Amiga Format 38/af038b.adf/ReadMe

Text File | 1992-07-22 | 13KB | 324 lines

            Personal Finance Manager Plus
    ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­


    Personal Finance Manager Plus is a database program specially
    created to handle personal bank accounts, savings accounts,
    credit card transactions and many other similar applications.
    With its full INTUITION interface entering new transactions is
    as easy as filling in a form, and graphical reports can be
    instantly called up from pull-down menus. Standing orders can
    now be automatically debited or credited to your account
    without you having to remember them. When its time to check
    the account against an official statement, PFM PLUS will even
    work out which transactions have not yet cleared. PFM PLUS can
    work with up to ten accounts at the same time. Transfers of
    money between accounts are handled automatically with the
    built-in posting facility.

    If you are currently using this program's predecessor, Personal
    Finance Manager, you'll be pleased to know that you can load
    your old files as separate accounts on PFM PLUS.


                Demo Version
    -----------------------------------------------------------------

    This demonstration is a special cut-down version of the program
    with many of the features removed. You can create your own
    accounts and indeed add entries and standing orders, but you're
    not able to save them.

    This demo version of the program starts with the example file
    "EXAMPLE.MNY" already loaded. This file was created to best
    demonstrate some of the features of PFM PLUS.

    Along the bottom of the screen are the ten icons that represent
    the ten different accounts that can be held in each PFM PLUS
    file. On the example file, five have been created :- CURRENT,
    DEPOSIT, BSOCIETY, ACCESS and VISA. CURRENT is the most
    interesting, representing a standard bank current account, it
    contains the most entries. You can view these entries by either
    double-clicking on the CURRENT icon, or by selecting it and then
    choosing "View Account" from the "Report" menu.

    A window containing the account entries will be displayed. The
    separate columns should be self-explanatory with the exception of
    BC, which stands for "Budget Code"; entries may be grouped into
    separate budget categories by entering the appropriate code
    when an entry is added. For example, all shopping would go under
    the code "Co" which stands for "Consumables". More on this later.

    If you scroll the window to the right (using the bottom scroll bar)
    you will see some additional columns :- "Confirmed", "Reference",
    "From" and "To".

    "Confirmed" is similar to the balance column but it only includes
    entries that have been confirmed or checked. The difference
    between the two columns generally represents the cheques that have
    not yet been cleared. "Reference" allows you to enter the cheque
    number (or similar). "From" and "To" record the movement of entries
    under the automatic posting facility. This means that you can
    transfer money from one account to another. So you can, for
    example, have a debit in your CURRENT account which appears as
    a credit in your ACCESS account, representing a cheque you've
    written to pay off your ACCESS balance.

    Double-click on an entry to edit it, select "New Entry" from
    the "Update" menu to add new entries, and select an entry (click
    on it once) and then choose "Delete Entry" from the "Update" menu
    to remove entries. If you scroll vertically through the account
    (using the right scroll bar) you will see that entries are
    coloured white wherever the account is in debit. Note that
    dates must be entered in the form "dd/mm/yy" e.g "25/6/92".

    You can view an account's standing orders by selecting
    "View S/Orders"    from the "Report" menu, with the desired account
    selected (You select an account by clicking on its icon).
    Standing orders have a description, an amount, a start date,
    an optional end date, a budget code, a frequency letter and
    an optional destination for s/orders which are to be added to
    the source account and also posted to another account. This can
    be used for regular transfers between one account and another. For
    example, paying £200 into the building society every month
    (transferring £200 from CURRENT to BSOCIETY every month).

    Once again, double-click on an entry to edit it, and select
    "New Entry" to add a new standing order.


    Budgets
    -------
    When you add a new entry to an account, you generally give it
    a budget code. This enables you to group entries together into
    separate budgets. For example, Consumables, Transport, Clothes
    etc, which have the corresponding budget codes "Co", "Tr" and
    "Cl".

    If you select "Sort On Budget" from the "Options" menu, you can
    see the entries grouped into their various budgets, with the
    balance column replaced by "Total" which adds up the spending
    within each group.

    With the full version of the program you can define up to 28
    such budgets, each having a separate spending allocation,
    e.g. Consumables = £240 per month, Transport = £140 per month
    and so on. You can also decide which of the budgets you wish
    to be displayed on the charts.

    Setting up budgets enables you to keep track of your spending
    since PFM PLUS will make it obvious, through the use of charts,
    whether you're keeping to a budget or not.


    Graphical Displays
    ------------------
    To display a chart, the account must be date-sorted, so select
    "Sort On Date" from the "Options" menu to make sure.

    There are four graphical displays for an account. All of the
    windows can be resized, and the chart will be scaled to make
    best use of the window area.

    By default the charts cover the entire period of the account,
    but this may be restricted by double-clicking on a chart and
    entering dates into the resulting dialog box. Where a date is
    left blank, the date of the first/last entry in the selected
    account is automatically used.


    Balance Plot :
        With Account 1, CURRENT, selected, choose "Balance Plot"
        from the "Report" menu. You will see a window containing
        a plot of the balance against time. The vertical scale
        shows the maximum and minimum values over the period of
        the graph. You will also see that a third figure is
        shown on the graph next to a dotted line. This represents
        the final balance at the end of the period.

        Now close this window.


    Pie Chart:
        Select "Budget Pie Chart" from the "Report" menu and a
        pie chart will be displayed. This will have six different
        segments, each representing a different budget category.
        As mentioned before, your spending can be grouped into
        various budgets, by entering a budget code when an entry
        is added to an account. This chart shows how your money
        is being divided amongst the various budgets. On our
        example, most spending goes on "Co" or "Consumables", the
        weekly shopping. The budgets displayed in the pie chart
        can be controlled in the full version of the program
        (we've set it to display 6 of the 13 defined budgets).

        Now close this window.


    Budget Comparison Bar Chart:
        Select "Budget Bar Chart" from the "Report" menu and a
        3D bar chart will be displayed showing a pair of vertical
        bars for each budget category selected for display. The
        left hand bar in each case shows the budgeted amount
        whilst the right hand bar shows how much has actually
        been spent. Some of the right hand bars have a lower white
        section, this represents the actual expenditure for the
        selected account, whereas the total height of the bar
        represents the total expenditure from all accounts for
        that category.

        Now close this window.


    Trend Plot:
        Select "Plot Trend Graph" from the "Report" menu and a
        chart is displayed which plots a line for the category
        "Co". The line indicates the value of individual entries
        in that category over the period of the account. In the
        example file, "Co" is used to cover the weekly food
        shopping, so in this case the graph shows how the cost
        of food has fluctuated over the period of the account.
        For regular bills, this chart can give an important
        indication of long term trends.

        For this demo version, only "Co" is displayed, but any
        number of categories can be displayed on this chart.


    Other Reports
    -------------
    PFM PLUS has two other report windows, "Account Summary" and
    "Budget Table":

    Account Summary:
        This gives the date of the last entry for each account
        together with a closing balance. On the full version
        of the program, this summary may be printed.

    Budget Table:
        This table allows more detailed analysis of expenditure
        than the charts can provide. The table lists the budget
        and actual expenditure for each budget category. The
        expenditure in a particular account can be selectively
        included and excluded by clicking on the account buttons
        in the top left of the window. By default the table
        dates correspond to the earliest and latest entries
        across all selected accounts. This range may be changed
        by entering dates into the appropriate boxes.

    Printout:
        The full version of the program has extensive print
        capabilities covering statements, reports and charts.
        Print format may be accurately controlled to best
        suit your printer.


    Multiple Windows
    ----------------
    Up until now, you have always closed a window before opening
    another, but this is not actually necessary. This means that you
    can open several windows on the same account and scroll them
    independently, or open several copies of the same chart and set
    them to different date ranges. The only restriction is that no
    more than five windows may be opened in total (not including the
    window with the account icons).


    Reconciliation
    --------------
    Imagine that the account displayed represents your bank account
    and that you have just received a statement through the post.
    You want to check it against the statement but none of the
    balance figures agree. Assuming no errors, there are generally
    two reasons for this. Firstly the cheques may not be cleared in
    the same order that they were written so that the earlier
    balance figures will appear incorrect. Secondly the statement
    only includes cheques that have passed through the clearing
    system. The PFM+ account is likely to include cheques that were
    written before the statement date but have not yet cleared. If
    these could be "hidden" from PFM+ then the final balances should
    agree.

    PFM+ provides such a way to effectively hide individual entries
    without deleting them. Such entries are said to be "deferred". To
    see this in action, open an account window and double-click on
    an entry, in order to edit it. Click on the "Defer" button and
    then on "Done". When you return to the window, you will see that
    the entry appears "ghosted" and that the amount of the entry is
    no longer included in the balance column.

    You can use this facility yourself to effectively "hide" suspect
    cheques and try to get the balances to agree, but PFM PLUS can
    also do this for you automatically.

    Open the CURRENT account window and scroll to the end. You should
    see that the final balance on 16/5/92 is 133.92. Now assume that
    you have just received a statement that shows a final balance
    of 1098.24 at 12/5/92.

    Select "Auto-balance" from the "Update" menu and you will see a
    dialog box requesting the target date and amount. Enter the date
    and amount on the statement (12/5/92 and 1098.24). The field
    labelled "Scope" determines how many entries are to be juggled
    starting at the target date and working backwards. A default
    value of 14 is already filled in.

    Click on "Ok" or press RETURN on the scope line. Almost
    immediately a message will be displayed stating that an exact
    match has been found. Click on "Ok" and you will see that a
    number of entries have been automatically deferred and that the
    final balance agrees with the statement. The deferred entries
    represent those that have not yet been cleared.

    So PFM PLUS has identified the uncleared cheques for you. If you
    now select "Auto-check" and then "Clear Defers" from the "Update"
    menu, the "Balance" column will return to normal but the
    "Confirmed" column will correspond to the bank's view of the
    account.

    Using "Auto-balance", "Auto-check" and "Clear Defers" in turn
    provides a very fast way of checking an account against a
    written statement.


    The Full Version
    ----------------
    In this demo, it has only been possible to give you a brief
    insight into the capabilites of PFM PLUS, a program which takes
    all of the hard work out of keeping up with your finances.

    PFM Plus was designed to be the most user-friendly finance package
    available at an unbeatable price. Controlling your finances is now
    easier than ever before. There's even on-screen help, should you
    ever need it.

    As users of the program on the Atari ST have found PFM Plus
    quickly becomes invaluable. Since you've got one of the finest
    home computers available, you might as well make it work for you.

    PFM Plus - You'll wonder how you ever managed without it!


    Availability
    ------------
    To see what the program can do for you, check out the full version
    at software stockists or contact Michtron directly:

    Michtron/Microdeal
    PO Box 68
    St Austell
    Cornwall
    PL25 4YB

    Tel.[phone]    Fax.[phone]

    Price at time of writing         =    £39.95

    Upgrade from "Personal Finance Manager"     =    £15.00


            --------------------------