In: Root » Computers and technology » Microsoft office » Introducing Microsoft Money 2004
In this article, you discover the various ways that Money 2004 can help you stay on top of your finances. You also discover how to start the program, find your way around the Money windows, and choose for yourself what appears on the Home Page, the first page you see when you start Money. Finding Out How Money Tracks Your Finances All the personal finance advisors agree that keeping good, accurate records is the first step toward financial security. Before you can start saving for a down payment on a house, you have to know how much you are capable of saving. Before you can tell whether your investments are doing well, you have to track them carefully. If you want to make sound financial decisions, you need to know what your spending habits are and how much income you really have. Microsoft Money 2004 makes keeping accurate financial records very, very easy. After you use the program for a while, you will know precisely what your account balances are, what your net worth is, and how much your investments if you have investments are worth. To find out precisely how much you spend in different areas, all you have to do is generate a chart. At tax time, you can run a report that lists and totals all your tax-deductible expenses. With Money, you can print checks, do your banking over the Internet, find out exactly what your spending habits are, compare loans and mortgages, plan for retirement, and track and analyze different kinds of investments. Money 2004, in fact, offers many more techniques for handling and analyzing investments than did its predecessors. Starting the Program Starting Money is as easy as falling off a log. You can start the program from the menus or by means of the Microsoft Money shortcut icon on the desktop: - From the menus: Click the Start button, choose All Programs, and choose Microsoft Money 2004. - Microsoft Money shortcut icon: Double-click the Microsoft Money 2004 shortcut icon on the desktop. When you installed Money, the installation program should have put a Money shortcut icon on the desktop, but if it didn’t, you can still create a shortcut icon for starting Money. To do so, follow the standard Windows procedure for creating shortcut icons: 1. Click the Start button and choose All Programs. 2. Locate the Microsoft Money 2004 menu command and right-click it. A shortcut menu appears. 3. Choose Send To -> Desktop (Create Shortcut). The shortcut icon appears on the Windows desktop. A Fast Trip around the Money Windows When arriving in a foreign city, the first thing most people do, after finding a hotel room and taking a shower, is to go for a stroll. In the following pages, you can stroll very gingerly across the Money screens. Enjoy yourself and take your sweet time. And don’t forget to put film in the camera before leaving the hotel. The Home Page When you start Money, the first thing you see is the Home Page. The Home Page is the starting point for all your excursions in Money. Don’t worry the Home Page is not as complicated as it looks. It offers a peek at different aspects of your finances, buttons that you can click to go to different Money windows, and links to sites on the Internet. If you roll the mouse carefully just about anywhere on the Home page, you find hyperlinks links that you can click to visit a new Money window. Sometimes a little butterfly appears beside the mouse pointer when you move it over a button or hyperlink. That butterfly means that clicking the button or link takes you to a Web site on the Internet. Notice the Home button in the upper-left corner of the screen. No matter how far you stray from the Home Page, you can always click the Home button (or press Alt+Home) to return to it. The button is always there. Click it if you get homesick. You can decide for yourself what appears on the Home Page. Later in this article, “Personalizing the Home Page” explains how to put what matters most to you on the Home Page. Going from window to window: The Navigation bar and Navigation buttons Besides clicking the Home button to return to the Home Page, you can also go from window to window by clicking buttons on the Navigation bar, by making a selection in the Choose a Task drop-down list, or by clicking the Back or Forward button. The Navigation bar and Navigation buttons, as with the Home button, are always available and ready to be clicked. The Choose a Task drop-down list is found on the Home Page. The Navigation bar Account List is the leftmost button on the Navigation bar; the More button is the rightmost button. By clicking a button, you can visit other windows in Money. By clicking the More button, you make more button choices available on the Navigation bar. The table is here to show you what happens when you click a button and to give you a glimpse of the different tasks you can do with Money. Try clicking a button to start your own adventures in Money. To personalize your Home Page, start by following these steps: 1. Open the Customize Home Page dialog box. Do one of the following to open this dialog box: • Open the Choose a View drop-down list and choose the last option, Customize My Home Page View. • Choose Tools -> Options, select the Feedback tab in the Options dialog box, and click the Customize button under Home Page Customization. 2. Choose which view you want to customize from the View drop-down list. Do the view names look familiar? They are the same views you can choose from on the Choose a View list on the Home Page. Choose Custom if you want to create a Home Page from scratch. 3. To select which items will be on view, select them one at a time in the Available box and click the Add button. 4. To remove an item, select it and click the Remove button. 5. To decide the order in which items appear on the Home Page, click the Move Up or Move Down button. 6. Click OK when your customized Home Page is just right. The fastest way to remove an item from the Home Page is to click the X on the bar to the right of its name. Do that right away to all the advertisements for credit cards and stock-trading companies on the Home Page. Who needs another advertisement? To get rid of all the advertisements on Money screens, choose Tools -> Options, click the General tab in the Options dialog box, and select the Turn Off Sponsorships and Shopping Links check box. Setting Up Your Accounts In this article, you get down to the nitty-gritty and find out how to set up accounts so that you can track financial activity. In this article, you discover how to set up savings, checking, and credit card accounts. You also find out about Money files, how to put an account on the Favorites menu, and how to change account names and account types. Accounts and Registers for Recording Financial Transactions The first step in tracking your financial activity is to set up an account for each type of item you want to track a checking account, a savings account, or an IRA, for example. When most people hear the word account, they think of savings accounts, checking accounts, and other kinds of bank accounts. However, accounts in Money are a little more than that. For example, you can create a home account for tracking the value of a house. You can also create a credit card account for tracking credit card charges. When you set up an account, you need to name the kind of account you want. Money offers 17 kinds of accounts. Each time you set up an account, Money creates a new register for recording transactions. As all bookkeepers know, a register is a place for recording income and expenses, withdrawals, deposits, payments, and the like. Registers look different, depending on the type of account you have set up, but all registers have places for recording transaction dates and transaction amounts. Registers also show balances. The balance is the amount of money in the account, or, in the case of an asset, liability, or investment account, the value of the thing that you’re tracking. |
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