Cash Flow » Where's my money going?

• How do my transactions get categorised?
• How can I tell if I'm living within my means?
• How do I add my own categories?
• How do I set up my goals and budget?
• How do I track my cash?
• How do I download my transactions to a file on my computer?

1. How do my transactions get categorised?

We categorise transactions based on their payees. A payee is the description for a transaction. It could be:

• The name of a store, utility, or person that you paid
• The name of a business or person who paid you
• A type of transaction, such as MONTHLY FEE
• Just the word CHEQUE or DEPOSIT

The payees from your bank often have a lot of extra text at the end. Whenever possible, we'll suggest more intuitive names and categories for common payees.

What if I don't like the way my payees and categories are automatically cleaned up?

Just change one transaction, and we'll remember your new payee and category and use them on future transactions from the same payee.

Why are some of my transactions marked "Choose a category" or "Uncategorised"?

If we don't recognise a payee, we'll ask you to assign a category yourself. We'll learn from that, too, and use that category for future transactions from that same payee.

But sometimes we can guess at the right category, so all you need to do is edit the payee if you want.

Why don't cheques get categorised?

You'll need to enter the payee and category on cheques that you've written by hand.

How should I categorise credit card payments?

On payments to your credit card, use the Transfer Out category. Otherwise, your Trends and Goals will double-count the expenses for your credit card charges.

Learn more about how to prevent credit card charges from being double-counted.

What if I want to split up the amounts in a transaction and assign them to different categories?

• Click DETAILS.
• Then click ADD ANOTHER CATEGORY

Learn more about splitting transactions.

What if I want to start a new category?

Learn how to add a new category.

Pretty soon, as new transactions come in, you'll see that most of them have their payees cleaned and categorised, just the way you like!

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2. How can I tell if I'm living within my means?

For a quick answer, go to the Trends page. The Bottom Line and the green box tell you if your income is more than your spending (this would be Good)!

You can click through to see subtotals of your transactions. You can even compare your spending to goals you've set up in the same category.

How do I control what I see on the Trends page?

In the top part of the Trends page, you can click to total your transactions in different ways.

Then in the bottom part of the Trends page, you can change the Payee, Category, or Note for each transaction.

Here is what you can click in the top part:

• Click the 1 MO, 3 MO, or other date buttons.
• Click the SPENDING, INCOME, or SAVINGS buttons.
• From any pie chart, click a slice. You'll see just the transactions assigned to that slice.

Am I missing some transactions?

You won't see any transactions assigned to Transfer In or Transfer Out. If you want to edit those transactions, go to the Transactions page.

How do I exclude transactions from the Trends page?

To exclude an entire account, go to the Accounts page and look in the Include in Trends column. Uncheck the box for any account you want to exclude from the Trends page.

Note: Some people like to exclude their investment accounts because transactions within those accounts aren't part of their day-to-day spending.

To exclude individual transactions, select Transfer In or Transfer Out as the category.

Are my credit card transactions double-counted?

This can happen if you use the Credit Card category for payments to a credit card account that you're tracking in Money Manager. To fix this:

• In your savings account, categorise each credit card payment as Transfer Out.
• In your credit card account, categorise each payment received as Transfer In.

Tell me more

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3. How do I add my own categories?

Yes, you can add your own categories. You're not restricted to the Base list of categories that we set up for everyone.

To add a category:

• Click Add/Edit Categories... from any transaction list.
• On the Manage My Categories page, click Add Category. Then type your new category name.
• If your new category has to do with money coming in, be sure to change Expense to Income.
• Click SAVE AND CLOSE.
• Assign the new category to your transaction.

That makes your new category available to assign to transactions.

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4. How do I set up my goals and budget?

Note: If you cannot view the Goals page, please make sure you have Adobe Flash Player 9 or later installed

To add a category:

• Click the Goals tab. We set up your first month's budget for you automatically, based on your recent spending.
• To add a category, find the Add a Category list at the bottom of the page. Then select the new category you want to watch.
• Delete categories you don't want to watch.

We recommend that you watch only categories that you can control. (For example, watching your dining makes sense,but it probably isn't useful to set up a goal for your rent.)

What do the numbers mean?

• Your spent amount is how much we think you've spent so far this month in this category. You can click the category name to see the list of transactions we're counting.
• Your amount remaining is how much more you can spend this month in this category and stay under your goal.
• Your goal for each category is the limit you want to set for your spending in each category.
• You can get a mobile or email alert when you're close to exceeding a goal.
  How do I set up an alert?
• We calculated your average from your last three whole months of spending.

If you just signed up with Money Manager, you won't have enough data to produce accurate averages. You can still set goals for this month and watch your progress toward them, though.

The Overall goal is the sum of all the goals you're currently watching. If you edit the Overall goal amount, the other goals all adjust by the same percentage.

But I've been using Money Manager for a few months. What if my averages still don't seem right?

You may need to categorise some transactions differently. You can go to the Transactions page or the Trends page to review your transactions from the previous 3 months and make any changes.

What happens to my goals next month?

Your categories and goals transfer to the next month with fresh spent amounts. And your budget for past months will be available for you to review.

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5. How do I track my cash?

Getting cash from the ATM (and just categorising it as Cash) is no longer the end of the story. Now you can track what you actually buy with your cash.

• Click in the Cash section on the Accounts list to open the Cash Tracking page.
• Fill out the fields for a transaction and click Add.

Each expense transaction you add decreases the Cash category and increases the category you choose.

You'll see the change immediately on Trends and Goals. Plus you'll see each cash transaction on the Transactions tab.

Note: You must add an account to Money Manager before the Cash Tracking page (My Wallet account) becomes available.

This isn't really an account

Because it's on the Accounts list, you may be thinking that you should see a balance. But this page just shows you your cash transactions within the selected dates.

Instead, you can see how much cash you have left from the gray bar at the top:

• The Spent number totals your cash transactions within the dates selected.
• The Not Categorised number takes the total in your Cash category and subtracts the Spent amount.

Use the Cash category for ATM withdrawals

This all adds up correctly as long as you assign your ATM withdrawals to the Cash category. And if you get an ATM surcharge rebate, for example, you should assign it to the Cash category, too.

Then, after you add cash transactions, they'll be summarised on one row in the Cash popup from Trends or Goals.

Should I track every rupee I spend?

It's totally up to you. For example, you can add one cash transaction every month or week for broad estimates for things like Lunch, or you can add a separate transaction for each time you buy a cup of coffee.

Why should I use the Wallet when I already download ATM withdrawals from my account?

The Wallet is for placing the cash amounts that you spend into specific categories other than just Cash. If you don't use the wallet, your entire ATM withdrawals will be categorised as Cash.

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6. How do I download my transactions to a file on my computer?

With just a few clicks, you can download your transactions to a file. Then you can open that file in a spreadsheet application, or in any application that can open a .csv file.

For example, if you open the file in Microsoft Excel, you can use the data to create charts customised the way you like them.

Each row in the transaction list ends up as a separate row in your spreadsheet.

Downloading from all your accounts at once

If you want to analyse all your transactions at once and you don't care which account they're from, follow these steps.

• Click the Transactions tab.
• Use the date bar to select the dates of the transactions you want to download.
• Click Download. (It's at the top right of the Cleared Transactions list.)
• The next steps depend on the browser you're using. If you're using:
  • Safari: Go to your Downloads folder and double-click the transactions.csv file.
  • Firefox: Choose Save to Disk and click OK. Then click the Open link in the Downloads window.
  • Internet Explorer 6 or 7: Click Save. Choose a folder where you want to save the file. (You can also change the filename if you want, but leave the extension as .csv.) Make a note of where you save it so you can find it later. Then open Windows Explorer and double-click the .csv file you saved.
  • If you have a spreadsheet application associated with .csv files, it should open with your transactions listed.
• If necessary, resize the columns and change the format of the Expense and Deposit columns so they show two decimal places.

Downloading from a single account

If you want to download transactions from only one account, follow these steps.

• Click the Transactions tab, and then click the name of the account.
• Use the date bar to select the dates of the transactions you want to download.
• Click Download. (It's at the top right of the Cleared Transactions list.)
• Follow steps 4 and 5 above.

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