What is the best way to track my paycheck in Quicken for Mac

jbahensky2

I download all my transactions from my WF account which include my paycheck earnings. That can fluctuate with commissions, etc... I receive. What is the best way to to track my paycheck in Quicken including deductions for 401K, Medical, Life Insurance, Taxes, etc..withoug doing it all manually?

jacobs

The normal way to track paychecks is to set up a scheduled transaction for the interval at which you receive paychecks. The deposit transaction into your checking account is the net amount of your pay, and then you enter a split for your gross pay and splits for all your deductions, looking like this example:



Now, you mention that your pay varies due to commissions. There's no shortcut around that; you'll have to edit the items which change from paycheck to paycheck: your next pay, gross pay, and taxes. Make the split lines follow the same order as your paycheck stub, because it will make entering changes easier. So if commission is separate from salary, enter the splits that way in Quicken. Some split lines, such as health care or insurance deductions probably won't change as your commission does; your 401k contribution may change if it's based on a percentage of pay including your commissions. But even if you need to edit the values, having all the splits set up in the recurring transaction makes this a one-minute task instead of something more. 

If your paycheck is direct deposited and you download transactions to your checking account, your pay deposit will show up when you download. If the amount exactly matches your scheduled transaction, Quicken will likely automatically match them together; if not, you can drag one over the other, and Quicken will merge them. If the amount of the schedule transaction and downloaded transaction are different, Quicken will ask if you want to merge them, and it will use the downloaded amount as the transaction amount; any difference will be in an uncategorized split line until you update the gross pay and tax deductions to use up the uncategorized amount.

Questions? Ask away…