Balancing Account in Money Essentials 2007

I am an experienced user of other MS Money products and versions. I am
helping my elderly mother learn to use MS Money Essentials 2007. We've been
able to connect to the bank and download transactions. We've also been able
to add and modify transactions. What we cannot seem to find is the Balance
Account funtction that we became used to seeing with other MS Money products.
This version was advertised as having this function but we cannot find it in
menus, user guides ,etc. How is "Balance Account" function done in MS Money
Essentials 2007? Thanks.

Dick
Thu Aug 03 00:02:40 CDT 2006

My guess--I haven't played with this version--is that the Essentials theory
of life is that all the data came directly from the bank in the first place,
what's to balance? Your balancing their data against their data. No gain
there.

"John McNeely" <JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1EBB2B6D-7577-4B3E-8523-72B990A013CB@microsoft.com...
>I am an experienced user of other MS Money products and versions. I am
> helping my elderly mother learn to use MS Money Essentials 2007. We've
> been
> able to connect to the bank and download transactions. We've also been
> able
> to add and modify transactions. What we cannot seem to find is the Balance
> Account funtction that we became used to seeing with other MS Money
> products.
> This version was advertised as having this function but we cannot find it
> in
> menus, user guides ,etc. How is "Balance Account" function done in MS
> Money
> Essentials 2007? Thanks.

JohnMcNeely
Thu Aug 03 16:24:01 CDT 2006

Hi Dick:

The Essentials software does permit manual entry of transactions. Also, in
the advertisement of this product, balancing accounts is mentioned. I need a
mechanism for reconciling manually entered but not yet cleared transactions
with the download from the bank. That is what I assumed that the product
would do much the same as the other versions of MS Money do....but Essentials
appears to be a very different product. Thanks for replying.

John

"Dick Watson" wrote:

> My guess--I haven't played with this version--is that the Essentials theory
> of life is that all the data came directly from the bank in the first place,
> what's to balance? Your balancing their data against their data. No gain
> there.
>
> "John McNeely" <JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:1EBB2B6D-7577-4B3E-8523-72B990A013CB@microsoft.com...
> >I am an experienced user of other MS Money products and versions. I am
> > helping my elderly mother learn to use MS Money Essentials 2007. We've
> > been
> > able to connect to the bank and download transactions. We've also been
> > able
> > to add and modify transactions. What we cannot seem to find is the Balance
> > Account funtction that we became used to seeing with other MS Money
> > products.
> > This version was advertised as having this function but we cannot find it
> > in
> > menus, user guides ,etc. How is "Balance Account" function done in MS
> > Money
> > Essentials 2007? Thanks.
>
>
>

Dick
Thu Aug 03 17:33:34 CDT 2006

Does it have Help? Can you search its help for Balance?

"John McNeely" <JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B43AD579-83A4-402B-AF99-7579DC3BF150@microsoft.com...
> The Essentials software does permit manual entry of transactions. Also, in
> the advertisement of this product, balancing accounts is mentioned. I need
a
> mechanism for reconciling manually entered but not yet cleared
transactions
> with the download from the bank. That is what I assumed that the product
> would do much the same as the other versions of MS Money do....but
Essentials
> appears to be a very different product. Thanks for replying.

Dick
Thu Aug 03 20:58:18 CDT 2006

(Again, I'm making educated guesses. I re-read your post and had another
thought.) A manually entered transaction probably needs to be MATCHED with
the bank download of the same transaction so that they become one and the
same in the register. If you have a manually entered transaction and a
separate downloaded version of the same transaction, getting them to match
isn't a BALANCE function--you clearly don't--but a "matching" function in
the parlance of the rest of the Money products. How to do that in Essential
is the next open question.

"John McNeely" <JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:B43AD579-83A4-402B-AF99-7579DC3BF150@microsoft.com...
> I need a
> mechanism for reconciling manually entered but not yet cleared
> transactions
> with the download from the bank.

JohnMcNeely
Thu Aug 03 23:35:01 CDT 2006

I think I have figured this out. MS Money Essentials opens an upper and lower
pane. The lower pane contains only cleared transactions from a bank download.
The upper transaction contains manually entered transactions. In that pane
there is a "cleared" column that contains a checkable box to the left of each
transaction, presumably to manually clear a transation. I have yet to run a
download to see if or how well the matching occurs that you wrote about. If
the matching works well, then a manually entered transaction would presumably
move down to the lower pane. Above the upper pane and to the right side of
the screen is an ongoing set of totals, that you see in other Money products
when you are balancing an account. The figures indicate the difference, if
any, between the register balance and statement balance. If none, you are
balanced. Not a particularly obvious approach for low-end users, but once
understood, it is workable enough. Thanks for your additional replies.
John

"Dick Watson" wrote:

> (Again, I'm making educated guesses. I re-read your post and had another
> thought.) A manually entered transaction probably needs to be MATCHED with
> the bank download of the same transaction so that they become one and the
> same in the register. If you have a manually entered transaction and a
> separate downloaded version of the same transaction, getting them to match
> isn't a BALANCE function--you clearly don't--but a "matching" function in
> the parlance of the rest of the Money products. How to do that in Essential
> is the next open question.
>
> "John McNeely" <JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:B43AD579-83A4-402B-AF99-7579DC3BF150@microsoft.com...
> > I need a
> > mechanism for reconciling manually entered but not yet cleared
> > transactions
> > with the download from the bank.
>
>
>

Jim
Fri Aug 04 07:45:11 CDT 2006

On Thu, 3 Aug 2006 21:35:01 -0700, John McNeely
<JohnMcNeely@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> think I have figured this out. MS Money Essentials opens an upper and lower
>pane. The lower pane contains only cleared transactions from a bank download.
>The upper transaction contains manually entered transactions. In that pane
>there is a "cleared" column that contains a checkable box to the left of each
>transaction, presumably to manually clear a transation. I have yet to run a
>download to see if or how well the matching occurs that you wrote about. If
>the matching works well, then a manually entered transaction would presumably
>move down to the lower pane. Above the upper pane and to the right side of
>the screen is an ongoing set of totals, that you see in other Money products
>when you are balancing an account. The figures indicate the difference, if
>any, between the register balance and statement balance. If none, you are
>balanced. Not a particularly obvious approach for low-end users, but once
>understood, it is workable enough. Thanks for your additional replies.
>John
I think I saw how this works when I viewed the instructional video
under the help menu item. At least I think it explains much of what
you refer to above.

Jim