Help setting up Quicken with old budget?

[JahJahwarrior]

I've been keeping track of money using an Excel spreadsheet for the last two years...my parents gave me a copy of Quicken this year, and I'd like to set it up and have it contain all transactions made in 2009.

The auto download features with my bank would be nice, but even without that, I'd like to use it.

On my spreadsheet, I have different pages for different catagories of my money:
personal spending, school money, car maintennance savings/emergency fun

Quicken seems to want me to give each category an debit/credit selection...but I take money out of and put money into each category, so if I set up personal spending, well it's not an expense, but it is at the same time. I put money in there, I take it out... How should I set this up? Should I make classes for each of those three areas, then use Quickens' categories inside of those classes? Can I make another class using the year, so I can also look at each thing (school spending, for example) by year, in the future?

Thanks for any help ya'll can give...the spreadsheet was easier to set up but I think Quicken is better for the long term.

 

[tep]

I've been using Quicken for almost 10 years now, and I still don't use more than half of the features. That said, I pick my credit unions (NO BANKS!) and borkerages (SIC) by whether or not they have Quicken integration.

First thing - use accounts for all your real accounts for where the money is going to and from. Use Categories for *what* you are spending on.

For example, checking Account is *where* the money is going to or from, "scuba gear" Category is what you're spending the money on Credit card *account* is where the money is coming from, "paying for dive vacation to Fiji" is in the "Vacations" Category

If you start by creating Quicken accounts to match all your real-world accounts, that's the first step and the rest will follow more easily.

PM me if you need more info.

(Running Quicken 2009 Deluxe on Windows XP, inside VMWare Fusion, on MacOS)