Hi! I currently use an Excel spreadsheet for tracking personal finances. I'm thinking of moving to KMyMoney instead.

In Excel, I have a Pay account. A paycheck's gross amount is entered in a transaction as income coming into that account. Each deduction from the paycheck (taxes, dues, etc.) is a separate expense transaction in that account. I then have a transfer transaction that transfers the net income to our checking account (the actual account where the check gets deposited by the employer). I track all this detail, because I want to know the gross income we have for the year and I want each deduction broken out for when I prepare our taxes.

How would I achieve the same results in KMyMoney?

Thanks!

Don

That is very easy. The trick is to use split transactions. Here's how to do it:

1. create all necessary categories (e.g. social security, taxes, ...) in case you don't have them already
2. goto the ledger view of the account where you cash the paycheck
3. create a new transaction and enter the net income as amount, because this is what ends up in the account at your bank
4. click on the button on the right of the category field which opens the split editor
5. create a first split with category 'salary' and enter the gross income as positive amount
6. create more positive splits for any surplus you receive
7. create a single entry for whatever category (tax, social security,...) money is deducted with a negative amount

Details can be found in The KMyMoney handbook. Once done, create a scheduled transaction so you don't have to re-enter all the categories each month. Simply right click on the transaction and use the Create scheduled transaction feature. Just adjust the amounts where needed on a (monthly) basis. Some stats: my first such transaction on file in KMyMoney goes back to Jan 2002 and has 9 splits. Today, my pay-check transactions comprise 15 splits

Great, thank you very much! I'll start moving my data over from Excel.

Good morning,

At risk of resurrecting an older post...

I had the same issue as described above, and the solution above almost works for me.

However, I have categories set for 'gross' and 'net' income, as well as 'taxes' etc, all of which I wish to track in KMyMoney.

Using the method set out above works OK, except it does not allow me to track net income, the category balance remains as zero. I have tried setting the net amount against the 'net' income category and then doing the split for 'taxes' and 'gross' but this seem to result in a warning about unassigned amounts and a negative balance in the relevant checking account.

Any guidance much appreciated.

Thanks,
gsrxqybtd

I would create a report to get an overview of the net payments (the sum that is paid out to you).