Do you receive services at the point at which you initially pay the money?
Or are those services rendered later, and the balance of the retainer
account decremented at that time, like legal retainers?

If the latter, create an asset account called 'Prepaid Retainer'. Transfer
the money from checking (or whatever) to retainer. As actual expenses are
incurred, deduct them from the retainer account.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL



"brett" <account[at]cygen.com> wrote in message
news:1160201183.656986.247470[at]i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I wouldn't say BP/DRP are in the same league as "subaccounts". They aren't
trying to lie/create a synthetic appearance of the situation. They're just
trying to report/analyze real data.

I think the tools exist in Money for the situation you describe: Job 1:
understand what it takes to get spending aligned with income: BP; Job 2:
understand where money is going and understand the difference between the
expenses and the "cost of money": BP, categorization in general, the
formalized model that recognizes Transfer as different from Credit Card
Payments; Job 3: manage the cash flow to pay down the debt: DRP, Forecast
Cash Flow.

"." <ggroup[at]sarj.ca> wrote in message
news:1160352421.949574.254300[at]m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I see where you're going with your argument, and it raises the
question, aren't tools like the budgets and debt reduction planners
behaviour modification tools? So why not have another type of tool
which would be aimed at helping those who are between being in debt and
having 6 months (or whatever is right for you) worth of cash reserves?

Generally I'm a fan of having a real savings/MMF account or two that
can act as a buffer for one-time or unexpected expenses. It achieves
most of the benefits of the "cookie jar" accounting, while allowing one
to earn a decent interest rate.

Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

The only downside is that it's not accounting--it's behavior modification by
other means.

If you spend until your balances are $0 and you can't keep yourself from
doing that by knowing that it's OK to have, say, 6 months free cash flow
saved up--planted in a **good** money market fund working for you at market
rates and low costs--to buffer this kind of thing, then it seems like all
the subaccounts in the world are nothing more than ways to fake yourself
out. Now, if you have the MMF that's probably a separate account in Money.
If moving money from, say, your checking account to the MMF hides it
sufficiently to keep you from thinking it needs to be spent, all the better.
But as you note, Money doesn't support "cookie jar accounting" schemes for
trying to hide money that's really in plain sight.

"." <ggroup[at]sarj.ca> wrote in message
news:1160320346.943801.276690[at]m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Could you explain the possible downside of this type of accounting? I
can see how it could be quite handy for earmarking money that's needed
a long way in the future. So far I don't see any good, or accurate,
way of putting money aside for known expenses in Money 2007. All the
suggestions seem to involve playing tricks which would quickly cause
the records to differ between one's bank and Money.

Of course, with the free accounts offered by some online banks, one
alternative is to create real accounts to stash the earmarked cash.
However, this method can sometimes have logistics issues.

Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

What I do is use categories for the spending. Thus I can track the
difference between maintenance on one car and the second one. I also
use it to identify expenditures relative to a trip or vacation.

As you pointed out, Quicken has sub accounts but Money does not. Your
comment about cash accounts would make it difficult to track the balance
of the primary account.

Art

Subaccounts are basically cookie-jar accounting and Money has tended (until
S&S Budget) to avoid that. (I think that's a good thing. YMMV.)

One way to avoid reports in the category scenario is to R-click any
transaction with the category in question, select the retainer categories,
and go to its details to see the sum of transactions in that category. As to
adjusting if you underrun the retainer, it'd just be another "virtual
deposit" against the retainer category. I'm not necessarily lobbying for
this solution, just pointing out ways to solve your objections to it.

"brett" <account[at]cygen.com> wrote in message
news:1160201183.656986.247470[at]i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Thanks. I think the best way for me is to use the cash accounts. That
way, if I only spend $350 of $400, I can adjust easily. I also have
real time access to see the funds. That's easier than running reports.

The real solution is sub accounts. I'm guessing that still isn't
available in Money (but is in Quicken).

Thanks,
Brett

Having read all of that, I'm still kinda clueless what it is you are really
trying to do.

That having been said, can you just create a separate cash account for these
"retainer" funds; transfer the total amount in from checking at the
beginning of the period and then enter expense transactions as incurred
throughout the remainder of the period?

I'm assuming your real issue is that you want the money to appear gone at
the beginning but you haven't actually moved any money. And then when you
actually move the money, say by printing a check or and epay or whatever,
it's not "there" anymore so gets "double" spent.

Another way--rather grotesque--to handle this:

Create Categories like "Miscellaneous:Retainer A" and
"Miscellaneous:Retainer B".

"Expense" the initial amounts against Miscellaneous:Retainer A and
Miscellaneous:Retainer B in the checking account.

Then when it comes time to disburse, put the disburse transactions also in
the checking account against the real category. But follow that up
immediately with a "deposit" from Miscellaneous:Retainer A or
Miscellaneous:Retainer B of the exact same amount. (If/when Money whines
that this is a income as expense, tell it to go fly a kite, you know what
you are doing.) These net to $0--thus no change in account balance by these
two transactions. To see how much remains in the retainer "accounts", do a
spending by category report for the categories in question. The amount they
total below $0 is remaining "retainer". The end state is that the total for
each category should be back to $0.

Making this agree with downloaded transaction data is probably a nightmare.

"brett" <account[at]cygen.com> wrote in message
news:1160196046.054699.259850[at]h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

I have certain amounts of money that are spent at one location for a
month. I'd like to setup something in Money 2004 that allows me to
track how money in these accounts are distributed. For example, say I
will spend money on these two services each month:

Oct 2006
ServiceA $300
ServiceB $100

In September 2006, I'd like to apply the above money as spent and my
checking account appear $400 less. Through out Oct, I will gradually
spend the $400 but want to track how it is spent. For example:

Oct 10 - ServiceA $50
Oct 12 - ServiceB $75
Oct 19 - ServiceA $100

and so on. As I spend the money from my primary checking account, the
amount applied to the above two retainer accounts decreases until it
reaches $0. The problem is I want the $400 deducted from my primary
account, which means I'd need sub acounts. I don't think Money 2004 or
any version does that.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Brett