Working with Financial Accounts and Registers in Microsoft Money

If you have never used personal finance software before, start by reading Setting Up Accounts in Personal Finance Software, which explains all you need to know about what goes on behind the scenes when you work with accounts in financial software, including Microsoft Money. This short tutorial teaches the basics of what you can track in your accounts, types of accounts and automated features your software may offer.

This tutorial takes you through the simple process of setting up your first account in Microsoft Money, and includes notes for working with Microsoft Money Sunset Deluxe. If you're using that version, be sure to read the notes in Step 4.

When you start the account set up procedure in Money, you'll need to select an account type. Your options are banking, credit card, investment and other account type.

Cash accounts can be used to track funds of all kinds, like children's allowances, job related expenses to be reimbursed, fund raiser money that's being held for deposit and, of course, keeping track of purchases made with cash. Read 5 Ways to Track Cash in Personal Finance Software to learn how to use these versatile account types.

This tutorial was written for Microsoft Money Plus Sunset Deluxe, and can be used for earlier versions as well. Setting up investment accounts in Microsoft Money can be confusing since the software can no longer access financial accounts over the Internet, but this MS Money investments tutorial takes this into account and will have you setting up investment tracking accounts in no time.

Microsoft Money has two ways to view account registers. The Essential Register shows you transactions and balances in a very basic view, while the Advanced Account Register is more detailed. You will probably want to use the Advanced view more often since Money no longer supports account downloads.

You'll need to choose a spending category for each transaction you enter into an account register in Microsoft Money. Money lets you view categories and subcategories side-by-side, or subcategories can be viewed on a separate list. How to Change Category View Preferences in Microsoft Money explains how this is done.

To learn more about using categories with transactions, see Setting Up a Budget in Personal Finance Software.

This list of shortcuts for entering and working with transactions in Microsoft Money is most helpful if you use shortcuts for the tasks you do most often in the registers.