Monitoring a Budget
You can monitor your budgets using budget reports or by using the handy budget monitor graph. To display the monitor graph, select the View -> Show Budget Status menu and it will appear at the top of the main Moneydance window. To create a budget report, click the graph icon at the top right next to the extension icon and select Budget from the list of reports.
The budget report will show in detail how closely your income and expenses match your planned budget. You can generate a budget report for any time period to see how closely your finances matched your budget for any period in the past. The report will display your budget by each category of income and expense, and will also total the values so you can see how much over or under budget you are (or were). You may also opt to break up the budget report into time intervals such as week, month, quarter or year. Doing so will allow you to compare your budget status for different periods side by side.
The budget monitor graph is meant to provide an overview of your financial status as applied to a budget that you have created. This graph is displayed in the toolbar at the top of the main Moneydance window and will adjust automatically every time you record change a budget or enter a transaction so you can use it to keep track of your expenses as you work.
The budget monitor displays two primary elements: Income and Expenses. The blue bar represents your actual expenses for the current time period while the green bar represents your actual income. The length of each bar shows actual income or expenses for the budget items that apply to the current period. Income or expenses for categories that don't have corresponding budget items are not currently shown.
The vertical line that is (hopefully) to the right of the end of each bar represents the total budgeted amount for income or expenses. This is helpful to show the relative amount of income vs expenses that have been budgeted for the current period.
Clicking on the budget graph will produce a table showing the detailed numbers that went into the calculation of the graph. Clicking on the budget name will let you select a different budget, choose the time period to be displayed or open the budget manager window.