Core budgeting

Right. Now it's time to set up our budget...

To set up a budget go to Budgeting menu item and you should see the following screen:



Here you could see the list of your accounts and ability to select them to include in your budget.
When accounts are selected – go to Next step:



Here you should see the list of your categories – income and expense – which you are going to track in your budget. In this example we’ve selected all we have and proceeded to Next step:



Now it's time to set up budgeted amounts for each category. To do that select Edit command near the correspondent category, then select one of the types – Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly or Annually – and then press Update:





Done. You can see the totals at the footer of your budget grid:



We also set up budget for our income:



Done.



Now if you browse to the Home page menu item you will see that system shows you how much is budgeted for week and month:



If we add transaction which has happened during the current week and current month the system will show us if we are out of budget or not for current week and current month:





Oops! We are over budget by 20 dollars for the current week. We should limit soft drinks consuming next week to be in budget for the month. :)

Using that simple technique, instructions provided and your money will be under control all the time.

Transactions

Alright, let’s start registering transactions in our system.
Browse to the Transactions menu item and you should see the following screen:



Here you can select an account and register a transaction for that account. In the following sample we will register two transactions – income and expense.
Select the type of transaction, contractor, category, date and amount for the transaction and press Register transaction button:









System reflects your transactions and shows balance of your account including all transactions for that account:



You can see consolidated view of your accounts from the correspondent section:

Manage contractors information

The third parties who will pay us or whom we will pay money are Contractors in terms of personal finance system. To manage them in our system we need to select Contractors menu item first and go to the Contractors screen:





We would like to add some contractors to he system. We provide new contractor’s details: Name – required, Address and Details – both optional and press Add contractor button:



Done. Our first contractor is here:



If we want to change contractor details we can do that in the contractors grid by selecting Edit link near the contractor details and then Updating data:



We then added another contractor – Local pub:



Easy.
Now our system is ready to register transactions, setting up budgets and build reports with our financial data.
Next post will be about transactions…

Managing categories

Today we will enter categories of income and expenses we will track in the system.
Select the Categories link on the top menu ribbon and you will see the Categories area:





To enter new category select the category type, provide category name and press Add category button:



Done:



We remembered that we don’t drink alcohol and to confirm that in our system we are going to edit the category name:



Press Edit link near the category name and edit it:



After that we are going to add an income category – Salary 1:





Using instructions above you can create as many categories as you want.

To be continued…

Managing accounts in your personal finance system

Think about accounts as they are your bank accounts or they are associated with the type of income or expenses or they are dedicated to keep track of money in regard to particular financial goal.

Select Accounts link from the top menu ribbon and you will get the Accounts section of the system:



Here you can see your accounts registry and create new ones or modify existing.
To create a new account you must type in account data in the controls area and press Add account button:



In this sample we are about to create an Out-of-pocket account to track our daily income and/or spending. The type of account is Current, currency is US Dollar – the default currency for our system, and starting balance is $200:



Done.

In a similar manner we have added another account with type Savings where we are going to track our saved money for cruise journey.



After viewing at our Cruise Journey account data we noticed that starting balance and interest rate are wrong. We can edit this information easily. Select Edit command for the particular account on the grid and then click Update to save your changes:

Keeping track of finances

This post will start series of instructions about how ho manage your personal finance.


I will use http://thehomefinances.com/ as the tool-set for keeping my money data in order.


When you enter the system first time you will see the following screen:

That is the summary screen and initially it shows you that you don’t have any accounts and budget set up.
To start working efficiently with the system you have to set up several key areas: Accounts, Categories and Contractors.

Next post will describe how to manage accounts in your personal finance system...

Some finance organizing ideas

I have several years of experience in the field of organizing my own personal finance and to manage that substance and I've also read a lot of material in regard to that matter.
Therefore I've developed some core ideas the one should bear in mind to keep personal finance in order.

1. Purpose. Why do you really need that? The answer is pretty personal. Someone could wonder where all the hard-earned money goes. The other could decide to save some funds for home loan deposit, cruise journey next year or retirement. You should set up your financial goals first.

2. System & Tools. System here means you have to develop - or to use already made by others - rules and routines to systematically maintain your finances' state. You could use a paper sheet or automated tools - it doesn't really matter - there should be a central storage for the information about your finances where you could easily edit, manage and analyze it.

3. Patience & Discipline. In order to get value from your personal finance system and to accomplish your financial goals you must keep the system up to date on a regular basis. It is not time consuming as it could seem - for me it takes up 10 minutes daily - and it really helps you in achieving your goals.

In this blog I'm going to show practically how to easily keep track of personal finances using free online system from http://thehomefinances.com
The above mentioned system is absolutely free, easy to use, secure - you don't need to provide any private information there and do not need to connect your real banking accounts, accessible from any place in the world where the Internet connection and a browser is.

Also I'm going to post some related material like links to other resources, reviews, ideas etc.