Quicken - Using the setup tab - Lynda

I know you just can't wait to start creating accounts and entering those financial transactions, but there are a few things that Quicken wants to know about you first, and a few things that you need to tell Quicken first. Here on the Customize Quicken section of the Setup tab, Quicken wants to know a few things about you and I'm going to answer its questions. Personally, I am married. I do have dependents. I do own a home and I own a business. By telling Quicken these things, it allows Quicken to behind the scene set up the categories that I'll need. Now we are going to be going into categories in a lot more detail in later videos. But for now, all you need to know is categories are where your money goes. For example, medical expenses, or rent, or unfortunately, taxes. Behind the scenes, Quicken is setting up default categories based on the information I just gave it. Now if you customize Quicken a bit by choosing to show or hide the different tabs that appear up here at the top of the screen. The reason you might want to do this is because maybe you just don't want to use all of Quicken right now. You still want to have the ability to use all of Quicken when you are ready to do it. But let's say that you are not ready to track your investments in Quicken yet. You can hide that by clicking the Show checkbox next to Investing. The Investing tab disappeared up here in the Tab bar and the Investing Accounts disappeared from the Account bar. In the same way, if you don't want to show, oh say Net Worth or Planning, you can click those off too. Now you might want to hide the Tax tab, but I suggest you don't, because sadly taxes are just too important. One other thing, throughout the Quicken interface you will see these blue links. Click on them to get a quick help window. It's not terribly detailed; it just tells you what you need right then so that you can get on with your work. I'm going to close it again by clicking the Close box. That wraps up our initial setup; now let's start working with your finances.