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

# Using &kmymoney; for the first time

## Running &kmymoney; for the first time

### Screenshots may differ

When you run &kmymoney;, it might not look exactly like the screenshots in this manual. Many details, such as fonts, colors, and icons, can be customized, using the Settings Configure &kmymoney;... menu item or the &kde; &systemsettings; application, depending on your operating system or distribution.

### The main window

The Main Window
The Main Window

The &kmymoney; main window consists of four major parts

- A. The menu bar

- B. The toolbar

- C. The View selector

- D. The view

The menu and toolbar provide access to the features of &kmymoney; and allow you to Create a new data file, open an existing data file, or configure how &kmymoney; operates. The toolbar can be configured to show icons for the operations you use most frequently.

On the left side of the main window, the View Selector consists of at least eleven icons with optional labels, depending upon the software provided by your system, as some features can be included or excluded when the program is compiled. More icons could be added by various plugins. By clicking one of the icon, the view window on the right hand side is loaded with the appropriate view of your financial data. Each view provides a unique representation of your financial situation and allows you to view or edit the information shown.

The View Selector may contain the following icons

- Home View Home: a configurable overview of your current financial situation (or an introduction page when no data file is open.)

- Institutions View Institutions: your institutions and accounts displayed in a hierarchy.

- Accounts View Accounts: your accounts displayed in a hierarchy.

- Schedules View Scheduled transactions: your recurring payments, income, and transfers.

- Categories View Categories: special accounts that provide a means for you to group associated transactions.

- Tags View Tags: special accounts that provide an additional means similar to Categories for you to group associated transactions.

- Payees View Payees: your payees - the people and organizations you pay money to or receive money from.

- Ledgers View Ledgers: your transactions in each account.

- Investments View Investments: your portfolio summary

- Reports View Reports: a collection of various, customizable displays of your financial data.

- Budgets View Budgets: your budgets.

- Forecast View Forecast: forecast of the balances of your accounts and categories.

- Outbox View Outbox: a display provided by the KBanking plugin to provide feedback on running processes.

Remember that some of these may not be present on your system; it depends on how your copy of &kmymoney; was configured and built.

## Creating a new file

&kmymoney; keeps all the data about your finances in a file. As was stated in Defining the accounts (personal records), you can keep more than one set of accounts, but the data for each will be kept in a separate file, and &kmymoney; can only have one file open at a time. See the chapter on File Formats for more details about &kmymoney;'s data files.

In addition to that data file with all the financial data for that set of accounts, &kmymoney; uses additional files to store data regarding configuration settings and display preferences. The exact location of these files depends on your specific Operating System or Distribution.

To create a new file you can either select the File New menu item or choose the new icon from the toolbar. In addition, if the main welcome page is displayed, you can also select the first link: Get started and setup accounts.

&kmymoney; will then open the New File Setup Wizard which will guide you through the process of creating the file.

Personal Data Page
Personal Data Page

Any information entered hereon the Personal Data page is used only to personalize your file. All these fields are optional, so you can use &kmymoney; without entering any information now. In the future, this information may be used in some reports and for online banking. If &kmymoney; requires any personal information in future releases and finds none, you will be prompted to enter the relevant data then.

In case you have an address for yourself stored in the &kaddressbook;, the button Load from Addressbook is enabled and pressing it imports all information into &kmymoney;.

Once you have completed entering data, press Next.

If you need to change any of this information in the future, you can access this form with the File Personal Data... menu item.

&kmymoney; supports multiple currencies. To set your base currency (the currency you use day to day and which will be used for your reports,) select the appropriate entry from the list provided and press Next. A default will be selected based upon your locale settings, but you can easily choose a different currency, if appropriate for you situation.

Base currency selection Page
Base currency selection page

In this example, US Dollar has been selected as the base currency.

After you click Next, the following page allows you to create an initial account. For the typical &kmymoney; user this is a checking account.

Checking account creation Page
Checking account creation page

Enter the name of the account and a possible account or reference number assigned by the institution managing the account. The name is arbitrary, and is simply how the account will be referenced and displayed by &kmymoney;. Enter the opening date and the opening balance of the account. For example, if you want to use &kmymoney; to manage all your finances as of 2008-01-01, then enter the balance of the account at the beginning of this date. The number can possibly be obtained from a paper statement. You may also enter the name and the bank code of the institution. The latter, known as the routing number in the US or the sort code in the UK, is optional and only required for online banking purposes, but it may also be helpful when importing bank statements in some of the formats supported (OFX, QFX.)

In case you don't want to setup an initial account or don't have a checking account, just uncheck the checkbox.

Once finished, press Next to proceed.

Account template selection Page
Account template selection page

Choose the appropriate country and account template(s). Each template provides a different set of categories for organizing your finances. Multiple templates, even from different countries, can be selected using a combination of &Ctrl; and &Shift; together with the &LMB;. The account hierarchy to be setup will be shown in a preview part of the wizard. In case you cannot find a template that suits your needs, don't select a template at this time, and you can manually set up categories later.

Once finished with the template selection press Next to proceed.

This is the final page of the wizard. If you select the checkbox Configure preferences after finishing the wizard, the application settings dialog will be displayed after you have completed the account setup wizard.

Filename selection Page
Filename selection page

At this point, clicking Finish will start the Save storage as... dialog, where you choose the type of storage (XML, possibly with encryption, or SQL) and specify the details of that storage method, such as file name and location or sql database details. See the File Formats and File Formats chapters for more information about each storage type.

## Creating accounts

There are multiple ways you can create an account:

Using the menu

  To create an account using the menu select the Accounts New account menu item.

Using the Accounts View

  To create an account using the Accounts View, click the accounts icon in the View Selector to display the Accounts View. Right-click either the Asset tree icon or the Liability tree icon in the display and select New account from the popup menu. The Asset tree holds all of your accounts that are assets, such as savings and investments. The Liability tree holds all of your accounts that represent money you owe, such as loans and credit cards. These and all the other account types are discussed in more detail in the Accounts Chapter.

Using the toolbar

  If the New Account... button is displayed on the toolbar, you can click it to create an account.

Note that &kmymoney; uses context menus throughout the whole application. If you find yourself stuck trying to figure out how to do something, try clicking the &RMB; where you would expect to see a feature.

Creating a new account by any of the above methods opens the New Account Wizard. This wizard will take you step by step through the process of creating an account, gathering the required information at each step. To navigate through the pages click Next and Back. A full description of creating accounts can be found in the Accounts section.

Now that one or more accounts exist in &kmymoney;, your account summary is shown in the Home View. You can create transactions manually in the Ledgers View, or set up automatic transactions through the Schedules View.

## Scheduled transactions

A scheduled transaction, sometimes called a schedule or a recurring transaction, is a transaction that occurs one or more times at a specified interval over a certain period of time. A typical example is your pay check that you receive every week or month, or a utility bill you pay every month. Rather than having to enter the transaction details each time you get paid, you can instruct &kmymoney; to create a schedule that will enter a transaction for you when you get paid.

To maintain your schedules, click the Scheduled transaction icon in the View Selector.

## Categories

To maintain your categories, click the Categories icon in the View Selector.

A full description of this topic can be found in the Categories section.

## Tags

To maintain your tags, click the Tags icon in the View Selector.

A more detailed description of this topic can be found in the Tags section.

## Payees

To maintain your payees, click the Payees icon in the View Selector.

A more detailed description of this topic can be found in the Payees section.

## Importing financial data from other applications

If you currently use another financial manager application, it is very likely that &kmymoney; can import much or all of the data from that program, as long as they can be exported or saved in a format &kmymoney; understands. The most common of these is the Quicken Interchange Format (QIF). Most financial programs can export this format, although the different applications' methods of exporting QIF is not discussed here for brevity.

A full description of importing data in this format can be found in the QIF Import section.

In addition to importing QIF format files, &kmymoney; can directly open data files used by &gnucash; file.

## Searching for transactions

&kmymoney; provides a useful and powerful transaction search facility in the form of the search dialog.

The search dialog can be opened from the toolbar using the find icon or by selecting the Edit Find Transaction menu item.

A full description of this topic can be found in the Search section.

## Reconciliation

At some point, you will want to reconcile your records and details of an account with the actual account to assure they match. This is generally done by comparing the account in &kmymoney; with a printed or electronic statement for the account issued by the institution, such as bank, credit card, loan, or any other statement. Reconciliation involves matching what you have entered, specifically the transactions since the previous reconciliation, with what the statement lists. If any discrepancies are found, either you or the person who created the statement has made a mistake.

To reconcile an account, first select the account, either from the Accounts View or in the Ledgers View. Then, either click the Reconcile icon on the Toolbar, if it is visible, or select the Account Reconcile menu item.

A more detailed description of this topic can be found in the Reconciliation section.

## Backing up

Now that you have created some accounts and entered transactions it's a good idea to perform a backup. Because the file used by &kmymoney; is a standard &Linux; file (or &macOS; or &Windows; file, depending on your operating system) you can just copy the file to another location to back it up or use the dialog provided by &kmymoney;. Using the dialog is the preferred method because if &kmymoney; ever starts using other file formats, such as SQL, then it would be much harder to copy the file manually.

To backup your file through &kmymoney; Select File Backup menu item and enter the folder where you wish the file to be saved. If the folder needs mounting first and you have the sufficient privileges then check the tick box labeled Mount this folder before backing up and click OK.

The file will be saved to the folder specified with the current date appended to the filename so it is easy to see the date the file was backed up.

For more details about the actual format of the data file, and the backup process, see the File Formats.

## Launching &kmymoney;

Most commonly, you will launch &kmymoney; from an icon or a start menu of your window manager or desktop environment. In this case, the default behavior is that &kmymoney; will open the last file you had open. However, in some circumstances, you will want or need to launch &kmymoney; from the command line.

For a complete description of all the available command line options, see the man page for &kmymoney;. However, there are two special cases which we describe here.

### `kmymoney -n`

The -n option tells &kmymoney; not to open the last file it had open. This can be useful if the program crashes on startup.

### `kmymoney <path to file>`

Giving &kmymoney; a filename on the command line tells it to open that file instead of the last file it had open. You can use the name of any valid &kmymoney; file, as described in the chapter on file formats. In addition, this can be used to import a &gnucash; file.

## How to move &kmymoney; to a new computer

### Moving your data

If you get a new computer, it's very easy to move your data. In fact, all you have to do is to copy your &kmymoney; data file. The name of the file is shown in the title bar when &kmymoney; is running; it usually ends in `.kmy`. The first time you run the application on the new computer you will have to tell it where you have put the data file, either by running from the command line, or from the File Open... menu item. You should even be able to move between &Windows;, &MacOS;, and &Linux; systems.

If you have encrypted your data file, be sure the appropriate software and keys have also been set up on the new computer.

If your data is in an SQL database, refer to documentation for your database software for guidance on migrating your data.

Note that this assumes you have installed the same version of &kmymoney; on the new computer as you were running on the old computer. Installing a newer version should also be safe, but you need to be aware of any issues related to that upgrade. Any such issues should be noted in the release notes for the new version.

### Moving your settings

If you only move your data file to the new machine, as described in the previous section, &kmymoney; will work correctly, but you will have lost any configuration settings you changed from the default on your old machine. To maintain these settings, you also need to copy your configuration file. This file is called `kmymoneyrc`. The location of this file depends on your operating system and distribution. On a &Linux; system, this will most likely be `.config` within your home folder. If you are migrating from a version of &kmymoney; prior to 5.0, the old location was `.kde4`.

#### Moving plugin settings

If you have run any &kmymoney; plugin, such as the csv importer or exporter, it may also have created a configuration file in that same folder, such as `csvimporterrc` or `csvexporterrc`. These files should also be copied to the new computer.

As with the main data file, this assumes the same version of the plugin on both computers. Upgrades are generally safe, but if the functionality of the plugin has changed greatly, it is advisable to carefully test using the old configuration file, to be sure the plugin behaves as you expect. Of course this applies even when upgrading the version of &kmymoney; on a single PC.

Note that when upgrading from a previous version to version 5.0 or higher, the location of the template files used by the plugin for printing checks has changed. Please consult the release notes or the project website for more details.

These instructions are solely for moving your &kmymoney; data and settings. However, there may be important items which are stored by &kde; and not by &kmymoney;, such as passwords stored in Keychain. Moving other parts of your &kde; setup is beyond the scope of this manual, although many of the relevant files are also stored under `$KDEHOME`.

## Getting Help / Contacting the Developers / Reporting Bugs

Since support channels change over time, you can refer to the Support page at the &kmymoney; web site for the most up-to-date information on where to get help with &kmymoney;.

If you simply have questions about using &kmymoney;, you want to confirm you understanding of how the application works, or need assistance figuring out the best way to handle a particular financial situation, please consider using one of the information sources, forums, mailing lists, or chat channels listed at the above link.

### Contacting the developers

For general questions or comments about &kmymoney;, there is a users' mailing list &userlist; with more details here. This list is suitable for general questions and discussion. There is also a developers' mailing list &devlist; with more details here. This list is intended for more technical discussions. Since replies are often sent only to the list, you may not get any response unless you subscribe to the list you send to.

Note that the developers generally monitor the various contact channels mentioned above, so direct email contact is rarely necessary. However, we're happy to hear about your experiences using &kmymoney; over whatever channel you prefer.

### Reporting bugs

To report a bug please use the interface provided by &kmymoney; by selecting Help Report Bug menu item and filling in the required information. However, in case you have any difficulties with that method, you can report a bug (or file a wish-list or enhancement request) directly at the &kde; bug reporting web site. Reports should be filed against the product kmymoney.

In any case, before reporting a bug, please read through the guidelines below. Following them will make it more likely that the developers will be able to quickly identify the problem without having to ask you for more information. Also try to be sure that what you are reporting really is a bug (or wishlist/enhancement request.) If things are just not working they way you expect, or you need help using some feature of &kmymoney;, please use one of the alternate support channels listed above.

#### Writing High Quality Bug Reports

We encourage users to take extra time to write high-quality bug reports when submitting them. This reduces wasted effort on all sides, as the reporter and the developer who will fix it trade emails until this information is really in place.

Eli Goldberg wrote the canonical Bug-Writing Guideline, available at https://issues.apache.org/bugwritinghelp.html. Generally, you'll be well-served by following the guidelines and advice from that page. Some of those points are repeated below:

##### Include your system information

The Help Report Bug menu item will fill this in automatically, but if you would prefer not to use this interface, there are several items you need to include in the report. We will need to know what operating system you are using (&Linux;, &MacOS;, or &Windows;), the version of &kde;, and the version of &kmymoney; you're running, and either the version of &MacOS; or &Windows; or the name and version of your &Linux; distribution and the version of your kernel. This information is extremely important, as many bugs (as well as behaviors mis-identified as bugs) depend on the Operating System.

##### Include a backtrace for crashes

The backtrace is often the single most useful piece of information in solving crashes.

##### Try to reproduce it

Let us know if you were able to do so. It's useful to know whether the bug only happened once and you couldn't get it to happen again or if it happens every time or if it happens sometimes but not others.

##### Include specific steps

This is a bad bug report: I entered a transaction, and &kmymoney; crashed. A much better bug report is: Using the transaction form, I entered a new transaction in my Credit Card account. I selected the Transfer tab, entered an amount, then changed to the Deposit tab, and back to the Transfer tab. When I returned to the Transfer tab, &kmymoney; crashed. This bug is fully reproducible for me.

##### Tell us what you expected to happen

In some cases, this is obvious, but in more subtle bugs, sometimes you'll see a bug report where it is not obvious what the reporter expected to happen. Always tell us what you think should have happened, as well as what did happen.

##### Consider running with debugging enabled

By compiling a version configured with --enable-debug=full you can ensure that the best possible backtraces are generated. If you encounter a crash, run &kmymoney; again from within gdb, and reproduce the crash. When it crashes, type bt to generate a backtrace.

Running this way is a bit more difficult, so we don't expect all users to do this. However, if you're interested in helping &kmymoney; become as stable as possible, this is the best way to do it short of finding the bug in the code and sending in a patch.