After installing Quicken, the first thing you need to do is set up at least one account so you can enter or download transactions and track spending. Property accounts are used to track the value of your home, car or other assets. You can also set up debt accounts to track loans, and those loans can be associated with property accounts to show your level of equity as the loan is payed down. Cash accounts are also an option if you want to track cash spending.

• Learn more about how accounts work in personal finance software.

1. Click on Tools, Add Account, or click on Add an Account at the bottom of the account bar on located on the left.
2. The account set up window will pop up. Start by selecting the type of account you want to set up: spending, investment, property or debt.
3. If you select an investment, credit card, checking or savings account, Quicken may download the latest update to the financial institutions it supports. Select the bank or brokerage the account is held with. If the financial institution is not listed, type the name of it into the box provided, then follow the instructions Quicken gives. Once you have the account set up, up to three months of transactions will download.
   If you choose to create a cash, property or debt account, Quicken will take you through a short series of steps get set up. You will need to know the value the asset, or the balance of the debt or loan, or the balance of cash on hand. You can use zero values and set the true values later if you wish.
   

1. Quicken will walk you through the rest of the process, and you can set up each account to download transactions automatically. If you want transactions to download, you'll need to enter the user name and password for each account. Quicken will prompt you to establish a Vault password, which is one password used in the software so you don't need to re-enter passwords each time you initiate the transaction downloads. You can opt not to set up a Vault password if that is your preference, but you'll be prompted for account passwords when you download. Quicken will connect the accounts you set up and will download three months worth of transactions.
2. After Quicken connects to your financial institutions, the software automatically names each account. You can change the account names to something that makes sense to you.
3. If you are not sure what you need to do in any part of the account set up, click on the small gold circle with the question mark on the lower left of the set up window for an explanation or further instructions.
4. When you finish setting up an account, it will show up in the account bar on the left in Quicken and in the account list found under the Tools menu.