I'm assuming by what you mean as a "miscellaneous expense" you bought
something for cash and want to charge it to some expense category (it could
be "gas" if you paid cash for a tank of gas, or even "miscellaneous expense"
as a collector account for all those nickle/dime expenses).

The "cash" had to come from somewhere. If you cashed a check for "cash"
for, say $100, and you use that $100 for 5 different cash transactions, you
would first need to record the check in your checking account register as a
withdrawl (check number, date, "cash", etc). Instead of inputing a category,
however, you would then need, to transfer the cash into another account
(which you would need to set up as an asset account and call "Cash"). What
you just did was transfer cash from checking to "Cash" (literally, the cash
in your wallet, which is still an asset to you).

Then when you spend your $100 for 5 transactions, you come back to Money,
enter the "Cash" account register (which now has a balance of $100) and enter
each of the 5 expenses, and enter a category for each e.g. "gas,"
"Miscellaneous Expense," "Bubble Gum," whatever. Once you have spent your
$100, and have recorded all those transactions they will then appear as
various categorized expenses in Money (on your budget reports, Monthly
income/expense reports, etc). However, if you just transfer the cash from
checking to "cash" accounts, and do not then record the categorized expenses,
the $100 will never show up in your expenses, so make sure you record the
cash expenses in the cash account.

Now it would drive most of us nuts to try to track all cash expenses, so I'd
suggest just keeping receipts for the expenses you want to track (e.g. "gas,"
"meals," "groceries," etc.) and recording these in your "cash" account as
expenses as appropriate. Also, each time you "cash" a check, just transfer it
into the "cash" account. You'll then have a running balance in your "cash"
account that shows all your cashed checks, and all the categorized stuff you
bought from the cash. But you have not yet recorded everything, because
there's some cash that you did not track in the "cash" account.

To record these numeous misc expenses as a bulk "expense", at the end of the
month (if you do monthly budgets) do the following: 1) determine how much
cash you still have on hand from all the cash you withdrew from the
bank--write this down, don't record anything in Money yet, 2) look at the
balance in your "cash" account--write this down, and 3) subtract "1" from
"2". This difference is the amount you record in the "cash" account as a
"miscellaneous expense." in Money.

Here's another way to accomplish a similar thing: You originally got the
money from your checking acct by writing a check. Record the check, as usual,
and categorize the expense in a category called "miscellaneous expense." Now
if you end up spending $30 on gas, $40 on a meal, and the rest on little
stuff that's too small to worry about (but you do want to track "gas" and
"meal" expenses), you can keep the important receipts, then come back to your
check register, to the $100 check withdrawl transaction, and edit it. Click
on the transaction to edit it. You want to make this a "split transaction"
(key in control-s simultaneously). When the split transaction screen comes
up, you can now enter $30 in the gas category, $40 in the meal category, and
$30 in the miscellaneous expense category. Make sure the splits add up to
$100. Once you hit "enter," your transaction will still be $100 in your
check register, but when you look at the detail, it will say "split/multiple
transactions." You can again hit control-s to look at the detail or edit
again.

One last note. What if you got cash from some other source other than your
checking account. You just won $1,000 in a poker game in cash and never
deposited in checking. Just record this as a "receive" transaction (instead
of a "spend" transaction) in your "cash" account, and categorize it in some
appropriate income category ("misc gambling winnings" or something). Then
you can, again draw down the cash balance by the method I noted above, with
also the original $1000 cash infusion recorded as income.

It's really not all that complex once you start using this method. Just
don't try to drive yourself crazy by recording all your cash transactions.
Record the important stuff, charge the rest to "misc exp" and remember to
reconcile at least at the end of each month (i.e. cash in wallet, vs "cash"
balance in account), and you'll have a well-categorized budget.



"Tim Riley" wrote:

- quote -

"Tim Riley" wrote:

- quote -

You go to the register in question, Select the entry just past the last one
present, click on it, and enter the transaction information (date, payee,
amount, etc.)

Unless there is some special Business version account, this is just like
entering any other transaction by hand--but cash usually is a separate
account.

Are you saying you do not know how to enter transactions manually?

"Tim Riley" <TimRiley[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:3F17F932-7CFC-40A3-858D-6D87BFE78F78[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Thannks Dick, but this isn't what I needed. What I'm looking for is a simple
way to enter expenses without writing a check. There has to be a way, very
similar to entering a check but I just don't remember how to do this. In
fact, I don't remember how to enter a check. My memory is not what it used
to be; I guess that's what you would call a senior moment.

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

See if http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=93 gives any hints.

"Tim Riley" <TimRiley[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EE8C22C7-A734-4073-8830-5B2899FEC93E[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Okay, here's an ABSOLUTELY stupid question...how do I enter miscellaneous
expenses? I have gas expenses and misc nickel and dime expenses for which I
pay cash. How and where do I enter these. FYI, I use MSB 2005, but I think
this should be the same in any version. TIA