I recently switched from Quicken 2009 to Moneydance 2010 back in February of this year. Since then I’ve been on sort of a quest to fix our finances. Part of that quest has been to set a budget and stick to it. I toyed with budgeting in Quicken a few years back but back then I was trying to budget each subcategory and, since I have so many, I found that difficult and ultimately useless.
So I thought I’d give Moneydance’s budgeting features a go and see what happened. First though a bit of a disclaimer: this isn’t intended to be a tutorial per se; rather this is an account of how I use the software. That said, if you find that this information is helpful then all the better. Also, this article assumes that you have a working knowledge of the software; for example, you have one or more accounts set up and have entered transactions that are assigned to one or more categories. Hopefully you also have at least a few subcategories set up too. It’s also a good idea to first read the instructions for the budgeting component of Moneydance, located here.
Creating A Budget
To create a budget you first choose “Budget Manager” from the “Tools” menu. Then click the “New” button. You’ll see this window:
