Unofficial Moneydance Help

I've been using Moneydance to track my personal finances for several years and thought I would make this page to help others get the hang of the sometimes quirky but very useful program. I have used Moneydance on Mac and PC and highly recommend it.

Budgeting

Most of the difficulty I have had using Moneydance involves the budgeting features.

Time periods for budget items

Why you should choose monthly or yearly time periods. I will provide examples for when it makes sense to have one or the other.
I create a new budget every year (just duplicate the old one and modify it). If you only ever used one budget, you couldn't look back and see how your budget looked last year.

More than one budget item category in a budget

You may find a time when you need to budget a category at two or more different amounts during your budget period (usually a year). For example, if your rent or car payment changes.
If you get a new job, I suggest you put your new and old jobs in their own categories. Like this:
Income: Old Job
Income: New Job

Prorated and non-prorated budget items

I will explain the difference between prorated and non-prorated items. Also how date periods affect dollar amounts.

Budgeting for Savings and Investments

How to budget recurring contributions to an investment account