I am with you on this. This is basic functionality that
should be in Money. Money is really lacking in this area.
- quote -

I would suggest that you give some consideration to modify your
accounting method to something that is more accurate.

For example: If you created an expense category (or used the existing
one) for Auto maintenance and you entered an expense every month for
$25 - even though you were actually saving this money in a fund for a
repair or scheduled maintenance item, you would not be correctly
accounting for this. You should record the expense, when it is
incurred.

You could create an account or use an existing account to transfer
money into every month.

Lets say you have $800 already saved for Christmas. Start that
account with $800 and then each month use a scheduled transfer to this
account. You can make the payee for the transfer "Christmas Fund
Contribution" - that way you can report very easily on your
contributions. If your Christmas fund holding account is not a budget
account - you will then see this transfer in your budget each month.

Now in December, transfer the funds into your checking account - this
will show as a transfer into budget account for the month and then you
can record the actual gift purchases you make as expenses during
december.

As far as left over amounts - create and expense called "Next Month
Carry Forward" . On the last day of the month expense this account
the amount you have left over. Then create an Income category called
"Prior Month Carry Over". On the first of the month - credit that
income category the exact amount you expensed the day before.

These are a few ideas that may help you. Your current method may not
be to most accurate way to account for things.


On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 18:57:14 -0700, "Majen4" <majen4[at]earthlink.netwrote:

- quote -

It probably has more functionality. It also probably does many thing
differently, and, in particular, is not terribly good at cookie jar
accounting.

This is all discussed with depressing regularity. You might try
reading/searching more posts or searching the archives for the group at
http://groups.google.com.

"Majen4" <majen4[at]earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:087701c3613e$37bc4da0$a301280a[at]phx.gbl...
- quote -

I have been keeping a budget in Excel for years and
finally convinced myself to start using Money to manange
our expenses. However, I'm stumped with trying to set up
our budget in Money 2002 because I can't get the sw to do
some very simple budgeting techniques. Please help with
these issues I'm having - mostly with expenses that we
save for all year but do not occur every month (may be 1
time expense for the year, or something like car
maintenance that we draw from as needed but allocate some
amount in our budget to each month). My main questions
are:

(1) I have several budget "buckets" that we've been
allocating money into all year (such as Christmas gifts,
auto insurance, car maintenance). How do I set these up
in Money 2002?

(2) How do I establish a starting balance for each of
these bucket items (i.e., if we have a $1200 budget for
the year for Christmas gifts, and it's now August, I've
allocated $800 already to Christmas - how do I allocate
the $800 to this category in Money 02)?

(3)For normal budget items, like groceries, I want the
remaining amount not spent in a given month to
automatically roll-over to the next month (unless I
realocate it to another category). I don't think it is
doing this in Money 02. Shouldn't it work this way? Am
I missing something?

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong! I am so
frustrated. I can't imagine that my Excel spreadsheet
system I created and have been using for 8 years could
possibly have more functionality than Money. Could it?