SET + MAINTAIN CATEGORIES
Categories (often called Details) allow you to break down your income and expenses into meaningful groups. They are how you group your transactions to track your spending and to budget.
This section allows you to create and modify categories, their headers and their budget details. You don’t need to worry about budget details until after you have imported and categorised transactions.
Most of the categories that you will need should already be in the list. Check to see if there are any extra categories that you need to add.
The First time you Categorise there are some Important Things You Should Do:
1. Review the Categories
2. Make Inactive the Categories you will not use
e.g. if you have no children you can make all categories under “Children” inactive. You can make whole sections or individual categories inactive.
3. Add any extra Categories you will need
4. Name + Categorise your transactions before creating a Budget
However, there are some categories that you should not add. Such a category is one for credit card payments, because it is categorised differently and automatically (as a transfer).
HEADERS AND DETAILS
Headers allow you to group categories together underneath them. Headers are important for organising your categories for reports, search and easy location. They allow you to set options for all of their categories at the same time, making it quick and easy to edit entire category groups.
Headers do not show in budgets, but their Details do. You can add and modify headers and details.
TO ADD A HEADER OR A DETAIL:
1. Select Income or Expense
2. Create Type - Header or Detail
3. Enter a name where requested.
Optionally, select a Header to display under.
MODIFYING A CATEGORY
For each category there are a number of properties that determine how each category operates, shows in budgets and reports. These are:
- Active or Inactive
- Included or Excluded from budget (Categories are Active and Included by default)
- If included in your budget, how your current spending (and if you are exceeding your budget) is displayed in the Budget Monitor.
A category must be active to apply that category to any transactions. It must also be active to be included in a budget. If you have future budget items against a category you cannot make it inactive.
Properties can be set in two main ways:
- Select a Category or Header and right-click (control-click on a Mac) on it. This will give you a menu of all the properties that you can set for Categories or Headers.
Select Modify Budgets or Categories. This determines the options you will see if you double-click on a category or if you select that category then click Modify. The Modify mode is automatically selected when you enter from the mail menu.
SHORTCUT:
You can very quickly make changes to all of the categories under a header. By right-clicking on a category header you can:
- Activate or deactivate all of these categories
- Include or Exclude them all from your budget
- Modify the header
- Delete the header
TO DELETE A CATEGORY
Delete is permanent, with no undo. You can not delete categories that have transactions assigned to them, you can only make them inactive.
To delete a category, right click on that category and then select ‘Delete Category’.
MODIFY A HEADER
Allows you to modify the header by changing its name, or by deleting it. It also allows you to set selected properties for all of the categories in that header.
ACTIVE / INACTIVE PROPERTY
By making a category inactive (deactivating it) you stop it from being added to, but still keep all details and transactions.
Even if inactive, you will still be able to search it and it will appear in your reports. You can make a category active again at any time.
You may want to make a category inactive if it is not relevant to you.
Categories can be made inactive to suit your stage of life. If, for example, you have only older children (or no children) then categories such as preschool may never be used by you. If you’re not going to use a category you can make it inactive. By making it inactive if will no longer be shown in your list of expense categories.
BUDGET PROPERTIES
INCLUDE / EXCLUDE FROM BUDGET
Don’t feel that you need to include all of your categories in a budget - what you include will depend on your needs. Some categories may not be relevant to your household budget or keeping track of your day-to-day spending. For example, you may have professional expenses that you don’t want to include in your budget because they are not where you are looking to make savings. These can be excluded from your budget.
By excluding a category from your budget you make sure that it’s expenses will not show in your budget. This will not stop you from monitoring its spending outside of your budget. Categories are included in budget by default.
Other Properties that effect how budget items display include:
- Always Show
- Only Show
- Exclude Income/Refunds
The Budget Monitor shows the total income/expenses for a category against its budget for a 4 week period. Exclude Income/Refunds can be useful for setting how your expenses display in the Budget Monitor. Consider your Credit Cards - if you pay off your cards your spending will appear less than it actually was. Exclude Income/Refunds allows you to exclude payments or refunds so that they will not skew your actual spending.
