When you create a new checkbook using Southern Couple's Checkbook, a few basic budget categories are automatically added. We provide a suggested percentage of your total expenses to allocate to each of these categories. You can customize this list of budget categories by deleting categories that don't apply to your budget situation and by adding others that do. To create your budget, you simply adjust the percentage allocated to the budget categories shown by moving the slider for each one left or right. As you adjust one budget category, the other sliders are adjusted to reflect the amount of your total budget you have remaining. Each slider changes color as it's adjusted from green to yellow to red when you might be getting into trouble.

The short answer is, well, everything! A longer answer is that you should assign 100% of your expenses to some category whether that's spending it, saving it, or giving it away. Any percentage of your expenses you don't assign in your budget will tend to disappear on you.

The funny thing about doing a budget for the first time is that it's almost guaranteed to be wrong. What!? That's right, no matter what percentages you pick, the reality of your expenses is probably going to be a little different than your perception of it in the beginning. And it's going to take a little time to bring your expenses in line with your financial goals if you've never taken the time to reconcile them before. When you're getting started, have fun with the Budget tab, but treat it as a goal setting exercise. Enter in the categories and percentages you want to achieve. Once we get some real numbers plugged into the software, you'll see where you're winning and where your finances need a little attention.

Everything!

Scheduled transactions are used for all income deposits. For example, your paycheck is a scheduled transaction. If you work on commission or have an irregular income, still enter in an estimated amount but think of it as a monthly income goal.

Expense payments to named recipients like your housing payment, car payment, utility bills, etc. should also be entered as scheduled transactions even if you're entering an estimated dollar amount that in reality varies somewhat month-to-month.

More general expense categories, like food expenses, gasoline expenses, and personal spending money, will be entered as a scheduled envelope deposit. As you enter reciepts that fall into these spending categories into the Transactions tab, the amounts are automatically deducted from the amount in that category's envelope.

No. Sure you can dive right into budgeting, but you don't have to. You can start using the software however you want. If you prefer to get started with the Transaction tab (your check register), feel free. If you want to start entering transactions and envelopes with the Scheduled Transactions tab, go for it! You are in control of your money! You manage it how you want to!

In the Checkbook menu, you can click the Category Manager menu item and add, rename, or delete Categories and Subcategories.

Whenever you add a transaction or envelope in the software, you are given an option to select a category and subcategory or split the amount of the transaction over multiple categories and subcategories.

Yes, you can schedule transactions and envelopes to occur only once, daily, weekly, every other week, twice a month, every four weeks, monthly, every other month, every three months, every four months, twice a year, yearly, or every other year.

People used to carry envelopes with cash to help them control their monthly spending. Nowadays, it's harder to track our monthly spending now that we use cashless payment methods like debit cards and electronic bank drafts. We've borrowed the concept to help solve a problem that other checking account management programs have- the budgeting portion of the software just doesn't work because you can't schedule payments if you don't know exactly who getting the money. For example, do you know exactly where you're going to eat, every day for the next week? The next month? No! In Southern Couple's Checkbook, you schedule an envelope deposit to earmark money for whole categories of expenses. You set your spending limit and the budgeting features of the software work. And when you do spend money from one of the envelopes, the software automatically deducts the right amount from the envelope when you enter the payment on the Transactions tab.

The Transactions tab is the Southern Couple's Checkbook equivalent to your checkbook register. All your payments and deposits are recorded here. If you make a payment for a category that matches the category of one of your envelopes, you'll be asked if you want to deduct the money from that envelope.

The cash flow graph, found on the Cash Flow tab, gives you a picture of your daily account balance minus your envelope totals for anywhere from the next week up to the next two years. It takes into account your scheduled transactions and envelope deposits, previous statement balance, and unreconciled transactions. The reason that envelope totals are subtracted from the account balance is that this money is already allocated to be spent, so it's not counted in your free cash flow.

The cash flow graph tells you how much money you have to spend in your checking account. The actual amount of money in your checking account will be higher than the amount shown on the graph, because money allocated to envelope categories is considered already spent and is not shown in the cash flow graph. The reason for this is to allow the cash flow graph to accurately reflect how much money you have to spend, even when you have frequent expenses that you can't schedule like meals out, groceries, or personal purchases. In those instances the purchases are deducted from the envelopes and the cash flow graph doesn't change.

The following reports are built into the Southern Couple's Checkbook software:

• Annual Budget - This is a summary of all your scheduled income and expenses, including scheduled transactions and scheduled envelope deposits. The summary block at the bottom of the report gives you the difference between your total scheduled income and your total scheduled expenses. Your goal is to have a zero based budget, where every dollar of income is given a purpose, whether that's spending or saving. If the information doesn't match the percentages on the Budget tab, the software alerts you to the problem.
• Category Summary - This is a summary of all your income and expenses over a selected date range organized by category and subcategory.
• Payee Summary - This is a summary of all your income and expenses over a selected date range organized by payee.
• Transactions by Category - This is a summary of all the transactions for a specific category and subcategory over the selected date range.
• Transactions by Payee - This is a summary of all the transactions for a specific payee over the selected date range.

The Reconcile Statement tab lets you rapidly mark transaction as cleared by double clicking. As you clear transactions, they are moved to the top of the tab and a running balance is recalculated that matches your statement exactly. This lets you spot discrepancies instantly. You'll be able to balance your checkbook in just a few minutes every month.