3. Set Up Your PaycheckNow that you've set up your accounts and added categories, it's time to tell Quicken how to handle one of your most important financial transactions: your paycheck. Your paycheck isn't just a simple deposit; it's the amount you are paid (your gross pay ) minus all of those deductions for taxes and other things like 401(k) contributions. You are left with your net pay , which is what gets deposited to your checking account. Your paycheck is an example of a split transaction , which is a transaction that has amounts assigned to more than one category. Your gross pay is a positive number, say $1,000. Each kind of tax (Federal, state, Social Security, etc.) or other payroll deduction is a negative number. The remainder after deductions is your net pay. On Windows, Quicken provides a handy wizard to help with your paycheck setup. On the Mac, you'll enter the different amounts into the register. On both platforms, you can memorize the paycheck and have Quicken automatically enter it for you the next time, so you only have to do the paycheck setup once.
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