Managing Your Personal Finances with Quicken: Visual QuickProject Guide

Chapter 3. Set Up Your Paycheck

Now that you’ve set up your accounts and added categories, it’s time to tell Quicken how to handle one of your most important financial transactions: your paycheck. Your paycheck isn’t just a simple deposit; it’s the amount you are paid (your gross pay) minus all of those deductions for taxes and other things like 401(k) contributions. You are left with your net pay, which is what gets deposited to your checking account.

Your paycheck is an example of a split transaction, which is a transaction that has amounts assigned to more than one category. Your gross pay is a positive number, say $1,000. Each kind of tax (Federal, state, Social Security, etc.) or other payroll deduction is a negative number. The remainder ...