help with structuring relational database for finances

Hi,

I recently attempted to use Microsoft Money 2001 for organizing my finances, but I don't like it. I think I would be happier rolling my own solution, and I would learn quite a bit doing it. I was thinking about using MySQL to store my transactions, and then create custom front-ends to enter the data and to create reports. However, I'm new to databases and am not sure how to structure my tables.

I want to keep track of transactions for my checking account, savings account, and credit card accounts. I also want to categorize each transaction so I can create a report saying, for example, how much I spent on groceries over a time period. Does anybody have any advice on what tables I should use? I was thinking of having a "Category Table", and "Account Table", and a "Transaction Table". The transaction table would then contain the following fields:

ID, DATE, ACCOUNT id, transaction type, category ID, amount, reconciled

Am I on the right track? Can anybody recommend low-cost reading material?

Thanks,
Mike Received on Tue Jul 24 2001 - 00:03:58 CEST