© 2012 Anishu, Inc. Page 36
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To keep up the habit of entering and tracking your finances, we recommend that you
attempt to make data entry quick and minimum. Towards this objective, we suggest the
following best practices:
• Enter your expenses as soon as you incur them. If you go shopping, enter the
expense when you get back in the car while you have your receipt with you.
(Caution: Make sure you are in a safe place always).
• Keep your categories/subcategories high level. Departmental/Macys is higher
level than Departmental/Shirt, Departmental/Perfume, Departmental/Shoes, etc.
Too many categories will require splitting and calculating category amounts
which can take time. Define categories at a level where you can enter full receipt
amounts.
• Create Payees either when using Bills or when you need tracking for a specific
Payee. Do not attempt to create Payees for every payment you make.
• Share the data entry work. If you have a spouse or partner, get them
HomeBudget, and ask them to enter expenses as they incur, using the Family
Sync feature. This avoids the burden of one person in the family collecting and
entering all data.
• Use recurring expenses when the payment amount is fixed, and you have
automatic payment setup. That is, recurring expenses are useful when you don't
need any reminders to make payments.
• Use recurring Bills when you need reminders on making payments and the
amount is different for each payment. Recurring bills can be generated without
specifying the amount, and still be reminded before the due date. Once you
receive the bill, you can enter the amount.
• Set up recurring incomes when you income amounts are nearly fixed and
periodic. (You can correct the amount when you know the exact income amount).
• Recurring transfers are to be used when you are setting aside money in a
savings account by periodic transfers.
• Enter your bill as a Transfer when you make payments on a credit (or
departmental store) card where the expense amount had already been entered in
HomeBudget. Often the date you incur the expenses and the date you make the
payments can be in different months. These payments will need to be entered as
transfers (or not at all if you are not using the Accounts support in HomeBudget).
• You can delay using the budget feature until you have a good understanding of
your expenses and the expense categories. Start with a OneBudget amount, and
once your know your expense categories and the expense levels, you can start
setting budget amounts for your categories.
• One common practice with Accounts is to create a Cash-On-Hand or Wallet
account and transfer money into this account whenever you withdraw money
from an ATM. All cash payments would be paid from this account. With this
approach, you can also track how much you have exactly on hand.
• If you need to categorize your recurring transfers (say, money set aside for
college education), enter them as a pair of settings: a recurring expense and a
recurring income settings with the same amounts, period and due date (instead
of as a recurring transfer).
• Take weekly backups. Your time is valuable, and you don’t want to be left
frustrated in case the data is lost.