Reports Problems

[PeterD]

Hi Group,

I have recently switched to MS Money after keeping my financial info in
Excel spread sheets for years. I am having a hard time learning Money as the
user interface is not intuitive - I have no clue where to find what. I'll
take function-based GUI over so called task-based GUI in a heartbeat but I
guess this is not an option in Money. (I use Office 2003 privately and find
it most user-friendly edition of Office, before the GUI was ruined by
ribbons.)

Anyway, that's not my point.

I am having trouble trusting Money's report, due to issues which can be
summed up in the following two scenarios.

(1) In Money, I have an account which I call Checking and I record my debit
card transaction there. But sometimes a refund comes along which I record in
the Deposit column in the checking account.

How come my spending by Category report does not pick up anything from the
Deposit column?

(2) I make monthly loan payments and the proceeds go to a
category-subcategory.

Again, this info is not shown on the monthly spending report. Instead, there
is an entry categorized as Loan : Loan interest, apparently added by Money
automatically as I do not enter payments against "Loan interest."

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

Peter

 

[Barry Schwarz]

I am having trouble trusting Money's report, due to issues which can be
summed up in the following two scenarios.

(1) In Money, I have an account which I call Checking and I record my debit
card transaction there. But sometimes a refund comes along which I record in
the Deposit column in the checking account.

How come my spending by Category report does not pick up anything from the
Deposit column?

(2) I make monthly loan payments and the proceeds go to a
category-subcategory.

Which version of MS Money are you using? How did you get it since
Microsoft discontinued the product several years ago?

If you Customize the report, there should be a Detail tab which will
let you specify the types of transactions eligible for reporting. I
always use All Types.

Similarly there should be a Category tab. Specify Select All to start
with and check the Show subcategories box. Later you can eliminate
categories till just the transactions you are interested in appear.

 

[PeterD]

Hi Barry,

I am using the following release: MS Money Plus Deluxe Version
17.0.120.3817. I know this product has been discontinued, but I couldn't
care less about that as long as it does what I need.

Thanks for your pointers. I will check this out and see if there are any
other causes of inaccuracies.

Peter.