Quicken 2009: The Missing Manual

Chapter 4. Categories and Tags: Tracking Transactions

As you learned in Chapters Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Quicken lets you assign categories to financial transactions to help you track what you’re spending your money on, prepare your tax returns, and so on. If you do a good job of categorizing each entry (and Quicken makes it dead simple), then you’re never more than a click or two away from generating reports that answer questions like, “How much did taxis cost me this year?” and “Do I spend more on my Chihuahua or my child?” When you create a new Quicken data file, the program automatically sets you up with a boatload of categories, based on what you tell it during setup (such as your marital status and whether you own a home).

For most of us, our financial needs change as time passes. That apartment you had when you first created your Quicken data file? Gone, replaced by your own home. Or perhaps you’re now even renting out condos. You can turn Quicken’s built-in categories on and off to track different types of income and spending as changes like these happen.

At the same time, everyone has a personal peccadillo or two. You may have a shoe fetish that warrants tracking how much you spend on footwear, whereas your best friend tracks horse shoes, hay, and vet bills. If Quicken doesn’t come with a category you want, creating new ones is easy. The program also includes another feature, called tags, to help you slice and dice your information in ways that categories only dream about. ...