Categorizing Your Transactions

For your convenience, Moneydance begins each user file with a standard set of income and expense categories. To view and edit these, select the Tools -> Edit Categories menu.

Categories are used to tell you how you are spending or receiving funds in a real-life account. You are not restricted to what you see in this list, though: you can choose to categorize your transactions in whatever way makes sense to you simply by creating income and expense categories which you can assign to transactions.

For example, you could keep an Expense category for each type of bill you pay (electric, gas, cable, water, etc), or just keep a single Bills category instead and assign all bill payments to that. You could make a separate Income category for income from each of three jobs, or just one Salary:Paycheck category for paychecks from all three. These categories will be useful in generating reports and graphs so you can see how you're spending money.