Creating a recurring bill or deposit

One of the features in Microsoft Money, is the ability to create recurring bills and deposits. This allows Microsoft Money to calculate budget entries, cash flow forecast and also to automatically enter transactions into your account registers.

To create one, you need to go to press the 'Bills Summary' option on the left hand side of the Microsoft Money window. Then press 'New' and 'Bill' or 'Deposit'.

The resulting window can be seen below:



The window is split into two sections - payee details and payment information. The first deals with who you are paying the money to (or receiving it from, in the case of a deposit).

The field is labelled 'pay to:' (or 'receive from' for deposits), and is a mandatory field. In the drop down list displayed, you can select existing payees, or create a new one. If you select an existing one, then in the right hand side of that box, the address details will be displayed if you have any in the Money file.

The second section is the payment information. This includes a lot of detail about the payment itself.

• Pay from ('Deposit to' for deposits): The account where the money is being paid from (or received into). Choose an existing account, or create a new one (mandatory).
• Next Payment Date: When the payment is to be made. (mandatory)
• Payment method: the mechanism of payment (direct debit/deposit, check etc). (mandatory)
• Frequency: How often you can make the payment or deposit. The choices here are fixed, and can be
  • Only Once
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Every other week
  • Twice a month
  • Every four weeks
  • Monthly
  • Every other month
  • Every three months
  • Every four months
  • Twice a year
  • Yearly
  • Every other year
  Choose 'only once' for a one off payment.
• Amount: The amount of the payment or deposit (mandatory). As an alternative, you can select an option to ask Microsoft Money to estimate the amount, based on previous spending. The addition option to the right of the amount box has three options
  • This is a fixed amount: Use the amount in the amount box (the default setting)
  • Estimate because the amount varies
  • Estimate amount based on last number of instances: You can choose a number of instances from 1-12. See Article 290
• Category: Drop down lists which allow you to choose a category and subcategory. If you need multiple categories, then you can use the 'split' option (if you don't see two dropdown boxes, and you want to in Money 2005, see Article 74).
• Memo: a text field allowing you to add comments
• Automatically enter transaction into my register the following number of days before the payment date: Selecting this allows Money to add the transaction automatically when you start up the program, based on the criteria you set (see Article 139 for limits)
• For payments or deposits which are not 'Once only', then you can specify a number of transactions before the bill/deposit will be deleted from the bills and deposits section

Once you create the entry, it should be listed in the bills summary. If the date you put in for the recurring entry is before today, then you should also see an overdue message.

Note - if some of the options above are missing, you might be running in 'Essential Bills' mode. You must change to 'Advanced Bills' to see all of the options. This can be done by pressing 'change bill settings' and selecting the advanced bills option (see Article 598 for full instructions).