unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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How to do things in Money: Accounts/Categories/Payees

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.

Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.

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