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There is some essential terminology for understanding Quicken that's necessary to really get a grasp of before you build your books. These terms consist of our accounts, which is contained within an account list; categories; tags; our register; and transactions within that register. Let's take each of these individually so we understand their purpose. First, our accounts. Our account list contains all of our banking accounts and all of what we consider our spending accounts. For instance, if I have a checking account, I write bills from it, so it would be a spending account. Cash that I carry in my pocket is also considered a spending account. Quicken wants us to track every item that we use to spend our income. So, if you write checks, we would have a check account; if we spend money, we would have a cash account. You will also notice that if you use online components such as PayPal, or EBay, it also wants us to consider setting those up so that we understand exactly where our money's going to. We will also set up areas for our savings accounts, for our credit cards, and we will list each credit card individually. Our investments will also be established. The idea is to list each stock, each bond, and every mutual fund that we have: our retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401Ks; and our assets, such as our home; and our liabilities, such as our loans. Now when we use the term Asset and Liability we are simply saying what we own and what we owe. These accounts are crucial to setting up our books, so step number one is to have a full list of all of the accounts that you use when managing your finances. If we go to our next item, our Category list, our category list will be what we want to track. These are areas that we are using as categories for spending. This is going to vary from person to person. In this example, you'll notice that my salary is tracked along with benefits such as my medical, dental, and vision. I'm tracking bonuses and I'm tracking other incomes that I want to work with. If I go further down you will notice that I come to the Expenses. Here, I'm tracking how much I spend on my car, on books, on charity; again, each of these areas will be personalized for you. Now, categories sometimes have subdivisions. If I had a vehicle account instead of an auto I may be able to track two vehicles that I own such as a truck and a car. Now, the difficulty to this category list is that it would get very, very long. You'll note already that I have business fuel, I have regular fuel, I have insurance. Another way of determining our categories is to break them down one more level. This is where the item called Tags comes into play. Now, I'm going to simply close our Category list and I'm going to return to our menu where I will find our Tags. This tag list now allows me to set up various sub-categories for tracking. So, for instance, if I have my vehicle account and I want a track my truck and car separately I can create a Tag that subdivides my categories, which are listed in my accounts. The purpose of this is to be able to pinpoint any expenses as quickly as possible. We'll be discussing both Categories and Tags in further detail. If it still seems a little hazy, please don't worry. We'll go through specific examples so you clearly understand the differences between a Category and a Tag. These are the main lists that are used in Quicken to group our items. Once we group them we will now use a Register to track them. I'm going to go to my Home page, and in my Home page, I'm going to click on the word Essentials. Under Essentials you'll notice I have my credit cards, and on the bottom my checking and my cash account. These are what we call our Registers. These registers, when we click on them, show us all the detail. Now, from time to time you'll notice that Quicken's going to ask you if you want to know what's new. If you do not want to see this screen, go down to the bottom of the screen and say, Please don't show me this again. When you close out, you will not see that screen again. You will note that Quicken will frequently show you the screen to try to get you up and running and to give you useful advice. Once we opened our fashion card you will notice that I'm now going through each of my individual transactions. Every entry made under my fashion card credit is considered a transaction. When I go back, you will notice under credit cards I have multiple card listings which are referred to as Registers. Registers are accounts. The registers contain our transactions. Our transactions can be categorized, that are subdivided through Tags. These are the basic terms that you'll hear used throughout Quicken. When using the Help menu it's a good idea to be comfortable with the terms to make the Help menu be very useful in guiding you through Quicken.