After accounts and categories have been added, you can start recording transactions each time money have been deposited or withdrawn from one of you accounts. If you have kept book before, either on paper, or in another program, you can either import a file (see the section called “Import & Export of Data”) or enter each transaction manually by hand. Just remember to enter the correct opening balance for each account.
Transactions can be entered in two ways, either with the new expense/income/transfer dialogs (where you have the option to create a recurring transaction), or from the transaction views. The latter option is usually preferred.
The first time you record an expense you need to follow these steps:
Switch to the expenses view, using the left-hand icons. The input focus is now in the description entry.
Type in a description for the expense. Your free to use the description property as you want, but I suggest you keep short and consistent without any inflections, as a subcategory for optimum efficiency and good statistics. For example, if you buy a delicious red royal gala apple and have an expense category for fruit, the description will be “Apple”, and if you want to record additional information put “Delicious red royal gala” as comment (others might find it more appropriate to use “Groceries” as category and “Fruit” as description). Press Enter or Tab and focus will move to the cost entry.
Enter what you paid. Note that the value should not be negative (except for refunds) and you do not need to type in currency. Press Enter or Tab.
Select the date when the transaction occurred. To change the date, either write a valid date, select one from the pop-up calendar, or increment/decrement the displayed date with up/down keys. If you now press Enter, the new expense record will be created, but we do not do that now since the current account and category probably are not correct.
Select the correct account (where the money for the expense is taken from) and expense category from the drop-down lists on the right.
Optionally enter a comment (memo) for the expense.
Click or press Enter.
Enter adds a transaction if pressed with input focus in the date or comment entry. Otherwise it moves input focus to the next entry.
Repeat the process to record another expense. When you enter the next (and all subsequent expenses) expense you can however usually do it more efficiently. Date, account and category will not be reset each time, so often you need at least not change account. More importantly Eqonomize! remembers the last expense entered for each unique description. When you enter a description, all values, except date, will be filled in with the properties of the last expense with the same description. Even more so, as you type the description a list will pop up with all previous descriptions with matching opening letters. This means that you often will follow this much shorter process:
Type the first letter of a description and select the correct one from the list.
Check if the cost is the same this time and press enter.
Check the date and press enter.
The same process as for recording expenses is repeated for incomes. Click the incomes icon on the left and enter an income instead of a cost (still positive, but instead means amount deposited, added, to the account).
The record a transfer from one account to another (for example an ATM withdrawal from a bank account to cash) follow the same process as for expenses and incomes. Click the transfer icon on the left. Enter the amount transferred (positive) and select the from account (withdrawn from) and the to account (deposited to).
You should record a refund instead of an income when you receive money as a refund for a previous expense, to get the statistics right. This can for example be if you return a product and get your money back, or if you buy a present that you and your friend will give to a mutual friend, and you receive your friends share of the cost later.
The record a new refund use -> or the context menu with the refunded expense selected in the expense list. You will have to enter the amount of money refunded (initially set to full refund) and the date of the refund. In addition you should specify the product quantity returned by you. In the first case this is clearly 1, but in the second case this is less clear. It can either be 0.5 if you count it as a half product, or 0 if considered a whole gift (none returned). The use is more obvious if the quantity property is activated for all expenses and incomes. The refund is recorded as an expense with negative cost and quantity.
Repayments are used as refunds, but for incomes that you have been forced to repay.
Split transactions are used when a transfer to/from an account is instantly used for multiple transactions. This is not when money is withdrawn from a bank account through an ATM and you go shopping (that is first a transfer from a bank account to cash, then multiple regular expenses). A split transaction can for example be appropriate when you pay with your credit card in a store and tell them to withdraw some extra money, which you get as cash in your hand. You might also use splits when multiple products is bought with the same payment.
It is up to you how and when you want to use split transactions, as multiple ordinary transactions can be used with the same end result, even though one way might be a bit more correct than the other.
You can create a split from scratch with -> or from the context menu. It is however often more efficient to use the join action. This way you can enter transactions the usual way and later join them in a split transactions. Select the transactions to join and activate from the menu or the context menu, and enter a description. All transactions in a split transaction have a common date and account.
To reverse the action and transform transactions in a split transaction to ordinary transactions, select a transaction and use .
In transaction list (ledger) for the account associated with the split, the split will be shown as only one transaction, but everywhere else the parts of the split will appear as ordinary transactions.
Transactions that have not occurred yet (with future dates) are called scheduled transactions and have certain special properties. Scheduled transactions can recurring, which means that transactions occurring regularly with certain intervals (usually on a certain day of month) do not need to be entered manually each time. This is often useful for bills and paychecks-
Single occurrence scheduled transactions are create just like ordinary transactions, except with a future date. Recurring transactions can only be created from the dialogs, with recurrences specified in the second tab.
The next occurrence of each scheduled transaction is displayed in the schedule view. You can edit or delete either the single occurrence or all future recurrences. If a single occurrence is edited, it will be created as a separate transaction, and any changes made to all recurrences will not affect this occurrence. If the date is changed to the current or a past date, the scheduled transaction becomes an ordinary transaction.
When a scheduled transaction is due, when the current date has gone past the date of the occurrence (or same date after 6 pm), Eqonomize! will ask you to confirm that the transaction really has occurred. You are then given the option to accept the transaction as it is, make some changes (for example the cost of your telephone bill might variate slightly), or postpone it. If the scheduled transaction is not postponed, it will become an ordinary transaction.
