Every time I spend money, I write up a “receipt” for it like this: “1/12/08 8.13 WAMU Visa groceries”. Or 1/13 2.00 cash donation”

I do it in that exact order: date, amount, account, and spending or income category because that is all the information I need, and in the right order, and I designed my spreadsheet around that : MY needs, not Intuit’s idea of my needs. The receipt goes in my wallet, occasionally my pocket.

Those receipts go in a jar by my computer.

When I fire the computer up, I enter the receipts in the “transactions” page of my excel spreadsheet, which is set up for the same categories. ALL transactions from ALL accounts go on the same sheet, so it is easy to enter. All of my transactions, income or outgo, for the entire year, go on one sheet.

The excel spreadsheet slices and dices them according to account and category and also happens to keep budget tallies. You might also want to add a column in the transactions spreasheet that selects Hubby or Wife as the person making the transaction.

As long as you have the transactions for one year on one sheet, it’s easy to analyze them or for an accountant to analyze.

I do not find this difficult, in fact it is much easier than not knowing what is going on. A married couple can put their receipts in the same jar and they are all there for whomever is going to enter them into the program. No slip ups this way, unless someone decides to lie about money or forgets to put the receipts in.

As to having all of the checks or receipts, it really doesn’t matter as long your accounts aren’t so low that they are in danger of overdraft or so high that they are in danger of overlimit. If your wife has a check and writes it, she just makes up a “chit” or receipt for it and puts it in the jar. So you don’t really need your check register to balance things.

my “check” entries look like this: “1/13 72.46 Al’s grocery groceries steve’s checking ck#1756″

And that goes in the jar.

My solution to the check problem would actually be not to use checks except to pay mail-in bills. Use your credit cards and write up a receipt for it to go in your wallet, and from there into the jar.

Having the jar as a repository makes it easier for the entire household to keep up on the finances as you don’t have to wait to talk to another person to give them the financial info, you just get into the habit of “going and putting it the jar”.