Create, edit or delete Categories

Income Categories track where your money is coming from.

Expense Categories track where your money is going.

To access your categories, you can navigate to Tools > Categories within the menu bar.

You'll then see the window in the screenshot below, where all your categories will be displayed.

The categories are ordered alphabetically, with all Expense categories first, then Income categories below.

Create Categories -

From the Categories window (shown above), simply select “New” to create a new category.

You can then choose the category type, either Income or Expense.

In the next window, you can input the category details including name, currency and the parent category.

Parent/Child Categories -

In Moneydance, categories and subcategories are referred to as Parent and Child categories.

For example, you may have a Parent category called "Bills".
This Parent category can have Child categories called "Gas", "Rent", "Phone" etc.

The parent category must always be the same category 'type' - for example, an Expense category cannot be the parent of an Income category.

You'll find more information about Parent and Child categories within this article

Create a Category when entering transactions -

You can also easily create categories when entering a transaction.

To do this, type the name of the new category into the Category field.
You'll then be offered the ability to create a new category.

In the screenshot below, we've typed "Healthcare" into the Category field of the transaction, and this category doesn't already exist in the data file.

You can click on the “Create Category…” item, and then you will be prompted to specify if the new category will be an income or expense category. Then you will see the category creation window as above.

Edit Categories -

To edit a category, open the Categories window (Tools > Categories).
Then highlight the relevant category and click “Edit”.

This will open a window displaying the category details (as displayed in the screenshot below), and you can amend the fields as required.

When you're done, press OK and the changes will be applied.

Closing Categories -

If you have categories that you no longer need or use - you can mark them as “Inactive”. This will prevent the categories from displaying in drop-down lists in your account registers.

Inactive categories are still accessible from reports and can be unmarked as Inactive (i.e., returned to active use) at any time.

To make this change, follow the steps above to edit the category, and check the “Inactive” box.

Delete Categories -

To delete a category, open the Categories window (Tools > Categories).
Then highlight the relevant category and click “Delete”.

IMPORTANT
Deleting a category will also delete all transactions associated with the category.
Any subcategories will also be removed.

If the category has transactions assigned, you'll have to confirm the deletion by typing 'yes' into the delete window.