need help getting direct deposit paycheck to work with spending & savings budget

I am using the trial version of Money Delux Plus 2008 to try out the
Spending and Savings budget. During the setup of the budget it told
me I had to enter my paycheck in advanced bills in order to track the
gross income and deductions for this budget. I had my paystub and set
that up; now I see it in Bills. This is the point where I need help.
My paychecks are deposited directly into my bank account and the payee
varies slightly each time due to it showing account numbers and
transaction numbers etc..(ex. 0446 083107 160 ;DES=PAYROLL ;ID=0446
013...) in the payee name as well as the amount varying slightly each
time due to how many drinks or snaks I get out of the break room. I
didn't know what to put when it asked me the payee druing the paycheck
setup, so I used Payroll as the payee since it showed up each deposit
consistently in the payee portion of the direct deposits. That may
matter..it may not. I also have Money download my bank transactions
automatically.
The reason I want to use Money is the Spending and Savings budget.
The budget tries to track the gross income and deductions, but my
budget does not have any amounts show up in the "actual" column. How
can I tie my direct deposit, the Paycheck in Bills that knows my gross
info, and my budget together so that when I get my direct deposit, the
Paycheck in bills associates with it and doesn't show as late, as well
as the budget seeing it and accruing "actual" amounts so that my
budget works as it should and I can correctly track my retirement and
such?

Thanks.

Brandi

Dick
Thu Oct 04 10:54:43 PDT 2007

There is a thing called Payee Name Rules Manager or similar that tries to
let you map the garbage that comes from the data providers to what you want
to use in your data file. It should help you fix the downloads vs. the Payee
in Bills Manager (or whatever it's being called this version). Likewise
there is supposed to be a way to "match" and "accept" downloaded
transactions as being the same as items already in the registers or in Bills
Manager.

I'm sorry I can't give you a more precise answer. My excuses for poor
performance include:

1) I don't use downloaded transaction data for dozens of reasons not the
least of which is the kind of problem you are having. The data coming from
the FIs is just of too poor and variable a quality for me to want to mess
with it.

2) The Money team keeps balkanizing the product and renaming features and so
forth because of "focus group" or "usability lab" results that aim to make
Money easier to use so that people who don't already use it will want to.
These results ignore the impact of these changes on the people who already
do use the product.

Independent of the matching of download transactions with the scheduled
paycheck, I'm not sure why your paycheck amounts are not getting in the
"actual" column of the S&S Budget stuff. Are you categorizing any paycheck
stuff or just accepting one with a net number and not categorizing the
amount(s)?

<brandi.craig@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191509162.240023.283640@k79g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
>I am using the trial version of Money Delux Plus 2008 to try out the
> Spending and Savings budget. During the setup of the budget it told
> me I had to enter my paycheck in advanced bills in order to track the
> gross income and deductions for this budget. I had my paystub and set
> that up; now I see it in Bills. This is the point where I need help.
> My paychecks are deposited directly into my bank account and the payee
> varies slightly each time due to it showing account numbers and
> transaction numbers etc..(ex. 0446 083107 160 ;DES=PAYROLL ;ID=0446
> 013...) in the payee name as well as the amount varying slightly each
> time due to how many drinks or snaks I get out of the break room. I
> didn't know what to put when it asked me the payee druing the paycheck
> setup, so I used Payroll as the payee since it showed up each deposit
> consistently in the payee portion of the direct deposits. That may
> matter..it may not. I also have Money download my bank transactions
> automatically.
> The reason I want to use Money is the Spending and Savings budget.
> The budget tries to track the gross income and deductions, but my
> budget does not have any amounts show up in the "actual" column. How
> can I tie my direct deposit, the Paycheck in Bills that knows my gross
> info, and my budget together so that when I get my direct deposit, the
> Paycheck in bills associates with it and doesn't show as late, as well
> as the budget seeing it and accruing "actual" amounts so that my
> budget works as it should and I can correctly track my retirement and
> such?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Brandi
>

Cal
Thu Oct 04 11:12:41 PDT 2007

In microsoft.public.money, brandi.craig@gmail.com wrote:

> This is the point where I need help.
>My paychecks are deposited directly into my bank account and the payee
>varies slightly each time due to it showing account numbers and
>transaction numbers etc..(ex. 0446 083107 160 ;DES=PAYROLL ;ID=0446
>013...) in the payee name as well as the amount varying slightly each
>time due to how many drinks or snaks I get out of the break room. I
>didn't know what to put when it asked me the payee druing the paycheck
>setup, so I used Payroll as the payee since it showed up each deposit
>consistently in the payee portion of the direct deposits. That may
>matter..it may not. I also have Money download my bank transactions
>automatically.


Tools->Settings->OnlineServiceSettings->ShowStandardizedPayeeNames
will cause you to match an existing payee that differ only by a
numbers or punctuation. Click MoreDetails to the right of the
setting for more information.

Then click on GoToPayeeRulesManager. Excluded Payee Names
identifies words and phrases that should be ignored from the payee
field (e.g., check, deposit, des, id).

I don't know about the budget part.

brandi
Thu Oct 04 12:05:12 PDT 2007


> Independent of the matching of download transactions with the scheduled
> paycheck, I'm not sure why your paycheck amounts are not getting in the
> "actual" column of the S&S Budget stuff. Are you categorizing any paycheck
> stuff or just accepting one with a net number and not categorizing the
> amount(s)?
>

I want to categorize paycheck stuff, and I think I've got it half
right so far. I set up the itemized paycheck in the bills section so
Money will know my gross income info and the spending and savings
budget is set to seperate out and add up the different deductions for
my gross income. I'm hoping that with the info you both have given
me, the budget will start seeing the gross pay info once I get the
bills paycheck entry to associate with my downloaded net paycheck.
The budget doesn't list the net income category since it's set up to
track gross income and my downloaded paycheck entries are categorized
with Wages & Salary: Net Income. I added that category as a test and
the budget sees it but it defeats the purpose of the 60% gross pay
idea and the retirement area was off.

Dick
Thu Oct 04 18:40:38 PDT 2007

Hopefully you can get the downloads to match up with the scheduled gross
paycheck. But if you get into S&S Budget problems we may not be able to help
much. Almost none of the regulars mess with it. We'll try, though.

<brandi.craig@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1191524712.221955.271600@o80g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
> I want to categorize paycheck stuff, and I think I've got it half
> right so far. I set up the itemized paycheck in the bills section so
> Money will know my gross income info and the spending and savings
> budget is set to seperate out and add up the different deductions for
> my gross income. I'm hoping that with the info you both have given
> me, the budget will start seeing the gross pay info once I get the
> bills paycheck entry to associate with my downloaded net paycheck.
> The budget doesn't list the net income category since it's set up to
> track gross income and my downloaded paycheck entries are categorized
> with Wages & Salary: Net Income. I added that category as a test and
> the budget sees it but it defeats the purpose of the 60% gross pay
> idea and the retirement area was off.

brandi
Fri Oct 19 11:44:45 PDT 2007

Thanks for the help everyone. That got me on the right track. I
ended up having to turn on the Advanced register to get the bills
register to try to make matches with my downloaded transactions. I
could have guessed that since the savings and spending budget is
considered the advanced budget and I had to switch to the advanced
bill register as well to be able to enter my gross paycheck info in
there.

So what happens now that the checking and bills registers are set to
advanced and the budget is the spending and savings budget, I have my
gross paycheck info from my pay stub entered in the bills register.
It's a close amount to what actually arrives and it's named Amigos
since that's the name of my company. Then when I was cleaning up my
payee names in the payee rules manager, I named all the Payroll
entries Amigos, and that's how they end up associating with each other
when the transactions are downloaded from the bank. At this point,
the register is set to ask me to accept or change every transaction
and this is where i accept most of the transactions or I choose change
when i get to my paycheck entry. Choosing change lets me tweak the
few amounts that are off. Once this is done and the paycheck is
accepted, then it shows up in the "actual amount" column in my budget
including all the gross amounts like my taxes and my retirement
contributions.

Cal
Fri Oct 19 11:58:32 PDT 2007

In microsoft.public.money, brandi.craig@gmail.com wrote:

>Thanks for the help everyone. That got me on the right track. I
>ended up having to turn on the Advanced register to get the bills
>register to try to make matches with my downloaded transactions. I
>could have guessed that since the savings and spending budget is
>considered the advanced budget and I had to switch to the advanced
>bill register as well to be able to enter my gross paycheck info in
>there.
>
>So what happens now that the checking and bills registers are set to
>advanced and the budget is the spending and savings budget, I have my
>gross paycheck info from my pay stub entered in the bills register.
>It's a close amount to what actually arrives and it's named Amigos
>since that's the name of my company. Then when I was cleaning up my
>payee names in the payee rules manager, I named all the Payroll
>entries Amigos, and that's how they end up associating with each other
>when the transactions are downloaded from the bank. At this point,
>the register is set to ask me to accept or change every transaction
>and this is where i accept most of the transactions or I choose change
>when i get to my paycheck entry. Choosing change lets me tweak the
>few amounts that are off. Once this is done and the paycheck is
>accepted, then it shows up in the "actual amount" column in my budget
>including all the gross amounts like my taxes and my retirement
>contributions.

Nice write-up.

laconic
Fri Oct 19 14:22:58 PDT 2007

On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:44:45 -0700, brandi.craig wrote:


> I could have guessed that since the savings and spending budget is
> considered the advanced budget and I had to switch to the advanced
> bill register as well to be able to enter my gross paycheck info in
> there.

The Savings and Spending budget is not the advanced budget. To get
the advanced budget type the following in the address bar in money:
money://navigate/newadvbgt
This is true for Money 2007 Deluxe and likely others. You have to
redo your budget from the start though.

Chris
Sat Oct 20 11:21:39 PDT 2007

<brandi.craig@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1192819485.220451.206230@k35g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>
> So what happens now that ... and the budget is the spending and
> savings budget, ...

How is that working for you? I tried switching from Advanced Budget to
S&S, but that dumbs down the cash flow forecast. The functional loss
was more than I was willing to accept.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

brandi
Tue Oct 23 11:07:08 PDT 2007

On Oct 20, 1:21 pm, "Chris Cowles" <spam_mag...@remove-me-
bellsouth.net> wrote:
> <brandi.cr...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1192819485.220451.206230@k35g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
> > So what happens now that ... and the budget is the spending and
> > savings budget, ...
>
> How is that working for you? I tried switching from Advanced Budget to
> S&S, but that dumbs down the cash flow forecast. The functional loss
> was more than I was willing to accept.
> --
> Chris Cowles
> Gainesville, FL

The spending and savings budget works for me. I assumed it was the
advanced budget since it was the other choice besides the more
simplistic option when I first set everything up. Anyway, it works
great for me. What I needed was some idea of how much money I should
be putting in each of the categories and this setup seems to be doing
that for me. I was having a hard time saving money for semi large fun
purchases and was using a cc instead, but this way I can see that I'm
saving money for the fun stuff as well as the emergencies separately.
I just needed a little structure and this was enough.

Chris
Tue Oct 23 17:37:03 PDT 2007

<brandi.craig@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1193162828.781315.165850@e34g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
>
> The spending and savings budget works for me. I assumed it was the
> advanced budget since it was the other choice besides the more
> simplistic option when I first set everything up. Anyway, it works
> great for me. What I needed was some idea of how much money I
> should
> be putting in each of the categories and this setup seems to be
> doing
> that for me. I was having a hard time saving money for semi large
> fun
> purchases and was using a cc instead, but this way I can see that
> I'm
> saving money for the fun stuff as well as the emergencies
> separately.
> I just needed a little structure and this was enough.

I tried but what I didn't like is that it's not predictive. If you
realize you're in a hole and make adjustments, you cannot simulate the
future effects of those changes as you can with the advanced budget +
cash flow forecast.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL