Adding Payees

The final step is to add your sources of income and payees for your payments. These can include your employer, your landlord, and stores where you regularly shop. Payees can help you systematize your finances just like categories. This means that you can see what you spent money on or earned, and also where it went or came from. Creating payees is only worthwhile if you receive money from them or pay money to them on a regular basis. You do not necessarily need to specify a payee when posting an entry in your digital budget book. You do not need to create a payee for stores where you only rarely shop.

Click Payees in the left sidebar to open an overview of the payees. You add a new payee by entering the data in the area at the bottom. You need to at least enter a name, and optionally an address. If you always have income or expenses of the same type for a payee, such as food from the baker's shop, you can enter the details directly in the appropriate category. Clicking Add lets you add the payee to the list. If new payees are added later on, the list can be expanded at any time. As soon as you make entries, the corresponding amount appears to the right of each payee.

Income and Expenses

To enter revenues and expenses, click on Operations in the left sidebar. Following the usual approach, a new tab appears showing your income and expenses. You can enter new operations in the fields in the area at the bottom (Figure 4).

Figure 4: You can then assign your income and expenses – known as operations in Skrooge – to categories and payees.

Just select the right account and enter the date and amount, remember to prefix expenses with a minus sign. You also select suitable payees and categories from the list boxes. Both help keep track of your finances, but neither is mandatory. If necessary, you can also add a comment. To transfer the operation to your budget book, press Add after entering all the data. You will now see a new line in the overview with the data you entered.

A tip on entering income: Record your gross salary, not the net amount. You need to state the income tax, social security contributions, and other deductions as expenses. This helps you keep track of your finances and have the correct amounts for a tax return at hand.

If an operation belongs to different categories – for example, if you buy groceries, personal care hygiene items, and magazines from the supermarket – press the Split button. You can then split the total amount across any number of categories.

Transferring money from one account to another is a special kind of a operation. For example, if you withdraw money from an ATM, you have an outpayment in your checking account and cash intake at the same time. To enter a operation of this type, press the Transfer button at the bottom of the page. This doesn't mean a bank transfer from your own current account to another, but a transfer between two of your own accounts. Enter the outpayment account in the Account field, for example, Current account in the case of a cash withdrawal from an ATM. The target account belongs in the To account field, such as Wallet.

Skrooge opens a separate input screen for purchasing securities when you press the Shares button. You can split the total amount into the actual amount attributable to the shares, plus any fees and taxes.

Regular Operations

Certain incomes and expenses recur regularly, like salary or rent. You do not need to repeatedly enter these operations. For example, after entering a rental payment, you can right-click on the line with the operation and choose Schedule from the context menu. A new tab opens where you enter the details of the regular operation (Figure 5).

Figure 5: You only need to enter regular income and expenses once. To do this, you need to create a scheduled operation to tell Skrooge to post the item automatically.

Start by entering the date when the operation is next due. Then enter the interval, once a month, for example. Optionally, add a closing date when Skrooge will post the operation for the last time. To do this, check the Number of occurrences box and specify the closing date. If the schedule is valid until further notice, do not check the box. You can also choose to be reminded of the operation any number of days in advance.

If you check the Automatically write, Skrooge will automatically post the item in your budget book. Then state how many days in advance you want the item to be posted. If you choose 0 here, Skrooge posts the item on the due date.