More Than One Employer

I have not used them for this purpose, but I think others in this group have recommended classes for this purpose. You could have one class for each employer rather than creating a bunch of redundant categories. You can then associate each class with a different form # for tax purposes. It should be easier and more to the point.

Peter

Perhaps I'm talking out of turn here, but I don't know whether you can set up the Paycheck Wizard to take into account classes. That might be a reason to have separate subcategories? But I agree that classes are classier :)

I've never seen any reason to use the paycheck wizard. But maybe it does something more than I think that it does. I would just set up a scheduled transaction with appropriate splits. I assume you can uses classes in splits.

Peter

"Mike B" wrote

(snip)

I agree, classes is the way to go.

I setup my wife's paycheck using the wizard (Q2002). I don't remember if I manually added the classes to the split, but it's easy to do the one time if you need to.

The way people use categories in here astounds me. It's not too cumbersome to use categories for two or three employers (this employer example only -- there are plenty of other examples!), but imagine if you and your spouse had a dozen employers between the two of you (not too far fetched in certain fields.) Then you would need 12 categories EACH for salary, FICA, fed tax, state tax, local tax, etc.

Greetings All!

Thanks for the comments! The "class" construct does sort of seem to be the way to go. Must admit I was not aware of classes.

Rick - In your post you say

"Then you would need 12 categories EACH for salary, FICA, fed tax, state tax, local tax, etc."

Wouldn't it be subcategories? This is sort of the crux of my question. Before knowing about classes, it seemed to me the options would be creating a category for each employer or creating a subcategory for each employer under the salary category. At the time the latter seemed to be the way to go. However, your point about taxes is what has pretty much sold me on classes: creating an individual subcategories for each employer under the Tax category would be a pain!

Thanks!

Don

"Don" wrote

(snip)

(snip)

You mean a category called FICA with subcategories for Job A, Job B, etc.? You could do that. I think it would be cumbersome.

I would rather see: FICA/Job A FICA/Job B... ... /Job Z

That way your category list only has one entry for FICA, and the classes only come to play when you enter the transaction in the register. With classes, you could have a hundred jobs and still have only one category called FICA, and no subcategories under it.

Rick,

I was thinking in terms of FICA being a subcategory of Taxes and ending up with something like:

Taxes:FICA_J1 Taxes:FICA_J2 Taxes:FICA_J3

All-in-all I think I am a "classes" convert now!

Thanks for the discussion!

Don

"P Ruetz" wrote in news:El_be.1619$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com:

I agree. A few months ago I moved to the paycheck wizard. For my paycheck, which is straight salary, it's fine. My wife's paycheck varies each pay period and the wizard is more cumbersome to work than the splits. I think I'm gonna move hers back to the transaction with splits and replace all the wizard entries for her.

AFAIK, the only thing the wizard does (compared to splits) is that it will keep a running tab on your taxable income (by subtracting out any

"Don" wrote

Yes, this is actually how I construct my categories for taxes. So, going with my thought process in my previous post to you it would have looked like:

Taxes:FICA:J1 Taxes:FICA:J2 Taxes:FICA:J3

(Utilizing subsubcategories for each job.)

Although it's a moot point now (since you're "sold" on classes) it should be noted that if you DID use subsubcategories for each job, you can run into problems with reports. Q doesn't handle subsubcategories as well as MS Money, but Q's class feature is far more powerful than Money's equivalent.

Thanks for the follow-up!

Don

I used MSMoney 2005 as I planned to migrate. After three weeks I was back on Quicken. That aside, MSMoney allows for a category and a subcategory. That's it - a two level categorization.

Quicken allows for multiple levels, at least three. I've never needed more.