import. Which should I pick?
A) First, your two choices are QIF and OFX. Everything else requires some amount of conversion to one of these before Money will import it. See "How do I import from Excel (or .CSV or etc.)?" for more information on importing other formats.
If both QIF and OFX are offered, OFX is preferable. This is because OFX includes unique identifiers assigned by the bank to the account and the transactions. Money uses the unique identifiers in two ways that make OFX import better than QIF. First, once Money has associated the account identifier with a specific Account in Money, it will always import future files to the correct account. QIF asks every time and is very problematic if you accidentally give it the wrong answer. Second, Money stores the transaction identifiers with the imported transactions. Because it does this, future imports of a file that has the same transactions won't duplicate the transactions. Importing QIF files that overlap requires Money and the user to attempt to identify any transactions that appear to be duplicates. This isn't always as easy as it seems and is prone to error and requires extra user effort. QIF is the last choice of import format for these reasons.
Question nominated to the FAQ by Mark Horn; answer derived from postings by Mark Horn and Chris Cowles.
Q) When I download account data, my scheduled transfer from Checking to [Visa] gets duplicated in the respective accounts. Why?
A) The secret is to make sure the first one you download is set as a Transfer:[name of second acct] and the second one you download is flagged as a match for the other half of the transfer created out of the first one downloaded.
Now that you've got them, you probably have to do something like void the second one downloaded and not turned into a transfer.
I say "probably" because I really don't know--I skip all of this downloaded transaction data stuff and all of these headaches that come as part of the set.
Cal Learner--MVP, who does download transactions, offered up this:
There is more than one good way to download your credit card data and have also the payment downloaded from a checking account. Here are three ways I like:
1. When you process the first transaction of the credit card payment, set the category as a Transfer to the other (credit card or bank account), or use the equivalent SPECIAL "Credit Card Payment" category. When you process the second transaction, Money should match it. Be careful to not just Accept if Money did not find the match on its own for some reason. Click Change and match it to the transfer you already made if Money did not match it for you. I would consider this the classic of the ways I like. Note that for this you would not use the Money 2005 EXPENSE category "Credit Card Payments/Transfer". Instead you should consider deleting that EXPENSE "Credit Card Payments/Transfer" to avoid confusion. See also "We had Transfer and Credit Card Payment in M04. What's with Credit Card Payments/Transfer added in M05?"
2. In method 2, don't handle credit card payments as transfers or the pre-defined "Credit Card Payment". Instead create one category of "CC payment" or some such. If you define the category as an expense category, expect a warning when you use it to represent the payment within the credit card account -- if you have the warning enabled. Just click Yes in response to the warning. The category should net at zero in reports across accounts, and you can still customize to ignore the category if you like. (This is Bonnie Synhorst's favorite method.) For this method you could use the M05 "Credit Card Payments/Transfer".
3. Create a suspense account. I have one I call In Transit, and I called it a "cash or other" account. Change each of the downloaded transactions into transfer to/from that account. That account will normally have a zero balance except while funds are in transit. Make your credit card payments as transfers to and from that account.
Q) When I download data from my bank, Money grabs the file. How do I make it stop?
A) As many applications do, Money tells Windows to associate certain file types with Money and assign certain things to do when files of that type are downloaded or opened. If you have Quicken installed, it tries to do the exact same thing. Barring your intervention, the last application installed will win this battle. You can use this fact to all Quicken to get the files by simply reinstalling it.
But you can also take matters into your own hands. If you want to see or change file associations yourself, you can
Start|Settings|Control Panel|Folder Options|File Types
Select OFX-- Open Financial Exchange File or QIF or whatever.
Click Advanced. Check Confirm Open After Download unless you would not like the pop-up box. That pop-up box may be of use in that it lets you save the file to the disk and open it with either or both programs later.
See that the "Actions" box contains "Open" in bold. If it is not bold, you can select Open as the default action by clicking the Set Default button.
Click Edit.
When you click edit, the application used to perform action for Money would be similar to the following line:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Money\System\mnyimprt.exe" %1
with both the quotes and the %1 after the quote. The path will differ based on your installation. Modify it for your setup. There would be a similar string if Quicken is handling that file type.
Answer courtesy of Cal Learner--MVP
Q) Why are my credit card charges showing as credits not debits?
A) There is more than one possibility here.
If downloaded transaction data is involved, there could be a problem in the download file.
Another thing that sometimes happens is that a user entered an account beginning balance as a negative number. So Money thinks the account has a credit balance (the bank owes you) rather than a debit balance (you owe the bank). Entering purchases makes this negative "you owe" balance decline since the bank now "owes you" less money. Unless the bank owed you when you setup the account, the account beginning balance should be a positive number.
Finally, some people just get confused by how liability accounts, of which Credit Card is one example, are depicted in Money. In the account register for a Credit Card account, the amount you owe is positive. At the bottom of the register it normally says something like "You owe: $123.45". If it said "You owe: ($123.45)", you would be running a credit balance.
Note that in the numbers on the Account List and Favorite Account balances on the home page and so on, the amount you owe is shown as negative, and a credit balance would be shown as positive. In the account register, things are the other way around.
Answer derived from one provided by Cal Learner--MVP.
Q) How can I transfer money (to / from) the loan I (made / borrowed)?
A) Money doesn't provide any way in the Loan Account Setup genie to account for money transferred into a loan you are making or from a loan you are taking. Since one typically is funding a loan from another account when you are lending money or transferring the money into some account or transaction (a car purchase, say), this seems a fairly fundamental omission.
If you can live with this, the easiest thing to do is just enter an expense or income transaction with some unique category ("Other Income : Loan Proceeds Received") or no category at all. You can enter a memo in this transaction making clear what you were doing and why and referencing the Loan Accounts involved.
An alternate way to account for the principal received follows a more elaborate technique outlined by Chris Cowles: setup a loan account with no balance but using the appropriate information for all else and letting Money calculate the ($0) payment. Then you enter a "Principal Transfer" of the balance in the loan account register to the settlement account. (You will have to type "principal transfer" as the drop-/pull-downs will not offer it.) Tomorrow (or roll the clock forward by a day for a moment--Money refuses to let you do this any other way), you can go to the loan Details and select Change Loan Terms and go in and set the balance. This will cause the account details to show the amount as $0, but the balance will be correct after the transfer. The interest charged may be off by a day's worth; I have not checked this.
Q) How do I 'mark' money in an account for future use so I don't spend it now?
A) Lots of people want to do this with some mechanism like the accounts-within-an-account "subaccounts" mechanism that Quicken provides. Money provides no similar mechanism. Money, instead, provides tools to manage budget--what you plan to spend when for what--separately from cash flow--managing the amount of cash available to execute the budget. Many of us prefer the latter approach since it leaves behavior modification--not spending money just because you have a positive balance--up to us rather than resorting to subterfuge to "fake ourselves out" by "cookie jar accounting." YMMV.
When a poster said that he was looking for a "cookie jar" mechanism since lack of one meant the money "has to show in the checking account because it is there, but I don't want to think the money is mine by seeing it in the balance," David Brownridge put it very well:
"The way I deal with that is to leave the money in the cheque acct, and in Bills & Deposits create a Bill (with frequency Only Once) and the appropriate future date. Until that "bill" is paid the money will show in the balance of the account; but if you look at the forecast for the account you'll see where it gets withdrawn.
"The important point is that in terms of 'think what money is mine' I never just look at the balances in the accounts list; rather I check out the cashflow forecasts."
Q) How do I budget an expected wage increase without changing my scheduled paycheck?
A) Go into the Budget Planner, Edit the budget, go to the category in question, Edit the "Other income for [category in question]" line and tell Budget Planner about the amounts it isn't figuring out from history/scheduled transactions. Here you'd just want to add the difference amounts since the basic amount should get picked up from your scheduled paycheck transaction.
Q) How do I create different payee information for two accounts with the same payee?
A) You can create two different versions of the same Payee by putting qualifiers after the name in curly braces. E.g., "Mondo Bank {his}" and "Mondo Bank {hers}". The information in the braces and the braces themselves will not print on checks or matter much of anywhere else except where it counts--you can enter transactions to the same payee and have different underlying Payee information in Money.
You can also use curly braces around information in memo fields if you don't want certain information in your memo to print on your checks. Cool, eh?
Q) How do I handle employer reimbursable expenses?
A) There are a few ways to treat employer reimbursables. Some people prefer creating a cash account (entitled "Reimbursed Expenses" or similar). Treat expenses to be reimbursed as transfers in from the account used to pay for the expense, and treat reimbursements as transfers from this account to the account destined to receive the reimbursement.
Another way would be to use an expense category (entitled "Job-Related Expenses:Reimbursable" or similar). Treat expenses to be reimbursed as debits against the category, and treat reimbursements as credits against the category. Depending on your Tools|Options setting, Money may complain about using an expense category for what is an income transaction, You can tell Money this is what you intend. In addition, if your taxing authority allows for the deduction/treatment of unreimbursed employee expenses (as in the United States), be sure to associate the expense category to the proper tax form/line. This way, any monies not reimbursed will appear as an outstanding balance in tax-related reports/calculations.
Thanks to Derrick Cole for this answer.
Q) How do I treat my income tax refund/bill for the prior year?
A) There are several different ways to treat this.
Probably the "best" way to handle this with the least side effects is one suggested by Chris Cowles: If you don't already have one, create a "bank" account (it doesn't have to be associated with any bank) for money owed to you. Flag it as a 'budget' account on the details page. Record a transaction increasing (or decreasing) the balance on that account, categorized to your income tax expense category, dated 12/31/[tax year in question]. That adjusts your income tax expenses to reflect reality. When you get the refund, record the deposit as a transfer to checking from the asset account. Alternately, when you pay the bill, record this as a transfer from checking to the asset account, payable to the taxman or woman, as you prefer. Either way, this transaction is budget-neutral.
You can also use/create categories for this that are flagged to not be included in tax reporting (federal prior year due or refunded) or are flagged to be included (state prior year due or refunded). These would be categories like Taxes:Federal Income Tax (prior year) or Taxes:State Income Tax (prior year). This has the downside of artificially reducing or increasing your tax expenses in the tax year in question. This can have budget planner complications.
Q) How do I treat taxable fringe benefits (imputed income)?
A) Imputed income is the tax accountants' term for income (typically in the form of an employer paid benefit) that the tax law says you owe tax on even though you never got any money. (This stuff gets reported in box 12 of form W-2. The cost of life insurance over $50k is reported as code C.)
Here's how I handle this income in Money--it seems to work and doesn't bollocks up the tax estimator:
On the wages tab of my paycheck:
Wages & Salary:Imputed Income $x (I created this category)
On the deductions after taxes tab:
Insurance:Life $x
Q) How do other users account for ATM withdrawals?
A) Many users setup a dedicated cash account, I call mine "Pocket Change". Transfer the money to the cash account, enter cash transactions in the cash account, and balance it occasionally against the amount of cash you have on hand, entering either an adjustment income (Other Income:Found Money) or expense (Miscellaneous:[unassigned]) transaction to get back in sync vs. the amount of money in your pocket. You don't have to record everything. Just record the things you remember or care about or have receipts for or whatever. If the amount you are writing off seems to be getting out of hand, you can track more closely. If it's getting to be a pain, track less closely and write off more.
If this is too much of a hassle or if your cash spending is sufficiently small/rare as to not be worth worrying about, you can just use splits to account for it. Say you get $50 from the ATM, spend $40 of tickets to the ball game and pocket the $10 to spend over the next week or two. You can split a withdrawal of $50 into $40 for Leisure:Sporting Events and $10 for Miscellaneous:[unassigned].
Q) I don't want to send the whole amount of my phone bill this month, but how do I categorize the whole expense?
A) (This question suggests a new FAQ section: Credit Counseling.)
Assuming that an Account for this payee is not appropriate (see "When should I create an Account instead of a Payee? Aren't Payees just Accounts? Or is my Payee really a Category?"), one way to treat this is to enter a split transaction with the total amount of what you are going to pay them and splits with the entire expense categorized and then some negative number against some Income category like "Other Income:Screw 'em, they'll get it later" or similar for the amount you aren't paying. When they catch up with you and you pay them this amount, do another split in the total amount you are going to pay them and the splits are the expense of the amount you are paying them that hasn't been expensed before, and the next split entry is a positive amount against the Income category "Other Income:Screw 'em, they'll get it later" in the amount you are going to cough up. Money will complain that you are entering an expense against an income category--tell it to get over it. Once they get all their money from you, the total income against "Other Income:Screw 'em, they'll get it later" will fall to $0.
If you need to do this with several payees simultaneously and want to keep track of the separate unpaid balances due, probably the only good choice is to temporarily create liability accounts for each unpaid balance. The basic steps here would be to create the liability account(s), record the expenses and the addition to the liability in a split transaction when you pay the partial amount, and then pay down the liability with transfers. Example transactions with a newly created liability account--created with $0 starting balance--named "Unpaid Phone Co Balance":
First transaction total $10 (paid amount), split #1: $45 Utilities:Telephone, split #2: ($35) Transfer:Unpaid Phone Co Balance
Nth transaction (paying it off): total $65 (paid amount, split #1: $45 Utilities Telephone, split #2 $20 Transfer:Unpaid Phone Co Balance
When you get the liability account balance back down to $0, you can just close the liability account.
Q) I entered a transaction for something I bought. Now I returned the thing for credit. How do I enter that?
A) This question also comes up in other contexts like "I bought lunch for a friend on my credit card last week; he paid me in cash today. How do I deal with that?" The concern in these cases is generally that the amount of spending in the original category may get distorted for reporting and budget purposes.
The best way to treat this is to put in another transaction against the same expense category you used originally but make it a deposit or a credit amount, as appropriate to the account type. Depending on the setting of Tools|Options|Categories|Require the correct type of category for each transaction, Money may issue a warning about using an expense category for an income. You can tell it that you know what you are doing and it will let you do it. (This setting is at Tools|Settings in M05.)
Some reports, e.g., Spending by Category, may require customization to include both debits and credits against the expense category for this to show up.
Thanks to John Buschman for pointing out that this FAQ should be in the UFAQ.
Q) I get a pay advance on the 15th and a full paycheck less the advance at the end of the month. How do I track this in Money?
A) The best bet here is to use a paycheck on the 15th that just has one entry on the after tax tab of "negative" after tax expenses in the amount of the check, expensed against some category like Other Income:Advance Pay. Then, on the alternate paycheck, after taxes tab, have an exactly equal but positive amount against the same category. Thus, these two net to $0. Money tracks everything else off the entries on the end-of-month complete stub. The after tax tab is to keep Money Tax Estimator happy. When entering an expense against an income item, Money may complain depending on your Tools|Options settings. Tell it to get over it.
An alternate method that should work, pointed out by Artie, is to put the advance in as a positive Wage & Salary:Gross Pay (or similar) on the Wages tab and then reduce the amount of the same category on the final paycheck transaction by the advance amount. This may be the best approach depending on how the stubs depict all of this and how much math/lookup you want to do by hand. You have to be very careful what you do with the first entry on the Wages tab of a paycheck as it holds special significance to Tax Estimator. However you set it up; if you use Tex Estimator, check to make sure that the results you are getting are sane.
Q) I paid the phone bill, but my roommate owes me half of it. How do I track that in Money?
A) There are two basic approaches to this. Which you pick depends on how frequent this requirement is and how carefully you want to track this obligation--i.e., is the roommate really all that trustworthy.
The first approach: Pay the Utilities:Phone bill. Then record some Utilities:Phone income when your roommate reimburses his share. Depending on your settings, Money will whine about an income categorized as an expense. Tell it that this is really what you want to do.
The second approach: Create a cash account to track your roommate's balance. Pay the Utilities:Phone bill. Add a second transaction for the same category depositing half the amount into your roommate's balance account. (This is a receivable--an asset--so it is a deposit here. Using the same category effectively reduces your spending in this category.) When your roommate pays her share, transfer the amount from the roommate's balance account to whatever account you deposit it in. Whatever the positive balance of that account is what she still owes you.
Q) I'm distributing my 401(k)/withdrawing from my IRA--how do I categorize the transfer as income?
A) The question frames the issue. This transfer from a tax-deferred Investment account to a Cash Account is not Income in the accounting sense. It's already your money. You didn't get richer by moving it from the tax-deferred account to the cash account. Thus, in the accounting sense favored by Money, Transfer is correct and categorizing it as Income isn't correct. But the problem is that the IRS treats money coming out of the tax-deferred accounts as taxable earned income. (Even that is a muddled picture. If the principal includes after-tax contributions, then not all of the distribution/withdrawal is treated for tax purposes as taxable earned income.)
While the Tax Estimator in Money is smart enough to ignore various earnings in the accounts set as tax-deferred, it isn't smart enough to deal with distributions/withdrawals from these accounts. (The before/after tax contributions problem may be one of the reasons they've elected to "not go there.")
So how do you get Tax Estimator and the tax reporting to deal with your distribution/withdrawal?
There are a number of possible ways, each of them imperfect. Possibilities include:
You can use some tool besides Money to manage the tax estimating. Excel is frequently a handy tool to have around to solve things Money can't.
You can enter the income in Tax Estimator by hand. You can do this buy going into Tax Estimator, on the Income page. click on the Wages income link, and then use the option to add additional income that's not in your Money file.
If you do not have an Investment Cash Account associated with the Investment Account that you are selling down, your choice is probably limited to the "two transaction" method posted by Cal Learner--MVP. This is doing the Sell transaction with no Transfer To account for the proceeds in one transaction and doing an Income transaction, for the same amount, in the cash account receiving the funds. One downside to this is that the transactions are not joined in any logical way in Money, only in your head.
You can use the "unassigned split" option posted by Michael Gordon. Here you to have the Transfer from the Investment Cash Account be part of a split with a similar amount categorized as some Income Category that is set to work and play well with the Tax Estimator, etc. The split is unbalanced--the elements don't add up to the transaction net--to keep from "creating" money. Say the transferred amount is $2,000; the split would have the $2,000 transfer and $2,000 of income--adding up to $4,000, not the $2,000 desired total for the transaction. You'd tell Money you know there is unassigned income in the split and you really want to do it that way when it complains.
If the unassigned split offends your sense of precision, a variant of this is to add a separate expense to balance the transaction against some made-up expense category, say Miscellaneous : Tax-Deferred Income Offset.
Jeff M suggested an interesting alternative to these last two: use a Paycheck transaction. In this case, you'd probably have to enter the Paycheck in the account that you are transferring the money to. (The umpmfaq has not tested this to see which works best with Tax Estimator.) The Paycheck would have some income on the wages tab, the after-tax tab would have a Transfer from--in a negative amount--the Investment Cash Account. You could either save the transaction with unassigned income or have the bogus offsetting expense category. This method might also prove valuable for 401(k) distributions, since these distributions are typically required to have taxes withheld. This tax withholding could be entered directly in the Paycheck transaction. Likewise, using a Paycheck would provide a ready model for separating the before taxed income portion of a distribution and the after-tax, i.e., already taxed, portion.
Q) I've been lazy and haven't balanced in months. How do I catch up?
A) If you wish to start fresh and declare an account balanced, you can mark all entries balanced. Select the register view to show only unreconciled transactions, sort by date, and go to the oldest transaction. Hold down Cntl+Shift+M and let auto-repeat work through the transactions until none are left showing. Then balance, making the starting and ending balance match the known balance. Choose the balance date to be the day after your last transaction. This is not the normal procedure; it just starts you with an amnesty for former balancing.
Thereafter, follow the normal procedure. Look at the balancing movie clip from your Money disk.
Answer courtesy of Cal Learner--MVP.
Q) Money won't let me make a Loan Payment from my Paycheck. Why not? What do I do?
A) A paycheck is a specialized instance of the generalized form of split transaction. A loan payment is a specialized instance of the generalized form of split transaction. In Money, a transaction that is a split of another transaction cannot itself be split. Thus, a loan payment cannot be made from a paycheck.
The general way to accomplish this is in two transactions via a holding account. E.g., transfer the payment amount to the associated Asset Account in the Paycheck and then schedule the Loan Payment to be made from the Asset Account. Yes, it creates a bunch of silly looking paired +x Transfer, -x Loan Payment Transactions in the Asset Account. But there is no other way to record it in Money.
There is an MSKB article with more detail on doing this; the reference is courtesy of Kimberly Renna, Microsoft MVP - Consumer Products.
References:
MSKB: Q148280 Loan payments from paycheck
Q) My wife and I have two accounts at the same bank with different passwords. How do I enter two passwords in Money?
A) This answer used to point to an MSKB item that has since been "disappeared" from the Microsoft Support site. (Thanks to Jon Anderson for pointing this out.) The old method was to define a new FI with a slightly different name ("First Galactic Bank of the Milky Way {his}" and "First Galactic Bank of the Milky Way {hers}") so that you can still have one user name/password associated with each FI. Now that Money tries to make you use FIs they define, so that the whole Yodlee thing will work, this probably doesn't work. What does work is still an open question. If anybody figures it out, let me know and I'll update this answer.
Q) Why don't my transfers to savings show up under some category in my budget?
A) Transfers do not have an income or expense category because they are net worth neutral. Expenses make you poorer, Income makes you richer; Transfers do neither.
For this reason, Transfers between accounts that are included in the Budget Planner (see the account details for information) will NOT show up in your budget. Only by excluding the savings account from the Budget Planner will you see the scheduled transfer (and then only grouped under the "Transfers out of budget accounts" Budget Group.
Answer derived from one provided by Derrick Cole
Q) How can I adjust the asset allocation of my investments?
A) Money has only limited asset allocation capability and some features just plain don't work. (This much improved in Money 2007 so if this is important to you, then consider upgrading.) First, we'll review available Investment Types and Asset Classes, and then we'll look at what you can and cannot with asset allocation in various versions of Money.
Investment Type
When you first tell Money about an investment, you must assign it to one of these Investment Types:
1. Bond
2. CD or US Savings Bond
3. Equity or Index Option
4. Money Market
5. Mutual Fund
6. Stock
7. Employee Stock OptionThis is a pretty comprehensive list, but if you have investments types that are not here, then the Money reports that use these types won't be very useful to you. You cannot create your own Investment Types.
Asset Class
In order to get an asset allocation report in Money, each investment must be assigned to an Asset Class. The available Asset Classes are:
1. Money-Market/Cash
2. Bond
3. Small-Cap
4. Mid-Cap
5. Large-Cap
6. OtherAgain, this is a pretty good list, but if you have an investment that doesn't fit into one of these classes, you are out of luck. You can't create your own Asset Class, and every investment has to fit into a single Asset Class. Things like lifecycle funds obviously don't fit well in this scheme.
Assigning Asset Classes
Money assigns Asset Classes for everything except Stocks and Mutual Funds when the investment is created. For example, Money always assigns the "Bond" Asset Class to the "Bond" Investment Type. For stocks and mutual funds, however, there are several possible Asset Classes, so you or Money need to make a choice. Here's how it works.
Stock Asset Classes
For stocks that are listed and have a symbol, Money will automatically assign an Asset Class every time you do an online update of investment prices. You can go into the Investment Details screen and change the Asset Class, but Money will change it back at the next online update. If the stock is not listed, then online updates have no effect, and money will use whatever Asset Class you put in the Investment Details screen.
Mutual Fund Asset Classes
This is where things get weird. For mutual funds that have investments that fit into a single Asset Class, things work pretty much as you would expect. However, for mutual funds that have investments in multiple Asset Classes, things don't work at all.
Mutual Funds with a Single Asset Class
For mutual funds that are listed and you have entered a symbol, Money will automatically assign an Asset Class the first time you do an online update of investment prices. This Asset Class cannot be changed and the only way to see it is to run an asset allocation report and see where the investment shows up. Note that you cannot see this Asset Class in the investment details screen. (See below.) You can beat Money to the punch by assigning an Asset Class manually before doing an online update.
If the mutual fund is not listed or if you want to assign an Asset Class manually, then you can do so. Unlike stocks, you do not do this in the Investment Details screen. Instead, what you need to do is go to Investing | Asset Allocation and click thru the "Learn about Asset Allocation" to see the portfolio's asset allocation. The new investment will be highlighted as one without an Asset Class. If you click on it, you will be able to assign any of the allowed Asset Classes for mutual funds.
You can also use the manual process to assign an Asset Class to a listed mutual fund. To do this, you must do the manual assignment before you do an online update. Once you have assigned the Asset Class manually, it will not subsequently change when you "Update Prices Online". And, as noted above, you can't view it or change it manually either. This is different from stocks, where any manual changes will be overridden by the next Online Update.
Mutual Funds with More than One Asset Class
If you have any mutual funds that have investments in more that one Asset Class, the asset allocation features and reports will not be useful. Money