&Michael.T.Edwardes; &Michael.T.Edwardes.mail;
&Roger.Lum; &Roger.Lum.mail;
&Jack.H.Ostroff; &Jack.H.Ostroff.mail;
2024-12-01
5.2.0

# Accounts

Your &kmymoney; file contains one or more accounts. All your money is in one of these accounts. There are several different types of accounts. Typical Asset accounts include bank accounts, cash, and investments. Typical Liability accounts include credit cards and loans.

There are two other account types: Income and Expense. These accounts are Categories, and are a way to organize your transactions. They are treated internally by &kmymoney; as accounts, and are described in more detail in the section on Categories. Income and Expense accounts are always displayed in the Categories View, but it is possible to configure &kmymoney; to also display them on the Accounts View.

You may also see Equity as an account type. Any account of this type is a special account in &kmymoney;, used to hold the opening balance transactions of other accounts.

The final type, although it is displayed first on the list, is Favorite. These are accounts of any other type which you have indicated are favorite accounts in the details when creating or editing that account.

## The Accounts View

accounts view
accounts view

The Accounts View provides a summary of all the accounts. It is similar to the Institutions View, except accounts are grouped by the type of account. The list of accounts under any account type (or under the parent account for any subaccounts) can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the arrow to the left of the type or name.

Similar to the Institutions View, the Accounts View displays several columns with descriptive and summary information about each account. As with the Institutions View, you can select which columns are shown by right-clicking any column heading and selecting or unselecting the checkbox next to the name of the column.

The rest of this chapter will focus on Asset and Liability account functionality. Income and Expense accounts, &ie;, Categories, are described in the chapter on Categories.

Name

  The name of the account. This column is always displayed.

Type

  The type of account, ⪚, Savings, Checking, Credit Card, Stock, &etc;

Online

  An indication whether this account has been configured for online access. The process of configuring accounts for online access is described in the Importing and Exporting Chapter., but details on the available settings are below in the section on Editing Account Information.

Tax

  An indication whether this account has been configured as important for tax purposes.

VAT

  An indication whether this account has been configured to apply a VAT on transactions.

Balance

  The current balance of the account, shown in the currency chosen when the account was created.

Total Value

  This is the same value as the balance, but always in the base currency chosen when data file was created. These values are summed for the row for the overall account type.

Number

  The account number, if one was entered.

IBAN

  The IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is shown if there is a value entered in the appropriate field on the account information dialog.

## Creating an Account

You must have a file open before you can create a new account. If you do not have an existing file, you will need to create one.

To create a new account, you can either select the Account New account... menu item or choose the new account icon from the toolbar. You can also create an account from the Accounts View; click the Accounts icon in the View Selector and then right-click the Asset or Liability tree icon and select New account... from the popup menu.

### The Institution (Bank) name

new account wizard - institution
new account wizard - institution

The first step involves selecting an institution for the account. If this is an account for an institution you have already created, you can select the institution from the dropdown list. If you want to create a new institution, click New Institution. This will bring up the New Institution Dialog, as described in the previous section. If this is not a bank account, or if you do not want to use online banking, you do not need to specify an institution.

The Account Number and the IBAN (International Bank Account Number) are not required by &kmymoney;. These fields may be left blank and filled in at a later time. The account number may be used for online banking and to assure data imports use the right account. The IBAN may be used by the KBanking plugin.

To proceed to the next step click Next.

### Account

new account wizard - account details
new account wizard - account details

First, enter a name for the account. This name will be used to identify it.

Next, select the type of account from one of the types available from the dropdown list. Different account types are handled differently within &kmymoney;, so it is important to choose the correct type when creating the account. Also, different types of accounts require different setup information, and may display different pages in the new account setup wizard to collect that information.

Checking

  A normal checking account, such as you get with any bank or credit union.

Savings

  A normal savings account, such as you get with any bank or credit union.

Credit Card

  An account to represent your credit card.

Cash

  A general purpose account, typically used for accounts not held at a bank, such as the cash in your wallet.

Loan

  An account to manage a loan for money either borrowed or lent. With a Loan account, &kmymoney; automatically calculates interest payments to help you track the remaining principal on the loan. Loans with no interest should use the plain Asset or Liability type below, depending on whether the money is lent or borrowed. A schedule can be created to manage ongoing payments.

Investment

  An account to manage an investment such as stocks, bonds, or mutual funds.

Asset

  An account to manage an asset that does not fit in one of the above types. For example, this can be used to track the value of a vehicle.

Liability

  An account to manage a money you owe or a future expense that does not fit in one of the above types. This is most commonly used for loans with no interest. If interest needs to be calculated, you should use the Loan type above.

Equity

  Accounts of this type are used for Opening Balance Transactions in other accounts. &kmymoney; automatically creates one account of this type and it is rarely necessary to create another.

Select the currency to be used for the account from the dropdown list. The default is the currency chosen when the data file was created.

Enter the date the account was opened or select it from the calendar using the icon to the right. You will not be able to enter any transaction with a date earlier than the account opening date, but you can change this date later, if necessary.

Enter the opening balance for the account. If this is an existing bank account, this information can be found on your statement. If it is a new account, the opening balance can be left at zero.

Selecting the Favorite Account checkbox will allow easier access in some dialogs and views of &kmymoney;. In some places, this has also been referred to as a Preferred account.

To proceed to the next step click Next.

### Credit Card Accounts

When creating a Credit Card account, after entering the basic information and clicking Next, you can optionally have &kmymoney; create a Scheduled Transaction for you.

new account wizard - credit card with schedule
new account wizard - credit card with schedule

If you want such a transaction generated, make sure the checkbox is selected and enter the required information.

Click Next to continue.

### Investment Accounts

In &kmymoney;, Investment accounts contain only equities (stocks, bonds, &etc;) but do not contain cash. (This is why you cannot specify a Opening balance for an Investment account.) If a transaction in an Investment account requires or generates cash (such as to buy or sell stock,) a Brokerage account is used for the cash. Brokerage accounts are described further in the chapter on Investments. When you create a new Investment account, after entering the basic information, and clicking Next, you have the option to create an associated Brokerage account.

There have been many requests to let Investment accounts also hold cash, and this will likely be possible in a future version of &kmymoney;, along with other things not currently possible. However, this will involve a significant effort, and is not expected in the near future.

new account wizard - investment
new account wizard - investment

It is generally best to create the Brokerage account here, which will be given the same name as the Investment account, with "(Brokerage)" appended. Currently it is not possible to specify the opening date or balance for the Brokerage account at this point; you may do by editing the account details after the account has been created.

### Loan Accounts

Loan accounts have special features to help you manage Loans with interest and scheduled repayments. By providing &kmymoney; with information about the loan, &kmymoney; can help you track interest payments and the remaining principal of the loan.

new account wizard - loan details
new account wizard - loan details

On the Details page you enter the general information about the loan.

First, select whether you are borrowing or lending money. If you are borrowing money the loan will be a Liability account. If you are lending money the loan will be an Asset account.

Next, select the payee or payer of the loan. As always, if the name doesn't yet exist in the Payees list, enter it here and &kmymoney; will create it for you.

The next three items are for handling Loans on which payments have already been made, If you select Yes in the Did you make/receive any payments yet? dropdown, you can then select whether you want to record all payments or just those from the beginning of the current year. If you want to record from the beginning of the current year, you are than asked to input the balance at the beginning of this year.

Next, select how often payments will be made and how often interest is compounded. Compounding is where the interest is added to the amount owed on the loan so that when the interest is next calculated there will be more interest paid on the interest. It's common for interest to be compounded at the same frequency that payments are made.

Next, enter the date the first payment to be recorded.

Finally, enter information about how the interest rate varies. If the loan is fixed-rate there is nothing to do. If the rate varies, select Variable in Type of interest rate and then enter the interval between interest rate changes and the date the first change of interest rate is due: &kmymoney; will ask you to update the interest rate when that date arrives. Click Next to continue.

new account wizard - loan payments
new account wizard - loan payments

The Payments page is where you enter the payment and interest values for the loan.

First, select whether the interest rate is calculated when the payment is received or when it becomes due. If you don't know, leave it on the default value.

Next, enter the following values:

Loan amount

  The amount of the loan.

Interest rate

  The annual percentage interest rate of the loan. This must be a positive number. If there is no interest, then the loan should be created as an Asset or Liability account.

Term

  The length of the loan. Enter a number and select either Months or Years.

Payment (principal and interest)

  The amount of each loan payment. This is the total of the principal and interest paid with each payment.

Balloon payment

  Additional final payment made at the end of the term to pay off the remaining principal of the loan. For a repayment loan this is often zero. For an interest-only loan this will be the same as the loan amount.

Finally, use the Calculate button to check the values you have entered. You must have entered either all or all but one of the values listed above. If you omit two or more values the button is disabled because it is not possible to check that the entered values are consistent: in that case you will not be able to use the Loan account facility in &kmymoney; and will instead have to use a Liability or Asset account to track the loan manually.

If you omit one value, &kmymoney; will try to calculate it for you. If you have entered all values &kmymoney; will check the values are consistent. &kmymoney; will not adjust entered values other than the "Balloon payment", which it may adjust slightly to deal with rounding. If the values are inconsistent or &kmymoney; cannot calculate the omitted value, &kmymoney; will let you know so that you can correct any errors and repeat the calculation.

Once the values are consistent, the Next button is enabled and you can advance to the next page.

new account wizard - loan fees
new account wizard - loan fees

The Fees page is where you can enter any fees added to the loan payments.

If there are any fees press the Additional Fees button. The Transaction Split editor will be displayed for entry of the fees. Any lines added here will be included in the payment schedule for the loan. When you save the splits the Fees page will display the principal and interest payment, the total additional fees, and the total periodic payment.

new account wizard - loan schedule
new account wizard - loan schedule

&kmymoney; will create a Scheduled Transaction for your loan. The Schedule page is where you enter the remaining details needed to create the Schedule.

First enter the Category to which loan interest will be assigned. Then enter the account from which or into which the loan payment will be made.

The page also displays the first payment date for which the Schedule will be created.

new account wizard - loan payout
new account wizard - loan payout

Optionally, &kmymoney; can create a transaction representing what was received or paid when the loan was created.

If you borrowed or lent cash select the account from which or to which the loan amount was paid.

If you borrowed money to purchase a car you can select or create an Asset account to help you track the value of the new car.

If you re-financed an existing Loan, check the Refinance existing loan checkbox, select the Loan account and &kmymoney; will create a transfer transaction paying off the existing loan.

If you don't want to create the payout transaction, check the Do not create payout transaction checkbox.

### Parent Account

new account wizard - parent account
new account wizard - parent account

This is the penultimate step in creating any new account except a loan. Depending on the type of account that is being created, a tree of your Asset or Liability accounts will be displayed. Most accounts are direct children of the Asset or Liability account type. However, most accounts may be created as subaccounts, using another account as the parent. There is no financial impact of making an account a subaccount; it is only used for organizing the hierarchical display of accounts in the Institutions View of the Accounts View.

The Parent Account page is not currently shown for Loans because they cannot be created as subaccounts. Also, Investment accounts cannot contain other accounts so they are not shown in the tree.

Select the account you wish contain the new account. If you do not select a parent account, the new account will be created at the top level.

### Review and save the account details

new account wizard - review and finish
new account wizard - review and finish

This is the final step in creating a new account. A summary of the information entered is displayed. Review it, and if everything is OK press Finish. Otherwise, either press Back to make corrections or Cancel to abandon creating the new account.

The Currency cannot be changed after the account is created. The account type can be changed, but only within a limited set of sufficiently similar type.

## Opening / viewing accounts

To display an account in the Ledgers View, you can either click the link to the account in the Home View, or you can click the ledgers icon in the View Selector. If the account is not already displayed there, then click + in the right-most tab and select the account in the dropdown box which appears. Alternatively, in the Accounts View or the Institutions View, either double-click the account name or right-click and select Open ledger.

## Editing Account Information

To edit a particular account, right-click the account name in the Accounts View or the Institutions View and choose Edit account... or with that account open in the ledger, select Account Edit Account.... A window will pop-up with several tabs, each allowing you to view and change certain information about the account. For more information on any of these details, see the section on creating a new account. Note that some of these fields may be disabled, possibly depending on the type of account. For example, Currency will always be disabled, since it can be set when the account it created, but not changed after that. Price Entry is only enabled for Investment Accounts.

edit account information
edit account information

This dialog has several tabs for configuring different aspects of an Account.

General

  View the general information about the account, and change the name, start or opening date, as well as some of the other basic settings of the account.

Institution

  View and change the associated banking institution and account numbers. You can also create a new institution here.

Hierarchy

  This shows where the account is in the overall hierarchy of accounts. You can change the parent account by dragging the account and dropping it on a different parent account in this view of the account hierarchy, or in the Accounts View or the Institutions View. You can also change the parent account here by clicking the new parent account and then clicking OK.

Limits

  This tab is only present for asset and liability accounts. If you enter amounts in the available fields, &kmymoney; will warn you when the account balance reaches or exceeds those values.

Tax

  Here you can check whether this is a VAT account, and you can specify the percentage of the VAT. In addition, you can check whether to include this account on tax reports.

Online Settings

  This tab is only be present if the account has been mapped to an online account. It has three subtabs.

  Account Details

    This shows the status of the online connection, the bank/broker, and the account number. It also allows you to store or change the password for the online account. Where and how the password is actually stored depends on your specific instance, but most commonly, it is stored by the KDE Wallet Manager.

  OFX Details

    Here you can adjust certain details &kmymoney; uses when it establishes an OFX connection with the institution. This should only be necessary if you get certain errors when you first set up the online account, or perhaps if your institution changes its OFX server software.

  Import Details

    In the upper box, you can tell &kmymoney; what to use as the start date for the import. The lower box has several items &kmymoney; uses when creating transactions from the downloaded data.

    - You can choose whether the payee's name is based on the PAYEEID, NAME, or MEMO field of the imported transaction. Different institutions use different standards, so you may need to try a different value here if your imported transactions seem to consistently have the wrong Payee. Unfortunately, this only applies to Direct Connect, but will hopefully also apply to OFX file import at some point.

    - Some banks do not follow the OFX standard of providing a repeatable, unique FITID (Financial Institution Transaction Identification) which can cause duplicate transactions on repeated downloads. If this happens, you can change the method &kmymoney; uses to detect duplicates from the OFX FITID to the internally calculated KMyMoney ID. This is not frequently necessary.

    - Importing transactions from an institution in a different timezone can sometimes lead to the wrong date on an imported transaction. If this happens, you can set a Timezone offset to adjust for the difference.

    - Very infrequently, an institution will create OFX downloads with the sign of the transaction amount reversed. You can click this checkbox to correct this problem.

    - A similar problem sometimes occurs, but only for the values in investment transactions, such as the purchase and sale of stocks. Clicking this checkbox corrects this.

## Deleting and Closing Accounts

An account can only be deleted if it has no transactions in it, and is not referred to by any other item in the data file. In general, this means you first need to remove all the transactions from that account in the ledger. Then you can select Account Delete account... or right-click the name in the Accounts View and select Delete account... from the popup menu.

If you are unable to delete an account which looks like it has no transactions in it, there may be transactions which are not displayed in the ledger due to a filter setting. See Settings Configure &kmymoney;... General Filter . Clear all filters and set the start date to 1.1.1900 or so.

There may also be transactions in your ledger that are not shown, for example, if you have inadvertently typed in the wrong year when making an entry so that an entry remains outside the opening date of &kmymoney;. This appears beneath the ledger page as remaining funds.

In some cases, you will be able to select Delete account..., but will get a popup stating why &kmymoney; cannot delete the account.

Deleting an Account completely removes all data related to that account from your data file. However, there may be cases where you have closed an account at the bank, and although you do not want to see it in your daily use of &kmymoney; you want to keep the data for use in historical reports, you can select Account Close account or right-click the name in the Accounts View and select Close account... from the popup menu. This will mark the account as closed, and it's visibility will depend on the setting of Show all accounts. Note that to close an account, it must have a zero balance, but it can still contain transactions.

It is also possible to re-open a closed account. This is most commonly necessary if you have closed an account, but find you did so before actually entering all transactions for the account, such as a final interest payment or dividend for an investment account. In this case, you can select Account Reopen account or right-click the name in the Accounts View and select Reopen account from the popup menu.

## Account Options

Right clicking an Account in either the Institutions View or the Accounts View will bring up the Accounts Options. You can also just select the Account menu.

account options sub-menu
account options sub-menu

Note that each of the listed menu options may be enabled or disabled depending on the particular account selected.

Selecting New account... steps you through the Account creation process.

Selecting New Category... steps you through the Category creation process.

Selecting Open Ledger brings you directly to the Ledgers View or the Investments View, depending on the account type.

Selecting Edit account... brings up a window allowing you to edit various aspects of the account.

Selecting Deleting account... deletes the selected account, but only if certain criteria are met, as described here. Otherwise, this item is disabled.

Selecting Reconcile... opens up the Reconciliation Wizard. Postpone and Finish are also described in the same section.

Selecting Transaction Report is only enabled for a limited selection of Accounts, in which case it opens a Transaction Report for the selected account, showing transactions YTD.

Selecting Close account closes the selected account, as long as certain criteria are met, as described here. Reopen account is described in the same section.

Selecting Map account... and Unmap account... allows you to associate an account with an online account and to remove the association. Selecting Update account... fetches transaction data from the online source for an account which has already been mapped. In addition, selecting Update all accounts..., which only appears on the main Account menu, updates all mapped accounts. These are all described in the Importing and Exporting Chapter.

Selecting New investment..., which only appears on the context menu when you right-click an account in the Investments View or Accounts View, brings up the New Investment Wizard.