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Quicken 2006 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Name: Quicken 2006 for Starters: The Missing Manual
Author: Bonnie Biafore
ISBN: 9780596101275

by Bonnie Biafore

November 2005

Beginner

428 pages

10h 2m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
The Missing Credits
About the AuthorAbout the Creative TeamAcknowledgementsThe Missing Manual Series
Introduction
Personal Finance and QuickenWhat Quicken DoesWhat Quicken Doesn’t DoQuicken and AccountingAccounts versus categoriesFollowing the moneyEquityChoosing the Right Quicken EditionWhat’s New in Quicken 2006About This BookAbout the OutlineThe Very BasicsAbout → These → ArrowsAbout MissingManuals.comSafari® Enabled
1. Setting Up Your Quicken Environment
1.1. Launching Quicken1.2. Setting Up Your Quicken Data File1.2.1. I Am New to Quicken1.2.2. I Am Already a Quicken User1.3. Opening a Quicken File1.4. The Quicken Guided Setup1.4.1. What You Need for Setup1.4.2. Tell Quicken about Yourself1.4.3. Set Your Goals1.4.4. Add Accounts1.4.4.1. Setting up cash flow accounts1.4.4.2. Setting up investment accounts1.4.4.3. Setting up accounts for what you own and what you owe1.4.4.4. Setting up your paycheck1.4.4.5. Setting up bills to pay1.4.5. Finishing Up the Guided Setup1.5. A Quick Guide to Quicken Preferences1.5.1. Startup1.5.2. Setup1.5.2.1. Turn on Quicken sounds1.5.2.2. Account Bar display1.5.2.3. Keyboard mappings1.5.3. Calendar and Currency1.5.4. Backup1.5.5. Investment Transactions1.5.6. Register1.5.7. QuickFill1.5.8. Notify1.5.9. Write Checks1.5.10. Downloaded Transactions1.5.11. Reminders1.5.12. Reports and Graphs1.5.13. Reports Only
2. Accounts and Categories
2.1. How Accounts and Categories Work2.2. Types of Accounts2.2.1. Cash Flow Accounts2.2.2. Investing Accounts2.2.3. Property & Debt Accounts2.3. Creating Cash Flow Accounts2.3.1. Creating a Banking Account: Step by Step2.4. Editing Account Information2.5. Hiding Closed Accounts2.6. Categories2.6.1. The Category List Window2.7. Customizing Categories2.7.1. Removing Categories2.7.2. Adding Quicken Categories2.7.3. Creating Categories2.7.4. Modifying Categories
3. Backing Up Your Financial Information
3.1. Backing Up Data Files3.1.1. Manual Backups3.1.2. Backup Reminders3.1.3. Automatic Backups3.2. Restoring Quicken Backups
4. Banking, Credit Cards, and Cash
4.1. Transaction Basics4.1.1. Getting to the Register4.1.2. Navigating a Transaction4.2. Quicken’s Quicker with QuickFill4.3. Recording Checks4.3.1. Recording a Check in the Register4.3.2. Recording Printed Checks4.3.2.1. Choose the checking account4.3.2.2. Filling in check fields4.3.2.3. Mailing addresses4.3.2.4. Reviewing the checks to print4.3.3. Printing Checks4.3.3.1. Setting up Quicken to print checks4.3.3.2. Printing to preprinted checks4.4. Recording Deposits4.5. Paying with a Credit Card4.5.1. How to Track Credit Card Charges4.5.2. Recording Credit Card Transactions4.6. Paying with Cash4.6.1. Cash Tracking for Photographic Memories4.6.2. When Your Memory Is Like a Sieve4.7. Splitting Transactions4.7.1. Adding Multiple Categories to a Transaction4.7.2. Editing Splits4.7.3. Handling Remaining Amounts4.8. Transferring Money Between Accounts4.8.1. Recording a Transfer Between Accounts4.8.2. Seeing the Other Side of a Transfer4.8.3. Transfers Masquerading as Checks4.9. Editing Transactions4.9.1. Editing a Field in a Transaction4.9.2. Recategorizing Transactions4.10. Voiding Transactions4.11. Searching for Transactions4.11.1. Finding Recent Transactions with One Click4.11.2. Finding All Transactions4.11.3. Finding Transactions4.11.4. Finding and Replacing Values4.12. The Transaction Edit Menu4.13. Managing Memorized Payees4.13.1. Removing Payees from the Memorized Payee List4.13.1.1. Limiting the length of Quicken’s memory4.13.1.2. Turning off automatic memorization4.13.1.3. Deleting memorized payees4.13.2. Locking a Memorized Payee4.14. Scheduling Transactions4.14.1. Setting Up a Scheduled Transaction4.14.1.1. Transaction values4.14.1.2. Scheduled transaction frequency4.14.2. Paying and Skipping Scheduled Transactions4.15. Automating Your Paycheck in Quicken4.15.1. Basic Paycheck Fields4.15.2. Setting Up Paycheck Details4.15.2.1. Account and scheduling4.15.2.2. Adding and editing paycheck items4.15.3. Entering a Paycheck Transaction4.15.4. Managing Your Paychecks
5. Property and Debt
5.1. Understanding Property & Debt in Quicken5.2. Setting Up Asset and Liability Accounts5.2.1. Types of Accounts5.2.2. Creating an Asset Account5.2.3. Creating a Liability Account5.3. Setting Up a Loan5.3.1. Creating a Loan5.3.2. Setting Up a Loan Payment5.3.3. Linking an Asset and a Loan5.4. Making a Loan Payment5.4.1. Making a Regular Payment5.4.2. Paying Ahead of Time5.4.3. Making an Extra Payment5.5. Editing a Loan5.5.1. Changing Loan Details5.5.2. Changing Payment Details5.5.3. Adjusting the Interest Rate5.6. Refinancing a Loan
6. Online Banking
6.1. What Quicken Can Do Online6.2. Connecting Quicken to the Internet6.3. Setting Up an Account for Online Services6.3.1. Finding a Participating Institution6.3.2. Applying for Online Services6.3.3. Activating Online Services for Your Quicken Account6.4. Updating All Accounts with One Step6.5. Downloading Transactions6.5.1. Downloading Transactions via a Direct Connection6.5.2. Downloading Statements with Web Connect6.6. Reviewing and Incorporating Downloaded Transactions6.6.1. Accepting Transactions6.6.2. When Quicken Doesn’t Match Transactions Correctly6.6.3. Matching Transactions When Quicken Can’t6.6.4. Completing the Incorporation of Downloaded Transactions6.7. Renaming Payees6.8. Setting Up Online Payees6.9. Paying Bills Online6.9.1. Setting Up Online Bill Payments6.9.2. Sending Online Payments6.9.3. Setting Up a Repeating Online Payment6.9.3.1. Setting up repeating online payments6.9.3.2. Setting up a repeating online payment for an amortized loan6.10. Setting Up Online Transfers6.11. Canceling an Online Payment
7. Reconciling Accounts
7.1. Your First Reconciliation7.2. Preparing for a Reconciliation7.3. Starting to Reconcile7.4. Reconciling Transactions7.5. Modifying Transactions During Reconciliation7.6. Stopping and Restarting a Reconciliation7.7. When Your Records Don’t Agree with Your Bank’s

8. Budgeting
8.1. Ways to Build Budgets8.2. Creating a Budget Automatically8.3. Copying the Current Budget8.4. Creating a Budget Manually8.5. Filling In Budget Values8.5.1. Average Budget Values8.5.2. Detailed Budget Values8.6. Making a Budget Current8.7. Choosing Budget Categories8.7.1. Adding Income and Expense Categories8.7.2. Setting Up Transfers in a Budget8.8. Saving or Restoring a Budget8.9. Comparing Your Performance to Your Budget
9. Investments and Planning
9.1. Why Track Investments in Quicken?9.2. Choosing the Right Type of Account9.3. Creating an Investment Account9.3.1. Creating a 401(k) or 403(b) Account9.3.2. Creating a Brokerage Account9.3.3. Creating an IRA Account9.4. Setting Up a Security9.4.1. The Security List9.4.2. The Security Detail View9.4.3. Adding a Security9.4.4. Editing a Security9.4.5. Categorizing Investments9.5. Recording Investment Transactions9.6. Purchasing a Security9.7. Selling a Security9.8. Recording and Reinvesting Income9.9. Recording a Stock Split9.10. Placeholder Entries9.10.1. Enter Missing Transaction9.10.2. Estimate Average Cost9.11. Evaluating Your Portfolio9.11.1. The Portfolio View9.11.2. Performance and Analysis9.11.2.1. Overall portfolio9.11.2.2. Individual accounts9.11.3. Evaluating Asset Allocation9.11.4. Capital Gains Estimator9.11.5. Portfolio Analyzer9.12. A Quick Tour of Quicken Planning Tools9.12.1. Quicken Planning Wizards9.12.2. Planning Resources9.12.3. Financial Calculators
10. Reports and Graphs
10.1. Running Reports10.1.1. Finding and Customizing Reports10.1.2. Generating a Report or Graph10.1.3. Managing Reports10.2. A Quick Guide to Quicken Reports10.2.1. Banking10.2.2. Spending10.2.3. Comparison10.2.4. Investing10.2.5. Tax10.2.5.1. Tax reports10.2.5.2. Exporting tax data to Turbo Tax10.2.6. Net Worth & Balances10.3. A Review of Report Preferences10.3.1. Reports and Graphs Preferences10.3.2. Reports Only10.4. Printing Reports and Graphs10.4.1. Printing a Report10.4.2. Saving a Report as a PDF File10.4.3. Saving a Report to a File10.5. Customizing Reports10.5.1. Date Ranges10.5.2. Subtotals10.5.3. Adding and Removing Columns in Reports10.5.4. Customizing Other Report Content10.5.5. Sorting Reports10.6. Saving a Report
A. Keyboard Shortcuts
A.1. Task ShortcutsA.2. Working with TransactionsA.3. DatesA.4. Moving Around in Quicken Windows
B. Quicken Help
B.1. Quicken HelpB.2. Task-Specific Quicken HelpB.3. Quicken Product and Customer SupportB.4. The Quicken ForumsB.5. Other Quicken Resources
Index
About the Author
Colophon
Copyright

Content preview from Quicken 2006 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Chapter 3. Backing Up Your Financial Information

Once you start using Quicken, paper and pencil rapidly start to look like an unthinkable hassle. You can now balance your checkbook, prepare your taxes, plan for a comfortable retirement, and have enough time left over to go spend some money—and dutifully enter those transactions into Quicken, as well.

The pleasure of doing your finances in Quicken evaporate instantly, though, if you lose your data to a hard-disk crash or other computer disaster. Good backups, as this chapter outlines, get you back to work quickly.

You’re probably reading this chapter so you can be prepared when your PC’s hard drive crashes and takes your Quicken data file with it. But keep in mind these other situations when backup files can restore your adrenaline level to normal:

* You delete your Quicken data file by mistake.

* You’ve assigned a password to protect your data file and now even you can’t open it.

* Your data file doesn’t open after being damaged by a power outage or power surge.

Quicken backups are also the easiest way to move a Quicken data file from one computer to another; for instance, to load it onto your laptop before leaving on an extended business trip. Back up the data file on the first computer, copy the backup file to the new computer, and restore the backup file there.

Backing Up Data Files

Quicken provides several backup methods, all of which work well for backing ...

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Quicken 2006 for Starters: The Missing Manual

by Bonnie Biafore

Chapter 3. Backing Up Your Financial Information

Backing Up Data Files

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