unofficial microsoft.public.money FAQ and A
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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.
Please see this disclaimer if you are using Money 2005 or this comment if you are using Money 2006.
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| How to do things in Money: Accounts/Categories/Payees Q) My Credit Card Payments don't show up in Spending Reports--how come? |
How to do things in Money: Accounts/Categories/Payees Q) Why don't my car Loan Payments show up as an expense in monthly expense reports? |
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Last update: 10 December 2006 |
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