3 Steps to Managing Cash in Personal Finance Software

With credit card or checking account expenses, you can always log onto to the financial institution site to what you've spent, or you can just download the transactions into your financial software. Tracking cash requires that you save your receipts, and if required, make some notes on the receipts to help you remember what you bought so you know what budget category (if used) to assign the transactions to in your software.

It takes just three steps to track cash in your software:

1. If you haven't done so already, set up a cash account in your software.
2. When you withdraw cash from your bank account, record the transaction as a transfer in your software from the bank account to the cash account. This will decrease the bank account balance and increase the cash account balance.
3. When you spend any of the cash, hold on to the receipt and as soon as it's convenient, record the transaction in the cash account. If you're keeping a budget in your personal finance software, assign the appropriate category to the transaction, using split transactions as needed.

Tips:

• If you do a lot of cash spending, enter receipts into your personal finance software every day or two.
• Remember to collect those receipts!