Another Bankroll Tracking Thread

[cbfair]

I've seen people use several fairly simple spreadsheets that never seemed real useful to me so today I started thinking of creating a database to track transactions between multiple accounts. Then it hit me, isn't Quicken/Microsoft Money designed to do just that? Has anyone tried using one of these products to track their poker accounts?

Money came installed on my computer at home but I've never used it. I assume I'll be able to set up an account in Money for each of my poker accounts and one for Neteller and then simply track each transfer to and from Neteller, each Neteller withdrawal as a cash withdrawal and any winnings/losses as a deposit/withdrawal to the appropriate account. Basically, I'll just "balance" the proper poker room account at the end of each session to reflect any wins/losses. I'll try to set one up later tonight, but if anyone has tried this and has some insights, I'd love to here it.

This seems like a perfect fit, I can use it to track bonus income, winnings, losses, withdrawals and of course, total working bankroll. I've also been concerned about taxes as I have no real records for 2004 aside from PT which doesn't include most of my gambling income this year; using one of these applications properly could track all gambling income and expenditures for the year and probably even estimate quarterly tax payments. Any thoughts?

[cbfair]

I guess I should've posted this in the Books/Software forum... Hopefully, I'll get some response here.

sorry.

[dfscott]

Maybe I'm too simplistic, but an Excel spreadsheet has always worked fine for me. I can keep track up my sessions as real sessions (not the table sittings that PT keeps up with). I can also create graphs to track my BR growth, BB/session fluctuations, and win/loss trends, all in a single file.

As far as taxes, remember that you can't just use net earnings and report that -- you have to report all your winnings and then take all your losses as deductions (assuming that you're not a professional). I'm not sure if Money or Quicken will do that.

[Yads]

You might want to check out www.pokercharts.com

[cbfair]

[ QUOTE ]
As far as taxes, remember that you can't just use net earnings and report that -- you have to report all your winnings and then take all your losses as deductions (assuming that you're not a professional). I'm not sure if Money or Quicken will do that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point, I'm aware of this requirement and will have to work something out.

Maybe simpler is better, I've just never seen a spreadsheet that will easily track the movement of money between the various accounts so I think a DB may provide a more elegant solution in the long run. This is an untested theory so I'm glad to get some feedback.

[itsmarty]

Since I used IGM-PAY with Party exclusively for 2002-2003, I had them as an account in Microsoft Money. If I recall, they were set up like a credit card account (except money was coming the other direction, fortunately).

Now that I play different skins and the Crypto sites, plus use Firepay, etc, it's been easier to use a spreadsheet.

Martin