Assuming you got a check and deposited it, or the IRS electronically sent it to your bank and it shows on the statement as a deposit, use the Category to indicate that it was a tax refund for the year 08.

e.g., I have a category for FED TAX 08. In it I have entries for each payment made. (This could be monthly from your paycheck or estimates if you are self-employed. In the former case, my sub-category would be “With Held”, in the latter case, “EST”

Once I get a refund, I make a new subcategory for FED TAX 08, and it’s an “income” item in the New Category widnow, called 08 REFUND. Then in the account where the refund is deposited, I use the category “08 REFUND”.

That way, you can run a report showing how much you paid and how much you got back.

I name the account “CD-BankName apy% maturity date”
Then all my CD’s will appear together alphabetically in the account list at side of screen. Then I can eyeball the maturity dates easily to watch for them.

When one matures, I change the name to YXX (the year of maturity)-Rest of Name above. I move it down to bottom of list of active accounts. At the end of the year I quickly know that if the CD matured in the tax year, I should include it in accounts for an interest report.

I too am surprised the Quicken hasn’t shown CD’s as one of the types of accounts from which you can choose when you open a new one.

When you install Quicken Home and Business, it will ask you if you have a business, if so, it will set up categories most commonly used by moist small businesses, and the appropriate tax line items will be attached to them. You can see all this in the Category List screen.

Take last year’s Tax return and see what was deducted for business expenses then and make sure you’ve got a category for it. Also, check with your accountant or on the IRS web site to get a list of all possible deductions.

Then as he enters ALL expense transactions, he can select the appropriate category for each one. If there is something not already on the Category List, you can add it, being sure to indicate that it is tax related and selecting the correct tax return line item for it.

Home and Business also has a mileage feature that allows you to enter business mileage as you go, and get totals for the month or year.

The old computer adage of “garbage in, garbage out” applies to Quicken…if you don’t make the entries, you won’t have the data!

Personally, I have been using Mint simply to track my spending and really only look at it once per week when it sends me my weekly update on how I’ve done. Everything(almost) I do financially, is electronic so I do not spend much time tracking every little thing. I do a quick check once every two months to be sure that everything is still falling into place where it should and make adjustments where I need to.

I’d love to try out Quicken / hear other suggestions on tools that are good at that. (My brokerage account doesn’t do a good job with that)

Mint is free so I suppose you get what you pay for. Although I like the user interface and a lot of their new features, its the poor and unresponsive support at Mint that’s convinced me to leave.

I appreciate the fact that I will encounter frequent problems accessing some of my accounts – for a number of reasons – security setting changes at the institutions’ websites, technical glitches. I’m willing to have to manually deal with these issues every couple of months. But I can’t resolve all of them myself – a lot of the problems can only be resolved with some assistance from Mint – assistance which I have yet to receive.

The only response to my support requests that i have ever received (other than confirmation emails) are form emails with instructions that can easily be found in the support forums. I visit support forums first and attempt the suggested instructions before I send support requests. I even explain that I have done so in the emails. Everytime I’ve responded to one of the form emails, to say that I have already followed their instructions and have not yet resolved my issue, I’ve never heard back from anyone. When I private message Mint personell in the forums, they simply direct me to the same information on the support forum and instruct me to submit a support request. I currently cannot access 3 of my 7 accounts through Mint.

Sorry to be long winded, but I’m frustrated. Mint would be a GREAT tool if they were able to devote more resources to technical support. Here’s hoping Quicken online is better.

Of to Tweet this now. Thanks Flexo!

I have found that it’s really quite easy to bring up Quicken’s monthly spending report and copy (manually) that data into a Google spreadsheet in which I do maintain an envelope-style budget report.

Thanks for the opprotunity to upgrade for free.

FYI, I handle all my payments electronically and seldom write checks. This method doesn’t allow you to track check numbers but I don’t see why you couldn’t select “Next Check Num” and then in the Category drop-down you could scroll all the way to the bottom and select “Transfer to/from…”. That should also record it as a transfer in both accounts.

Finally, don’t forget Quicken does allow you to manually match downloaded transactions to the register. I have not had many issues with Quicken’s automatic transaction matching so I can’t comment on that. When entering transactions I would verify that the payments are described as “Match” and not “New” before I accept them.

Still, for those people new to personal finance software, it’s pretty easy to set up, easy to understand, and most importantly, it’s FREE. Since I own my own business and also have several accounts (savings, checking, etc.) and want more than just an online check register, I would definitely consider it a good investment to purchase a full-service software program.

Thanks for the opportunity to enter the giveaway!

Cheers,
Marjorie

Hope I win Quicken! I’d like to transition to more powerful financial tracking.

I use the “Savings Goal” feature to “hide” cash in my savings account. My goal is called “Escrow 2009″ and I put money from each paycheck into this goal. The escrow is for annual expenses, like auto/home insurance, and real estate taxes. Then when a bill comes due, I remove money from the goal. The cash is there when I need it.

Other commenters have praised Quicken’s reporting. I find it lacking, and I don’t understand how it calculates ROR. When I call up a report, I select “Export to Clipboard”, then paste it into my own spreadsheet, and work the data to my liking.

I also use Quicken to track the value of non-financial assets like my cars and house. On a quarterly basis, I update the values from kbb.com, and zillow.com

I’m still on Q2008, so a free upgrade would be nice! :)

The real power of Quicken is in the reporting. The reporting helps you review and analyze your financial history and hence plan accordingly. Explore the reporting!

If you live paycheck to paycheck, with little money in your checking account, you might be able to better track your daily balance with Quicken or Microsoft Money. Both of those allow you to manually enter checks you write, and track your balance with each transaction. Mint.com periodically goes out to your bank’s online records to get a balance, so it won’t reflect a check that you wrote and is still in the mail.