Hi Cal,

I've been thinking about your suggestion and I think I figured out a work
around. It's painful, but it works.

I've created about 10 duplicate categories for business categories, but as
personal categories, so for example "business telephone" is a business
account, but "~business telephone" is a personal account. I'm now tracking
my expenses in the 'personal' business accounts. This, of course prevents
you from correctly reporting business tax, balance sheet and income
statements, so what I do is go to the categories page and move the items in
the personal categories to the business categories, run my reports and then
move them back. It's ridiculous that MS will not let you have both in a
budget and this is time consuming, but it works. At the end of the year,
I’ll move everything to the business categories and level the items for year
end reporting purposes and start with a new year.

I’ll say it again, shame on MS for selling us a ‘combined’ product that will
not let you establish a budget for business and personal transactions. MS,
would you please add this to your list of possible enhancements?

Best regards,

Mike
"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

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Hi Cal, thank you for replying. I've thought about your recommendation as a
solution. What you could do is create a personal category named 'business'
and then add sub categories for each business item. The only drawback I can
think of is that I suspect that you loose the tax, balance sheet, income
statement and schedule C reporting. Can anyone confirm that? If that's
true, I wouldn't want to create new categories. In fact, it kinda defeats
the purpose of buying a business and personal product. However, it may be
the only solution. The main thing I bought the business version was for the
inexpensive payroll solution, but I'd hate to give up the other reporting.

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

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In microsoft.public.money, Mike wrote:

- quote -

I assume you can still schedule an estimated transaction.

- quote -

Suppose you designated the business accounts as non-business
accounts? Would there be a downside?

Hi. I need help planning and tracking business expenses in Money 2006 Small
Business. I have a personal budget set up, but it doesn't seem like you can
add business categories to a budget. Fine, but why can't you create a
business budget? I assume that many have this same issue. For a simple
example, let's say your business pays for your Internet and telephone service
at $100 per month, that your business income is $1000 per month and that you
pay yourself $700 per month. Although the income and expense can be reported
in “spending by category� reports, it cannot be budgeted. Meaning real
transactions are occurring with no way to plan for those transactions. In
this case, your budget would only see the $700 in salary, but the $100
expense is no where to be found. Think of the small business owners who use
a combined personal and business account (not a great idea, but common for
very small businesses). The money is out of the account, but there is no way
to plan or track the expense in the budget. Is the solution to set up vendor
accounts and track it with vendor reporting, but with no expense goals?

Ideally, I’d like the flexibility to budget for all personal and business
expenses in one place. If that is not possible, is there a way to create a
separate business budget? If not, how do you recommend establishing and
tracking business expense goals?

Any and all help GREATLY appreciated.