Included in the BudgetTracker site is the ability to view your balance sheet which will give you a break down of your net worth by calculating your current Assets (both Cash and Non-Cash) against your Liabilities. To get to the Balance Sheet page, look under Reports & Graphs from the Navigation menu. The first thing you’ll want to do is update your non-cash assets by clicking the link “Update Non-Cash Assets”. From this application, you can enter in the amounts and names of your Assets and they’ll automatically get tied into your Balance Sheet. Then make sure you’re account balances are update-to-date and we’ll calculate the rest. Once everything is entered, you’ll see a Net Worth section showing you how much you have left after all liabilities have been calculated in.

Included in the BudgetTracker site is the ability to view a schedule of how long it will take to pay off a loan, credit card, or any other debt you might have that has a limit value. There are two ways to view your pay-down schedule:

• The first is simply to create a loan or credit card account from the My Accounts page. While creating the account, you’ll notice you have the ability to add this account to your recurring bills schedule for you automaticallly. If you’ve already created the accounts, you’ll need to create a new transfer recurrence on the My BIlls page and ensure that it is setup as a transfer from your Checking account to your Loan or Credit Card.
• The second way is when you are creating a new bill, click “more options…” and notice the “Total Due (optional)” field. If you enter a total amount of the debt that is due, we can calculate your pay-down schedule from this amount instead of the remaining balance on your account.

Once these have been entered, on the monthly forecast on the My Bills page, you’ll see small calculator icons next to the bill amount. Calculator Icons will only show up next items that meet the above conditions. Once clicked, you will be taken to the Pay-Down page where you can see the amount and date of each transaction until the balance is paid. Additionally, if you’ve chosen the first option (Accounts) and entered in an interest amount, we’ll calculate the interest into the schedule as well so you can see a more realistic time frame of when your debt will be paid off.

Setting goals though a Budget is a great way to adjust your spending by giving you an incentive each month to save extra money.  The BudgetTracker site comes with the ability to setup your goals either by account, or by budget category. Your goals can be accessed from the Accounts page, Budget page, or the Navigation menu.

• By Account – When setting up a goal by account, you are basically saying that when the account reaches a certain dollar amount in transactions, the goal has been completed. From the My Accounts page, you’ll notice next to any Checking or Savings accounts the ability to create a goal. Once created, you’ll see how far away your account is from reaching the goal as well as the name of your goal underneath the account that goal is tied to.
• By Budget Category – The other way to track your goals is by Budget Category. From the My Budget page, click the “Go To…” dropdown and choose Goals. From the goals page, you can enter in the name of your category, how much you plan to allocate each month towards your goal, and how much your goal is. At the bottom, check off “Or Tie to Budget Category” instead of account. This will create a new budget item for you to keep track of each month. As you add money to the budget category, you can navigate to the Goals page to see how much is left until reaching your goal.

Also note that if your goal is to payoff a credit card, this is built into the My Bills page already without having to create a goal. When creating a new bill, if you enter a total amount due, you’ll notice a small calculator that will take you to the paydown schedule showing you how many payments until your credit card or loan is paid off.

BudgetTracker makes it easy to keep track of what items need to be saved as tax deductions at the end of the year. Since April will be coming around soon, we thought it would be good to make people aware that you have the ability to mark your transactions as Tax Deductions. When creating a new transaction, you’ll see a dropdown titled “Add To…”. Under this you’ll see an option for “Tax Deduction”. This is also available when updating an existing transaction from the My Transactions page. To get to the Tax Deductions page, look under Graphs & Reports from the Navigation menu. Some Tax Deductions may not be tied to a transaction such as donating clothes or furniture so from the Tax Deductions page, you can also enter in new deductions manually. At the top of the Tax Deductions page, you can organize your display items by year. In addition to viewing individual tax deductions, we also give you the ability to view your taxed items by category. To do so, go to the My Transactions page. From the Go To… dropdown select “Transaction Summary”. You’ll then see a tab at the top of the page titled “2008 Taxes”. This will give you a breakdown by category of all the transactions that have been assigned as a Tax Deduction. Many people neglect to track what items can be written off at the end of the year which could save you lots of money when Tax season comes around. Make sure you consult with your tax adviser for which items can be written off.

You may have noticed we added a Kids/Basic option to the dropdown menu when choosing advanced or simple mode. The idea is to come up with an easy way to teach kids about budgeting their money and get started at an early age. This is a very slimmed down version of the regular site to avoid having to think too much. If you have any recommendations to the site, please let us know. Below is a list of features/changes that were made to make it more Kid/Basic friendly.

• Transactions – The first thing you’ll see is that there’s no New Transaction page. We felt it’s better to put it into a sentence instead and created 2 entries in the top dropdown titled “I Made Money” and “I Spent Money”.  They then need to just fill in the amount, payee, and category. The date will automatically be entered as the day the entry was created and lots of other features such as Gasoline, Tax Deductions, and the Account were removed. All entries will get entered into the Cash Account since most kids dont have a checking account yet. We will however look into being able to save money into a savings account that their parents setup for them. Continue Reading »

We hope your new year is one of happiness and financial success. We look forward to introducing you to some new and exciting additions to the BudgetTracker site in the coming year.