There is no one-size-fits-all answer.

That having been said, Money provides lots of tools that you can use. Secret
#1 is probably to understand what all you need to account for on order to
work the biggest set of attendant issues: tax consequences. Here there are
capital value, income, and expenses all at play. You'll probably have to go
read up on this stuff--and all of this is independent of Money. Secret #2 is
probably to think about what level of granularity makes sense to record and
dice and slice so you can understand your situation: are the units making
money? If not, why not? Given these sets of answers, Money supports tracking
asset value, income, and expenses with basic account types and with
categorization.

I've not done the income property deal, but I've pondered it at several
junctures and in several different context like resort condo ownership and
lease and aircraft leasebacks. One thing I've concluded is that
classification would be important part of tracking the activity in Money.
All classification does is let you tag every transaction with another vector
similar to, but in addition to, categorization. It's not a silver bullet,
but it is a way to assure that the data you collect can be traced to, say, a
specific property that was the reason for the expense or the source of the
income.

My biggest complaint with classification--and it's a complaint I've had for
over a decade--is that you cannot schedule classification of the elements of
a Loan Payment. You can enter it by hand every time you enter a scheduled
transaction in the register. But you can't schedule it.

"Brewmaster" <Brewmaster[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6B4326E7-BC17-48D9-9601-AA1DDE404BB3[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Hello to all,
I am a Money 05 user and I have been a Money user for many years. So
needless to say, I do know my way around Money fairly well. With that being
said, I'm finding out more ways to use all the power in Money and really
finding out that I don't know that much about Money after reading some of
these postings.

Well, now to the questions. I am a recent buyer of a duplex. My goal is to
keep track of the finances, maintain a budget, view some reports, and maybe a
little tax info development if possible. Is there any advice on how to set
up all of the things that come with owning property and yet still continue to
record my personal finances in a similar fashion? I have read some posts
talking about this situation on Classifications, but I'm not at all familiar
with this. So, what I'm asking for is some overall suggestions on how I
could set up my recent buy and maybe some explanation on to.

I hope this didn't confuse anyone, otherwise I will have to try to explain
better.