Quicken Reports

By FutureNestEgg | August 31, 2009

First day of September – Time to review how I went with my spending last month – I was monitoring it along the way as well, but now it is time to run reports from Quicken – my favourite personal finance software tool. I am going to share with you the reports I use in Quicken to analyse my spending and income.

Let me start by big a confession – I am actually a very simple woman when it comes to technology. I try to keep things simple and don’t make it too complicated. So too many reports and too many options kind of confuse me. So I stick with what I want – no more, no less.

With reports on Quicken, I have two main criteria:

1. See how I spent in various categories (for groceries, utilities etc)

2. See how much money I put into my mortgages

3. Export it into a PDF and send it across to my hubby for his review – This is really important – Because if your spouse is not actively involved in managing day to day finances, you should let your spouse know how you as a family are doing financially (every month) – the other partner has to be in loop.

Okay, there are now plenty of reports on Quicken. But for me three are enough – these three meet all my criteria (at least for the moment). Here are my three reports:

1. Banking Summary Report for the month I am after – Shows me all the spending for the various categories (on screen I can double click on a category and further drill down and see what and where I spent money in that category). This report also shows me all the transfers to my mortgages. I export this into a pdf and email it to my hubby and save a copy in my accounts folders.

2. Itemised Categories: This is under the Spending section of the reports – drills down each category and shows every expense.

3. Comparison – Cash Flow Comparison – Same report as above but compares the month’s spending to another month (or quarter or any customised dates). So this way I can give myself a pat in the back or a lecture !!!

Thats it all done for the last month….Hello New Month !!!

If you are interested in reading my previous posts about Quicken Review click Personal Finance Software Review – Part One

Do you use Quicken? What reports do you use to analyse your monthly spending…

Best,