Palmtop Money Demo
Tutorial

Table of contents

Getting started

Adding some categories

Transactions

Reports

Budgets

Scheduled transactions

Foreign currencies

Splitting transactions

Using VAT

Getting started

We’ll start by creating some accounts and categories and then enter some example transactions.

Please note that many of the details below refer to the way Money is set up when first installed. If any of the "Preferences" have been altered from the defaults, screen displays may look slightly different.

Creating a new administration

- Use "Create new file" on the main menu and enter "Demo". Tap on "OK" to confirm the name.

The "Create new account" dialog appears. (If it doesn’t, tap on the "New" toolbar button) Note how the dialog is ‘tabbed’. Each ‘tab’ ("General", "Balance" and "Additional") contains different lines for you to fill in when describing the new account.

2. In the starting "General" page, type "MidWest" into the "Brief name" line and "MidWest current account" into the "Description" line as shown below:

The account type, icon and default status can all be left in their default state as this is indeed a bank account that we’re creating.

3. Go to the "Balance" tab and enter the starting balance for your MidWest current account, e.g. £275. (Note that you don’t need to enter the pound sign).

Unless you’re an experienced accountant , there is probably no need to change the default names for ‘debit’ and ‘credit’.

The "Additional" tab allows you to enter some account details. The information you might enter here is for your own quick reference and isn’t used in Money’s day-to-day operations

.

- Tap "OK" to tell Money that the dialog is complete and that you’re happy with the contents of all the tabbed pages.

You have now successfully created your first account. Money’s screen should look something like this:

Note the tabbed interface, with the "Accounts" tab in front and the "Categories" tab behind. In the same way as you navigated the "Create new account" dialog, these tabs provide a very quick way of switching between different screens in Money.

The "Accounts" screen is a good overview of the worth of each account in your administration (in this case just £275 in the MidWest current account so far), and includes a net worth total at the bottom right. Tracking your net worth over a period of time is always interesting and sometimes illuminating!

Creating more accounts

- Tap the "New" toolbar button (or on an empty line) to bring up the "Create new account" dialog again. We’re going to create a savings account, so fill in the dialog with "Savings" as the "Brief name", "Savings account" as the "Description", "Asset" as the account icon and type and £4000 as the savings balance. Default status should be "Pending", as before. Tap on "OK".

Note that as soon as a second account has been defined two extra ‘tabs’ appear at the top of the screen, "Book" and "Scheduled". Because of Money’s double entry way of working, the extra transaction screens weren’t applicable with only the one account created.

2. Repeat the process for the money in your wallet. Use "Wallet" and "Money in my wallet" as the names, "Cash" as the account type, and set the initial balance to £100.

Note that you don’t get a chance to choose the default status when creating a cash account. Cash transactions are always reconciled.

3. Finally, repeat the process again for your Visa credit card using the "Card" account type. Use "Visa" and "Visa 1234.5678.1234.5678" as the names. On the "Balance" page you’ll note Money’s helpful tip at the bottom of the dialog. Initial credit card balances should usually be entered as negative, i.e. you owe this balance to the card company. Enter £-250:

Overview

You’ve now created four accounts and your screen should look something like this:

Note how the Accounts view gives you an overview of your finances, with the net worth now reflecting the sum of the balances in all four accounts. Note also the way in which the negative balance you entered for the credit card account has been represented with a figure in the "Debt" column.

Adding some categories

We’ve defined accounts to store our money in but so far have no means of spending it or allocating income. It’s time to create some categories!

1. Use the "New category" command (or use Tab to go to the Categories page and tap the "New" toolbar button). The "New category" dialog appears.

1. Fill in "Salary" for the "Brief name", "Monthly salary" for the "Description, and "Income" as the type, as shown below. Tap "OK" to confirm the dialog.

The screen now displays the Salary category. Don’t worry about the "Annual" button at the top of one of the columns, as that’s to do with Money’s monthly budgeting features — we’ll come to those later on.

In real life, money tends to get spent as well as earned, so the next stage is to define some expense categories. We’ll use Rent, Food and Clothing as our examples.

1. Use "New category" again and enter "Rent", "Monthly rent", "Expense" and tap "OK".
2. Use "New category" again and enter "Food", "Food and groceries", "Expense" and tap "OK".
3. Use "New category" again and enter "Clothes", "Clothes and accessories", "Expense" and tap "OK".

Your categories screen should now look something like this:

In the same way as the "Accounts" screen totalled your net worth, the bottom-of-column figure on the "Categories" screen shows your total profit (or total loss, depending on whether you’ve spent more than you’ve earned). Since you haven’t entered any transactions so far, the total profit is zero.

Note that, for real control, Money supports subcategories, e.g. "Food: drink" and "Food: family food". Subcategories are slightly more complicated though, so for the purposes of this guided tour we’ll stick to the categories already defined.

Transactions

All the preparation is now over and you can start to enter some example transactions. Try to take a moment after each one is entered to think about how it was handled.

Paying £30 cash for a new shirt

Note again that every transaction involves at least one account. In this case it’s the "Wallet" cash account, and its transaction book is the best place to start.

1. Move to the "Accounts" screen by tapping on the "Accounts" tab. Use the pen to move the highlight to the "Wallet" account and tap again. The screen should now show the transaction book for your "Wallet".
   Note the figure of £100 at the top–right of the screen. This is your initial balance, i.e. the value you entered when you created this account. The actual balance (helpfully called Worth for a cash account), shown at the bottom-right, is also £100 since you haven’t entered any transactions yet:

2. Tap on a blank line to bring up the "New transaction" dialog. Type in "New shirt" as the description. The action can be left as the default "Spend (Wallet)". Move the cursor to the "To" line and select "Clothes" from the available accounts and categories. Type £30 (the cost of the shirt) into the "Amount" line. The default status of "Reconciled" is fine as this is a cash transaction and you know for a fact how much money you handed over! Leave the "Reference" line blank for now.
3. Tap "OK" to confirm the dialog and accept this transaction. The screen should now show the updated transaction book for the "Wallet" account. Note that your actual balance has decreased by £30 and is now £70.

A note on navigation

Note that Money offers many ways to navigate through all the available transaction books. Simply pressing the letter "m", for instance, will take you immediately to the first book name starting with that letter, that for your "MidWest" account. Pressing "m" again would then take you to the next account starting with the same letter, and so on.

You can also use the left/right arrows to browse through the books, or press the space bar on a highlighted line to go to the book where the ‘other side’ of that transaction is stored. See the chapter "Getting around quickly" for more details

Other views

Try going back to the "Accounts" screen. Note that the new "Wallet" account balance is also reflected here and that your net worth has dropped to £4095. Now go to "Categories" and you’ll see another important view. The "Clothes" category is showing your £30 expenditure and this is now the overall loss.

Depositing a £2000 salary cheque

You have now (in our imaginary world!) received and deposited your monthly salary cheque.

1. Move to the "MidWest" book.
2. Tap on any empty line to bring up the "New transaction" dialog. Type in "Salary (February)" as the "Description". Feel free to use the current month here, as the transactions are all dated to the Series 5 clock. Keeping the dates consistent will make the reports easier to understand later. Set the third line to "Deposit (MidWest)" and type in £2000 as the amount. The "From" line can of course be left as "Salary". The status is left as "Pending", awaiting confirmation in your bank statement that the cheque cleared properly. Leave the "Reference" line blank for now.
3. Tap "OK" to confirm the transaction and the screen will show the updated transaction book for the "MidWest current account" with a worth of £2275.

Note the strange character in the middle column of the book. This is a visual ‘flag’, indicating that the transaction is still pending.

4. Tap on the "Accounts" tab and note that the account balances have been updated and that your Net worth has been increased by £2000 to £6095:

Writing a £300 cheque for your landlord

- As before, go to your "MidWest" transaction book, and highlight and tap on a blank line to bring up the "New transaction" dialog.

1. Type "Rent for March" into the "Description" line, set "Action" to "Withdraw (MidWest)", the "To" line to "Rent" and the "Amount" to £300. The status is left as "Pending", as usual, until a bank statement can confirm that your landlord actually cashed the cheque.

3. Tap on "OK" and the transaction book will show the rent entry and the new account balance:

It’s worth taking time to note several features of the book display.

Firstly, the figure at the top-right is the balance brought forward from just before the highlighted line. Use the pen or arrow keys to move the highlight up and down and watch how this figure is updated to always display your balance just before the current, highlighted transaction. If you highlight the very first line, it displays your initial balance. If you highlight the empty bottom line, it exactly matches the current balance.

Secondly, the numbers on the bottom line reflect different ways of viewing your balance in this account. Pending shows the amount that has yet to be confirmed by a bank statement, Reconciled shows the amount that has already been confirmed and Worth gives you a best guess as to the actual balance in the account (barring bank errors or other mishaps).

Transferring £500 from MidWest to your Savings account

In this transaction, for the first time, you transfer money from one account to another (rather than earning or spending money). Since there are two accounts involved, you can choose to enter the transaction in either of the account books. Choose the "MidWest" book for now, as using the account transferred from is a more intuitive way of presenting the transaction.

1. Go to the "MidWest" transaction book and bring up the "New transaction" dialog.
2. Enter "Some surplus money" as the "Description", "Withdraw (MidWest)" as the "Action", "Savings" as the destination and £500 as the "Amount". As usual, "Status" is "Pending".
3. Tap on "OK". Your MidWest transaction book should now look something like this:

Charging some meals on your Visa card

- Go to the "Visa" book to enter a new transaction.
- Enter "Dinner", "Charge (Visa)", "Food", £30 and "Pending" into the dialog. Tap on "OK". Your Visa transaction book should now show the £30 expense.

1. Oops!
The meal was actually £50. Tap on the "Dinner" transaction to bring up the "Edit transaction" dialog and amend the "Amount" to £50 and tap on "OK". The transaction has now been suitably amended, as confirmed by the transaction book:
Notice that the bottom-right total is entitled "Debt" and is automatically shown as an unsigned number. Money will automatically try to use real-world terms and values wherever possible, to make things easier to understand.

Processing your bank statement

One week later your bank statement arrives. Notice that each statement you get will have its own statement number (e.g. 00014).

The statement confirms to you that:

- your previous balance was £275
- your £2000 salary cheque has been added
- your £300 rent cheque has been cashed
- the £500 you transferred to your savings account has been deducted
- your balance is now £1475

Note that you have already entered these transactions. It simply remains to reconcile them.

1. Go to the "MidWest" transaction book. The reconciled balance so far for this account is £275. The pending balance is £1200 (i.e. the total of the entries entered so far but not confirmed).

Note that the reconciled balance should match your previous balance on your statement, i.e. the amount you had initially before you started entering transactions for this period. It is good practice to double-check this value because differences may indicate errors entered by either yourself or your bank.

2. To reconcile the "Salary (February)" transaction, move the highlight to that line and use the "Reconcile Transaction" command (on the "Transactions" menu). A similarly named dialog will appear, asking for a reference. Type in "00014" and then tap on "OK":

A few things to note:

- You can use the reference line for anything at all. Entering your statement numbers here is only a suggestion.
- The visual 'flag’, previously used to indicate that the transaction was pending, has been removed from the status column.
- The "Reconciled" balance at the bottom of the screen has been updated but your "Worth" has not changed, as no money has actually moved around. Remember that reconciliation is simply a necessary double-checking exercise.

3. Reconcile the "Rent for March" and "Some surplus money" transactions in the same way.

- Note that if you had spotted a discrepancy and it turned out to be your error in entering the transaction in the first place, the offending entry can easily be edited or deleted altogether.
- Your "MidWest" account transaction book will now look something like this:

- No transactions are pending and the "Worth" and bank statement balances should now agree.
- Note that in the real world transactions are probably being entered daily and that there will be several entries in your Money account books that are dated after the period covered by the statement. In this case, you should aim to match the statement final balance with the balance brought forward (top-right of the screen) after moving the highlight to the first transaction entered after the statement period.

Paying your credit card bill

Suppose you now receive a credit card statement, no.27, from Visa. Its starting balance is the £250 you already owed them and it includes your dinner for £50. The final balance on the statement is thus £300. You decide to send them a cheque for £280 from your "MidWest" account, paying off most of the debt.

1. Go to the "Visa" transaction book. Use "Reconcile transaction" as before to reconcile the "Dinner" entry, using "27" (the statement no.) as the reference.

Notice that your balances now match the final balance on the statement:

2. Go to the "MidWest" transaction book and enter a new "Pending" transaction, transferring £280 from "MidWest" to "Visa", as shown below:

If you now go back to the "Visa" transaction book, you’ll see that although your reconciled balance is still £300 (matching the last statement), your actual "Debt" is shown as £20, the amount still outstanding and also the amount which would be shown on your next Visa statement.

Reports

Money includes facilities to prepare a wide variety of financial reports. You can read about them in more detail in the "Reference" chapter, but for now we’ll just try two.

Net Worth

This report gives a ‘snapshot’ of your financial situation at any given point in time by totalling up details from all accounts and their transaction books up to the "End date" you specify.

1. Use the "Net worth report" command. The "To" line will default to today’s date and can be left as it is for now. Try pressing left and right arrows on the "Include" line and note the possible choices. Select "reconciled only" and tap on "OK". The report should look something like this:

As expected, Money reports on your total reconciled worth at today’s date.

2. To get a more visual feel for the spread of your worth over the different accounts, tap on the "Graph" button and then on "Itemised":
3. Tap on "Done" (or press Esc) to return to the report and then again to return to the main "Accounts" screen.

Profit and Loss

This report gives you a feel for income and expenditure over a given period of time.

1. Use the "Profit & Loss" command and choose "This year" for the "Range" and choose "Budget for period" for "Compare with". Tap on "OK".

As with the "Net worth" report above, it’s possible to show this summary in more graphical form.

2. Tap on "Graph" and choose "Itemised". Your income and expenditure categories will be shown in bar graph form.

Money can also plot time-based graphs, showing net worth, income and expenditure against elapsed time. Note that with so few example transactions in our demonstration file a time-based display is not very useful. As you start to use Money in real life and build up a ‘proper’ administration, the time-based graphs will help you spot trends in your financial affairs.

Budgets

Budgets are associated with categories. By planning your income or expenses in a category, you can avoid any unpleasant surprises!

Assigning a budget for a category

- Go to the "Categories" and screen and highlight "Food". Tap on the "Edit" button on the toolbar and then again on the "Budget" dialog button.

Note that the Money’s budgeting system is based on calendar months.

2. You decide that £160 a month on "Food and groceries" is a fair estimate. This shouldn’t vary too much over the year, so highlight "January" and tap on "Edit". Enter £160 as the amount, for January until "December":

3. Tap on "OK" and the budget screen will now show £160 allocated for each month:

4. Tap on "OK" to accept these allocations and "OK" again to finish editing the "Food" category. The "Categories" screen should now look something like this:

Note the button marked "Annual" at the top of the middle column. This indicates that the figure in the column is the budget for the whole year.

A possibly more useful yardstick for each category is the pro rata budget for the fraction of the year already gone.

5. Tap on the "Annual" button and choose "Year to date" from the dialog. Tap on "OK":

Note how the button has changed to "YTD". The figure next to the Food category will also have changed, reflecting what the expense should be for this time in the year.

Scheduled transactions

A scheduled transaction is simply one that is set to activate at some point in the future. For example, you might know the details of a transaction in advance and wish to enter it into your administration to make sure it doesn’t get forgotten.

More commonly, you might wish to set up a scheduled transaction that repeats automatically every so often, i.e. a "standing order".

Entering a standing order

As our example, let’s set up a standing order for a quarterly electricity bill. Every 3 months, £40 is direct debited from your "MidWest" bank account, and it would save work if this could be set up properly within Money rather than having to manually enter the transaction each time.

1. Go to the "Scheduled" screen and tap (or press Enter) on an empty line to start a new transaction.
2. Choose the "MidWest" account and tap on "OK".
3. Set up the dialog with "Electric direct debit" as the "Description" and £40 as the "Amount".

Note that you haven’t set up a category for electricity bills yet, and so will be wondering what to book the transaction to. Don’t worry, we’re simply going to use another handy feature of Money:

4. Choose "-new category-" on the "To" line and tap on "OK".

Notice that the "Create new category" dialog now appears, giving us the chance (even in the middle of setting up a transaction) to define an expense category for the money.

5. Type in "Utility" and "Electricity, Gas and Water" in the dialog and tap on "OK".

Note that the new "Utility" category is now filled in on the "To" line:

6. Tap on "OK", to bring up the "Schedule transaction" dialog, which is where you tell Money about the timing of the standing order.
7. Set the next due date to be the 1st of the following month, make sure the "Repeat" box is ticked and set the "Every" line to "3 months". Although you don’t have to set a sensible "Stop after" date, it’s a good idea to do so as it reduces the amount of work Money has to do when updating your administration. Tap on "OK" and the "Scheduled" screen should look something like this:

Note that if you are interested in the frequencies of standing orders, you can turn on an extra column by ticking the "Show scheduled frequency" option in "Preferences".

Time to process

Imagine that the date is now the 1st of the month and that the time has come for Money to process the scheduled transaction. It’s worth us practising the procedure so that you’re prepared for any choices you need to make when you do this for real.

1. Use the "Process scheduled" command (in the "Transactions"/"Special" menu), specifying a date a few months in advance of today.

Money will now scan the list of scheduled transactions and find the standing order you entered a moment ago. The following dialog appears:

The use of four buttons may look a bit excessive, but they all have subtly different actions. The statement at the top of the dialog says that your transaction will be added for a particular date. Although there’s no question mark, it is effectively a question and requires a moment’s thought and a decision:

Yes

– this tells Money to add the transaction now.

Automatic

– this tells Money to add the transaction now, and will also add every other transaction that is scheduled to be added now, without posing any more questions.

Skip

– this tells Money not to add the transaction, now or ever.

Postpone

– this tells Money not to add the transaction right now but to offer it again for consideration at a later date.

2. Tap on "Yes". Money returns to the "Scheduled" screen after processing the standing order. Note that the "Date" column shows the next incidence that’s due.
3. Go to the "MidWest" book and check that the standing order was performed correctly.

Foreign currencies

Money has the capability to book transactions in foreign currencies and to automatically handle currency fluctuations.

When first started, Money will set up a "Home currency" for you, derived from the settings in your Series 5. All foreign exchange rates should be entered with respect to this local currency and it will be used for almost all values displayed within the program.

Currency settings

- Use the "Currencies" command to bring up the "Currency settings" dialog. Tap on "Add" to bring up the "Add currency" dialog and fill it in with "US$", "US Dollars", "1" and "1.56", as shown below:

2. Tap on "OK", and the revised set of currency settings are displayed:

While you’re here, you might as well set up French francs and Deutschmarks as well.

3. Tap on "Add" again and this time enter "ff", "French francs" and set "1" unit of your local currency equal to "9.1" francs. Tap on "OK" to accept the dialog:

Note that Money is very flexible in how you specify the exchange rate for a currency. You could, for example, enter the fact that you changed £50 for 455 French francs and let the program work out the relative rate.

1. Tap on "Add" again and this time enter "DM", "Deutschmarks" and a rate of £"1" to DM "2.4". Tap on "OK" to accept the dialog and then "OK" again to accept the currency settings and return to the main screen.

Foreign currency accounts

Accounts in a foreign currency are useful for representing things you own (or owe) in that country. For example, a bank account in Germany or an amount of cash in Deutschmarks. Foreign cash accounts are the most common day to day use of this feature, with cash being owned while on holiday or on a business trip abroad.

1. You are going on holiday to Germany and need some Deutschmarks. Use the "New account" command to create a new cash account with brief name "DM Cash" and description "Deutschmarks (cash)". Make sure you use the "Balance" tab to set the initial balance to "0" and the "Currency" to "Deutschmarks (DM)":

1. Go to the "DM" transaction book and do a transfer of DM25 from the "MidWest" account. Note that because the new transaction was requested from a book in DM, the dialog reflects that fact and displays the "Amount" in DM as well.

Note that the transaction book now shows the transfer as "10.42", the equivalent in your home currency of DM25. This is purely for your convenience to give an idea of worth. If you find that this way of working is confusing, the "Preferences" dialog contains options to display foreign balances in the native currency.

Now, what happens when the exchange rate changes? Obviously you’ve still got the 25 Deutschmarks in your wallet but they’ll be worth a different amount in your home currency, thus increasing or decreasing your worth. It’s important to note that because Money uses double entry bookkeeping, money can’t just appear from (or disappear to) thin air. The problem of where to book these extra small profits or losses is solved through the use of a special "Currency fluctuations" category.

1. In the "Currencies" dialog, edit the rate for "DM" to be DM2.5 to the pound. Note that as soon as you confirm the new rate, Money detects the change and brings up the "Currency fluctuation" dialog:
2. Leave the default "Description" of this event as "DM fluctuation" and the "Book" as "-new category-" and confirm the dialog. Money will now prompt for the name of the new category to be used. We suggest you use "CurFlux" as the "Brief name" and "Currency fluctuations" as the "Description". Don’t worry about whether to classify it as an expense or an income.
4. Note the new entry in your "DM cash" transaction book, expressing the fact that your net worth has just been reduced slightly. With the highlight on this entry, press the space bar to view the other end of this special transaction:

1. Press the space bar again to return to the "DM cash" transaction book.

How does Money work with foreign currencies?

Every time you use Money to enter a transaction involving a foreign currency, the program stores several pieces of information:

- all the usual transaction details, including the amount in the foreign currency, e.g. DM25. Even if you set the "Preferences" to always display foreign accounts in your home currency, Money will store the actual amount in the original currency in the file and do a quick calculation for your benefit in displays and reports.
- the prevailing exchange rate.

Existing Series 3a Money users should take special note of the above two points, as the old version only stored amounts in the home currency.

The new way of working with currencies allows greater accuracy and more closely reflects what happens in real life.

Splitting transactions

Some transactions may involve more than two accounts or categories. For example, items bought in a department store might need to be categorised under two or more different categories. Money provides a way of splitting these transactions.

Entering a Split transaction

You use your credit card in a store and are charged £35.16, of which £12.72 needs to be categorised as "Food" and the rest as "Clothes".

1. Go to the transaction book for "Visa" and enter a new transaction: "Harrods department store", "Charge (Visa)", "Food", "£35.16" and "pending", as shown below:

You therefore start by assigning the expense fully to one particular category, in this case "Food". The transaction appears as normal in the Visa transaction book.

2. Check the highlight is on the right transaction and then use the "Split transaction" command. The title bar of the screen changes to "SPLIT":

You are now in "Split" mode and can enter transactions as usual, except that they must total the amount first specified (and confirmed on the first line of the display). As each item is entered, the "Split balance" is altered at the bottom of the screen to reflect your success in assigning the entire cost to a selection of expense categories.

3. Move the highlight to the "Food" line and tap on "Edit". Change the amount to "£12.72" and tap on "OK".

The split balance now shows £22.44, the remaining expense amount to be apportioned.

4. Tap on a blank line, to bring up the "New line" dialog. Note how the "Amount" line is automatically filled in with the remaining money to be apportioned:

5. Set the "From/To" line to "Clothes" and tap on "OK". Note how the "Split balance" is now shown as zero, as you have successfully accounted for the whole expense.

1. Press the Escape key to get out of "Split" mode and return to the "Visa" transaction book. Money will usually prompt you to confirm the changes you have just made to the split transaction, in which case you should tap on "Yes".
   The "Visa" transaction book should now look something like this:

Note how the "Harrods" entry is now displayed. The circled number "(3)" in the "Description" column indicates the total number of lines in the split (i.e. the Visa expense and the two category allocations).

At any point in the future, editing the "Harrods" transaction from either the "Visa", "Food" or "Clothes" transaction books will result in the "Split" mode appearing.

Using VAT

As you might imagine, the splitting of transactions is also involved in the handling of VAT. Money saves you having to split entries manually and can almost completely automate the chore of tracking VAT.

Enabling VAT support

- Use the "Preferences" command and tap on the "Support" tab. Make sure the "Support VAT" box is ticked. Tap on "OK" to confirm the dialog.

Creating a VAT account

You will need at least one VAT account, as a place to book the VAT part of relevant transactions.

2. Go to the "Accounts" screen and use the "New account" command. Enter "VAT", "VAT account" and type "VAT".

Specifying for which categories VAT is relevant

For each category for which you wish to track the VAT (either an expense category, e.g. "Business expenses", or an income category, e.g. "Invoices"), you can specify the normal VAT percentage and the VAT account to be used.

For example, you wish to track the VAT on clothing.

3. Edit your "Clothes" category, setting the "VAT account" to "VAT" and the usual VAT percentage to "17.5", as shown below:

Once this has been confirmed, every transaction involving the "Clothes" category will result in an additional "VAT split" dialog, in which Money will offer to automatically ‘split off’ 17.5to "VAT account".

Manually splitting off the VAT of a transaction

You can also manually ‘split off’ the VAT of any transaction. For example, suppose you decide to reclaim the VAT of the "New shirt" expense in our example.

1. Highlight the "New shirt" line in your "Wallet" book and use the "VAT split transaction" command. In the dialog that pops up, set the "VAT account" to "VAT", as shown below:

After confirming the dialog, you’ll see that the transaction has been split for you. The number "(3)" refers to the number of lines in the split (one in the "Wallet" account, one in "Clothes" and one in "VAT").

In the interests of understanding, let’s examine what Money has done in more detail.

2. Highlight the transaction and press the space bar. Since there are several "other sides" to this transaction, Money shows them all in the "split":

Note the apportioning of the VAT percentage. Money assumes the transaction amount originally entered to be the amount including VAT.

You can press the escape key to exit this split screen, or press the space bar on any of the transaction lines to go to the book that the line belongs in.