Getting Started

Finance Trails is a web-based application for tracking your finances. It has a simple interface with a focus on intuitive use, and some very powerful features to help you analyze and visualize your finances. Finance Trails can help you gain control of your money, today. Follow these steps to set up your Finance Trails account. In around 5 minutes, you will have personalized Finance Trails to your needs, and see visual data of the accounts, incomes, and expenses you have entered. After you login to Finance Trails, you will see the Dashboard. This is a centralized place featuring a snapshot of your money and finances as tracked by Finance Trails. Until we set up some accounts, incomes, and expenses, you will some warning that charts can't be displayed without any activity. Let's go add our accounts, incomes, and expenses. Step 1. Create an Account First we will create a new Account. An Account in Finance Trails corresponds to your real-life accounts - bank accounts, credit cards, and online accounts such as PayPal and Google Checkout. It is all symbolic, meaning that it is not actually feeding information from your real accounts, retaining your privacy. Click "Add Account" – This launches a dialog asking you to select the account type. We will start with Bank Account, as the majority of Finance Trails users do. Enter Account Details – Here you will enter a name for this Account in Finance Trails, the current balance in this account, and any static monthly account-keeping fees associated with the account. Periodicals – If you have static periodical expenses and incomes associated with this account, such as a monthly salary, a monthly loan, or monthly pre-school fees, you can enter them here and they will be managed automatically. Click "Add" under the Periodicals heading, select whether you are adding an income or an expense, categorize the periodical, select a date and frequency for the payment, and you are done. This periodical will now be automatically updated according to your specifications. That's It! – Your Account is ready for use in Finance Trails. Step 2. Add Incomes and Expenses Adding an income or expense is essentially the same process. Where there are differences, they are marked in the instructions. Click "Add Income" (or "Add Expense") – This launches a dialog asking you to categorize the income or expense. This step is very important — classifying your data consitently will allow you to get more useful visual data and reports from Finance Trails. Enter Payment Details – Here you enter the amount of the income or expense, the date and frequency of payments if it is a periodical, the Account in which the activity occurs, the Payment Method, the date of the payment, and any comments you would like to make for yourself regarding the payment. That's It! – Once you click "next" to save the data, the new income or expense has entered your finance streams and is viewable as part of your visual data and reports. Step 3. Using the Dashboard By default, the Dashboard is set up to show you some useful visual data, giving you a quick rundown on the health of your finances. Once you have added a range of incomes and expenses as outlined in Step 2., visit the Dashboard, and let's go through the information there. Date Range – The date range dialog box is a master setting for all charts and data on the page you are viewing – in this case, the Dashboard. The default range is usually one month (the current one). Change this by clicking the arrow and selecting a custom range, or simply selecting one of the "Day", "Week", "Month", or "Year" buttons directly underneath. Bills Vs. Total Income – The default graph shows all expenses classified as "Bills", in comparison to the total income received in all of your declared accounts for the selected period. Simply click "Add custom chart" to choose a different chart for display. Financial Health – This is a special pie chart with some essential information - it shows you exactly how your income was distributed in a given period. This is very useful for a quick overview of problem spending areas, for instance. Last 5 Incomes and Expenses – These data streams are quite self explanatory - they simply show the last 5 incomes or expenses entered into Finance Trails, with information on the date of entry, the category of the payment, and the Account the activity is linked to. Reminders – When adding periodical incomes or expenses, you can decide to get reminders on these, with various customizations. (There are other reminder types too, you can read more about those in the Setting Reminders "How To".) On the Dashboard, the Reminders stream show you the next 5 reminders from the current date forward. Balances – This is a simple view showing you the current balances on all your Finance Trails Accounts. Step 4. Check Activity The Activity tab has a range of more detailed charts of your incomes and expenses. Here, you can go into deep details, and get interesting information about your finance trails. You can create custom charts, customize the default charts, and more - the Activity tab is where you can get the most visual information that is relevant to you. All the features of Activity are beyond the scope of this Getting Started guide - here will will just list the default charts available: Top 10 Expenses (or Incomes) – A chart showing the top 10 expenses (or incomes) in the selected time period. Average Income (or Expenses) – A chart showing the average income (or expense amount) over the selected time period. Most Commonly Used Categories – A chart showing the most commonly used income (or expense) categories over the selected time period. Payment Methods Breakdown – A chat showing the distribution of payment methods over the selected time period. Monthly Analysis – A pie chart given you a breakdown of your income distribution over the selected time period. Activity Log – A raw stream of all account activity. Summary We have looked at the essential features and processes required to get your Finance Trails account up and running. Ultimately, it all comes down to: Adding Accounts that match your real-life ones. Diligently entering your incomes and expenses. (And, entering periodical incomes and expenses so that Finance Trails can manage these for you automatically.) Tracking your finance trails using the Dashboard and the Activity views, and using this information to improve your spending and saving patterns.