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PARADIGM CONSULTANTS 6486 PLUMMER AVENUE NEWARK, CA 94560 (415) 794-8977 (C) Copyright 1989 Paradigm Consultants Mini-Ledger TABLE OF CONTENTS Program Overview 6 GETTING STARTED Before Starting 6 Payment Codes 6 Printing Out The Payment Codes 7 Explanation of Payment Codes 8 INPUT EXPENSES Typing In Expenses & Income 9 File Names 9 Beginning Balances 10 Storage Files 10 Copying From Other Files 11 Moving File Names 11 Entering the Expenses 12 Inside the Box 12 Quick Printouts 12 Special Feature of Return Key 14 Practice Time 15 Field Lengths 15 Transaction Types 16 Copy Feature 17 Subsequent Dates 18 New Payment Codes 19 Codes From the Help Message 19 Stop Entering 19 PRINTOUTS Printouts 20 Printing Monthly Files 20 Monthly Files With Check Totals 22 Printing Monthly Summaries 23 Uncoded Items 23 Printing Yearly Summaries 23 Wide or Narrow Summary 24 Fiscal Year 24 About 80-Column Printers 25 Non-Expense Items 25 Notes on Printing into Files 25 Interrupting Printouts 25 Create A Sorted Output Report 26 Full-Disk Problems 27 Check Number Sort 27 Vendor Sort 28 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 2 Printing an Old Sorted Output Report 28 Printing A Profit & Loss Statement 28 Selected Code or Description Printouts 28 Income Code Ranges 28 Selected Code/Description Printouts 28 Selected Codes 29 Selected Descriptions 30 Think About your Chart Of Accounts 31 BANK STATEMENTS Reconciling With Your Bank Statement 31 Marking & Unmarking Checks 32 Reconciliation 33 REBALANCING Rebalancing A Group Of Monthly Files 34 CHECK FORMATS What Kind of Checks? 35 Setting Up a Check Format 35 Test Your Settings 36 Items on The Same Line 37 Items You Do Not Want Included 37 Form Length 38 When You Are Through Experimenting 38 WRITING CHECKS Writing Checks 38 Mark the Checks for Printing 38 Items Which Cannot be Printed 39 Printing Checks 39 Multiple Checks 39 Continuous Printing 40 Stopping the Printout 40 Printing Checks with Addresses 40 When You're Finished 41 Printing Checks From Input Screen 41 STORAGE SUB-DIRECTORIES 41 PAYCODE FILE Creating a Paycode File 42 Be Careful 42 Repeating (Copy Function) 43 Deleting Codes 43 Limitations of Code Descriptions 43 Sorting Your Paycodes 43 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 3 Some Ideas 43 Sub and Main-Codes 44 Sample Paycode Printouts 45 MONTHLY FILE INDEX Deleting & Renaming Files 47 Reorganizing Your File Index 48 Reconstruct Your File Index 49 SEARCH & REPLACE Search & Replace 50 Changing Codes 50 Changing Descriptions 50 Replace Without Asking 50 THE VENDOR FILE What is it for? 51 Addresses 52 Non-Printing Addresses 52 Putting in Ledger Information 52 Leaving off The Amount 53 Finishing the Input 53 Special Features 53 Correcting Vendor Information 53 Vendor Index 53 Active and Non-active Vendors 54 Reconstructing Index 54 Deleting Inactive Vendors 55 Printing Envelopes 55 Vendors to Include 55 Other Items in Box 56 IMPORTING VENDOR INFORMATION Importing Vendor Information 56 Assigning Vendor Numbers to Old Entries 57 ADVANCED CONCEPTS Budgeting 57 Handling Payroll Checks 58 Getting Extra Paycodes 58 Putting a Code in the Check Number 59 Quick Display 59 Notes on Dummy Files 60 Notes on Copying Files 60 Skipping the Main Menu 60 Chaining to Payables & Receivables 61 Print Checks From the Input Screen 61 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 4 Function Keys 61 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 5 MINI-LEDGER PROGRAM OVERVIEW The Paradigm Consultants Mini-Ledger Program is designed to help you keep track of your monthly expenses and income in an orderly way. The program assumes that you code your expenses to various categories as you make out your checks. The program also assumes you are likely to have income which you would like to categorize. This program should not be confused with a full accounting-type general ledger program. Complete general ledger programs provide a full range of accounting functions and often cost a great deal of money. This program, on the other hand, is much smaller and provides a narrower range of functions. The Paradigm Mini Ledger Program is designed to do essentially two things: (1) Help you prepare your records for submission to your accountant in a condition which will reduce the time he must work on your books. (2) Help you track your expenses and income on a continuing basis in a way which will help you make intelligent decisions about your operation. One last thought: This program was not designed to replace your accountant; it was designed to help you and your accountant work together more efficiently. With that in mind, let's get on with learning the Mini-Ledger Program. BEFORE STARTING If you haven't read the setup part of the manual for Mini-Ledger please do so. There are some important things in there. On the assumption that you have set up Mini-Ledger for your computer and printer, we will start by learning to use the Mini-Ledger pro- gram. PAYMENT CODES To start the program type: LEDGER <ENTER> Throughout the program, it doesn't matter if you type in uppercase or lowercase, Mini-Ledger will accept either. The disk drives of the computer will make some noise, the lights will flash and eventually you will see Mini-Ledger's signon screen. In a couple of seconds the message will disappear. If you don't want to wait for it to disappear on its own, hit <ENTER>. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 6 The next screen you will see is Mini-Ledger's Main Menu. There are three "main" menus in Mini-Ledger; the main menu, the utility menu, and the printout menu. You can move between them by hitting <UP ARROW>, <DOWN ARROW>, or by pressing <ENTER>. Let's look at the utility menu. Press your <DOWN ARROW> to see it. PRINTING OUT THE PAYMENT CODES Now, let's look at the printout menu. Again, press your <DOWN ARROW>. If you want help for any of the items on the menu simply press the / or ? key, you will get a message which tells you how to get help for a particular menu item. For example if you want to find out what item number 1 does, press 1/. You will get a help message explaining what item # 1 means. Take a couple of minutes and run through the help messages for this menu. That will give you a quick overview of the various functions of Mini Ledger. Please note one basic concept of Mini-Ledger: If you see nothing on a menu which you want to do, press <ENTER>. That will take you back to a previous menu. When you are through looking at the help messages, we need a printout of the demonstration payment codes. Type: 5 <ENTER> The program will now ask if you want your output to the screen, to the printer (one sheet page at a time) or to the printer (continuously.) There are three places the program can put your printout. On the screen is useful for a quick review of your payment codes. On the printer will give you a paper copy, and Into a file will put the printout into a disk file where you can manipulate it with your word processing program if you should want to. Throughout Mini-Ledger, for all printouts which are more than one page long, if your printer uses single sheets of paper, choose number 2. The program will stop at the end of each page to allow you to put in a new sheet. If you use continuous paper, choose 2C and the program will not stop at the end of each page. We want a paper copy to refer to, so make sure your printer is on and has paper in it, then type: Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 7 <ENTER> (This is a short printout and will not go beyond one page.) EXPLANATION OF PAYMENT CODES You should get a printout of the sample payment codes. For this demonstration and training session we are using only nine codes. The program will allow you as many as 350 under MS-DOS, but most people will want between 50 and 75. Let's look at the different parts of the printout. The two zeros before the dash (00-) are the sub-code. The four digits to the right of the dash (-0500) are the main code. The words describe what those codes represent. In our code list we have three codes for office supplies; a main code which we will not use, and two sub-codes 01 and 02 which represent different suppliers from whom we buy office supplies. 00-0300 OFFICE SUPPLIES 01-0300 ABC STATIONERS 02-0300 ABBOTT OFFICE SUPPLIES When you write checks for office supplies, you should code them to either 01-0300 or 02-0300, depending on who you got the office supplies from. Later, when you do summaries, if you want all the office supplies lumped together, you would ask for a main-code printout, and both categories would be totaled together. If you want to see separate totals, you should indicate that you want totals for sub-codes. Another thing: Mini-Ledger will handle "non-expense" items. For example, let's say you borrow money from a bank to buy a company car. Your accountant may decide that you will come out ahead if you depreciate that car over a period of time. In that case the payments you make to the bank would not be tax deductible even though you would be writing checks to make the payments. If you use a sub-code of NE for these expenses, the program will make special provision for them. The same is true of any income which for one reason or another should not be considered taxable income. Again use a sub-code of NE to keep track of it. One final thought: At the end of the manual is a more complete discussion of payment codes and our recommendations for Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 8 setting them up. For now, however, let's go on with working with the demonstration files. When you finish with that, you will have a much better concept of the Mini-Ledger pro-gram and what we say at the end of the manual will make more sense. In any case, after you print out the payment codes the program will take you back to the printout menu. For now we want to go back to the main menu, so press <ENTER>. INPUT EXPENSES TYPING IN EXPENSES AND INCOME After you left the printout menu, the program brought you back to the main menu. Now that we have our printout of the payment codes to refer to, we are ready to enter some checks and income into the system. Type: 1 <ENTER> FILE NAMES After a couple of seconds you will be presented with these choices: 1. Create a New File? 2. Edit an Existing File? / or ? Gets Help Message Once again, take a couple of minutes to look at the help messages for this menu. They will help you with some basic concepts. When you are finished, look again at the above question. It implies that the program will allow you to edit previously created files or to create a new file. The first thing we did in the setup part of the manual was to move some files from your program disk on to a storage disk in drive b: Three of those files were: JAN.LED FEB.LED MAR.LED and represent expense and income activity for the months of January, February, and March. Let's create a new file for April. Type: 1 <ENTER> Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 9 BEGINNING BALANCES You will now be asked if you want to set up your beginning balance by inputting it from the keyboard or taking it from a previous file. Input Expenses This question is about your checkbook balance. When you get around to doing this for real you will have to input it for the first month, but for this demonstration, let's take it out of a previous month. Type: 2 <ENTER> You will now be shown this display of the existing files: Since we are creating a file for April, let's take our beginning balance from the previous month, March. Type: 3 <ENTER> STORAGE FILES You will now be shown this display of the index of data storage files. Since the three existing files are called JAN, FEB, and MAR let's call this one APR. Type: apr <ENTER> The program will provide the ending .LED Let's digress for a moment. Mini-Ledger now checks to make sure there is not already a file named B:APR.LED. If there is not, the new name will be entered into the index and a file called B:APR.LED will be created. If there already is a file called B:APR.LED, you will get an error message telling you that. File names must start with the first three letters of a month or with the letters, DUM. Once you have chosen the name for your new file you will be Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 10 asked to confirm your choice. COPYING FROM OTHER FILES After you press <ENTER> to confirm your file name, you will be asked: Would you like to copy the entries from some other monthly file? Y/N <RETURN> = N Many people have recurring expenses which they pay at regular times, usually the first or the 15th of the month. Since these en- tries are often the same except for the date and check number, there is no good reason they should have to be retyped into the computer every month. Mini-Ledger takes that fact into account and allows you to copy entries from other months. In fact, when you get to be more expert at using Mini-Ledger, you will probably want to set up some files which hold your recurring expenses and payroll entries. You might name them like this: DUM-1ST (For first of the month expenses) DUM-LAST (For middle or last of the month) DUM-PAY (For payroll entries) By starting the file names with "DUM" you will know that these are dummy entries and not real expenses. However, for this exercise, we don't want to copy any other entries so press <ENTER>. MOVING FILE NAMES The next message you will get is: The name of the file you just created is the last name on your index. Would you like to move it? (Y/N) <RETURN> = N This feature is to allow you to run more than one account or more than one year on a disk. We will discuss this concept in detail later, so for now press <ENTER>, indicating that you do not want to move the name. You will now be shown a display for the entering of data. ENTERING THE EXPENSES Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 11 INSIDE THE BOX You will find that you can move your cursor around on the input part of the screen (below the box) by using your cursor keys. If you cannot get your cursor keys to work, these control keys will work: CONTROL E Moves you up one line. CONTROL X Moves you down one line. CONTROL S Moves you left one field. CONTROL D Moves you right one field. or CONTROL K Moves you up one line. CONTROL J Moves you down one line. CONTROL H Moves you left one field. CONTROL L Moves you right one field. Now, inside the box are these suggestions: (1) If you type a 0 (that's a zero) on the line number, your entries will be stored. (2) If you don't want to store the new entries you have made, type an X on the line number. (3) To make a new empty line between two existing lines, that is to insert a line, type an I on the line number. (4) To delete a line type an asterisk (*). That will result in the entire line being deleted. There will be times when you will want to look at entries on parts of the page either below or above what you can see. There are two ways to do this: (1) Move your cursor to the line number column and type the line number of the line you want to jump to. A good way to check a whole page is to type in line numbers ten apart. For example, type 10. You would then see the first ten lines. Then type 20. You would see the next ten lines, and so on down the page. Also, your page-up and page-down keys will move you up and down the page 10 lines at a time. QUICK PRINTOUTS (2) The second method is to get a QUICK screen print out of the entire page. To do that type Q on the line number. You will get a printout of the en tire page of entries. While the lines are being displayed, you can stop them by pressing any key and Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 12 restart them by again pressing any key. If you press escape <ESC>, the display will be stopped and you will be taken back to where you were on the input screen. If you want to look at only a particular type of entry, move your cursor to the line number which has the sub-code and main code combination you want to look at and then press Q+. The quick printout will include only those entries whose main code and sub-code match the ones on the line on which your cursor was sitting. Also, as the message in the box implies, you can get help by pressing the / or ? key. For example, if you want help about line numbers, while the cursor is in the line number column, press /. You will get a message listing all the valid entries on the line number. Now would be a good time to do that. If you do, you will see that there are several things you can do while inputting: (1) Copy a line (2) Copy from another file (3) Mark an item as returned by the bank (4) Mark several items as returned (5) Tag single items for removal (6) Tag several items for removal (7) Remove tagged items (8) Unmark single items (9) Unmark several items (If you have not entered a date, Mini-Ledger will not let you move your cursor beyond the date column.) Now let's look at the numbers in the box and their labels. The first two numbers are near the middle of the box and keep track of your cash entries. Below that are the different balances beginning with: BEG.BAL 10,552.30 This is the balance you asked the machine to read out of the file called MAR.LED. (It is the same as the ending balance of March.) CHECKS 0.00 We haven't written any checks yet, so the amount is zero. As we enter checks into the machine their cumulative amount will be kept in this spot. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 13 CREDITS 0.00 It is not unusual to receive a credit of some amount on some category of spending. As we enter them, their cumulative amount will be kept in this spot. DEPOSITS 0.00 As we enter deposits, they will be accumulated here. PRES.BAL 10,552.30 Beginning balance minus checks, plus credits and deposits equals present balance. (Beg.Bal - Checks + Credits + Deposits = Pres.Bal) Now let's look at the top two lines at the left side of the box: In general when putting in expenses and income you can copy the item above by pressing a <TAB>. SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE RETURN KEY The <ENTER> key produces some special features: (1) If the transaction type (explained below) is a P or a V and you press <ENTER>, instead of copying the check number from above, Mini-Ledger will increase it by one. (2) If the transaction type is a D, and you press <ENTER>, instead of copying or increasing the check number above, Mini-Ledger will put DEPOS in the check number block. (3) If the transaction type is a C, and you press <ENTER>, Mini-Ledger will put CREDIT in the check number block. (4) If the transaction type is a V and you press <ENTER> instead of typing in a payee or description, you will get VOID CHECK. (5) If the transaction type is a D and you press <ENTER> instead of typing in a payee or description, you will get DEPOSIT. (6) If you try to copy the amount from above by pressing either a <TAB> or a <ENTER>, the amount from above will not be copied and the amount will be left as zero. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 14 (7) If the transaction type is V and you put in an amount, it will be set back to zero. If there is no special feature associated with the <ENTER> key, for example in the date field, hitting <ENTER> will copy the item above. PRACTICE TIME Throughout Mini-Ledger all your inputs (that's what you type in) can be ended with a <ENTER>, a <TAB>, or one of the cursor arrow keys. It usually makes sense to use either a <TAB> or an <ENTER>, whichever you are most comfortable with. FIELD LENGTHS In this section the program also checks for field length. Fields are the different sections of the line where you type in information. That's not a very good description, but it will probably become clearer as we go along. To help here are the fields you will be working with along with their lengths: FIELD LENGTH LINE NUMBER 2 or 3 DATE 8 TRANSACTION TYPE 1 CHECK NUMBER 7 PAYEE 20 SUB CODE 2 MAIN CODE 4 AMOUNT 9 To explore what we're talking about, and to learn to use the pro gram at the same time, let's type in a check entry. Your cursor is sitting on a 1 (one) at the left of the screen. That means line number 1. Press <TAB>. Your cursor will move under the DATE column. The cursor is sitting in the date field and is looking for a date. It can be entered in any of three forms: 00/00/00 0/0/00 MMDDYY Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 15 For example, 010589 is the equivalent of either 01/05/89 or 1/5/89. From the table above, you can see that the date field is 8 characters long. Let's say you type in a date like 4/2/89. Since that is only 6 characters, you will have to end your input with a <TAB> or an <ENTER>. If you had typed in 04/02/89, 8 characters, the cursor would have jumped automatically to the transaction-type field. That's what we mean by the program checking the length of the field. If you fill up a field, the cursor jumps automatically. If you don't, you have to end with either a <TAB> or a <ENTER>. In the DATE field the program will fill zeros needed to make the dates line up attractively. For example if you type 4/2/89, the program will convert it to 04/09/86. If you use the form MMDDYY (040286), the program will put the slash marks where they belong. TRANSACTION TYPES The cursor will now move under the T. The program is looking for TRANSACTION TYPE. There are six possibilities: P for Payment C for Credit D for Deposit X for Cash out Y for Cash in V for Void Type P Since this field is only one character long, the cursor will automatically jump to the next field. The cursor will now move under the CHK # column. The program is looking for your check number. Type: 2725 <TAB> The check number field is 7 characters long, but since the check number we used is only four characters long, you have to end your input with either a <TAB> or a <ENTER>. Your cursor is now under Payee or Description. Try to type: Management Specialists Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 16 Since you reached the 20th character of the field when you got to Specialists, the cursor jumped to the sub-code field. Notice that the end of Specialists was cut off. No big deal, you were left with enough to tell who the check was written to. If you want to back up to a previous field, use your left cursor arrow, your backspace key, or a control s. That will jump you back to the beginning of the previous field. Your cursor should now be sitting under SB. That stands for sub code. If it isn't, use your cursor arrow to get back, and then press <TAB>. That will result in the sub-code being 00. Now type in the CODE. Type: 100 <TAB> or 0100 If you use the short form, Mini-Ledger will add a zero to the front. Your cursor will now move to the AMOUNT column. Take a look at the message box above where you are typing. Notice that the code number and the name assigned to it are displayed. This feature of Mini-Ledger allows you to check your codes as you type them. You are now ready to put in the amount. Type: 788 <TAB> Your cursor will now move down one line into the date field, and some of the numbers in the box above will reflect the results of the check you just entered. COPY FEATURE When you typed in the check above, you used a code of 00-0100 and Mini-Ledger informed you that you paid the rent. Let's say Management Specialists also charge you utilities and that you customarily pay both the rent and the utilities with one check. Your rent is $788.00 per month and your utilities for this month are $67.89. Let's now enter the utilities. Your cursor is sitting on line #2 under the date column. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 17 Hit a <TAB>. Notice that the program copied the date from the line above. Hit another <TAB>. The program copied the transaction type. Hit another <TAB>. The program copied the check number from above, which is exactly what we wanted since we used the same check to pay both rent and utilities. (If we had wanted a new check number here, we would have pressed a <ENTER> and we would have gotten check number 2726.) Now press another <TAB>. The payee has been copied. Hit another <TAB> to copy the sub-code. We do not want to copy the main code from above, so type in the code for utilities 0200. Now type in the amount. 67.89 <TAB>. With your <UP ARROW> key or a control E, move your cursor up one line. Notice now that the present check section in the box reflects both the amount of the rent and of the utilities. That's because you used the same check number for both transactions. Now, type in these checks. 3 04/12/89 P 2726 Sally Smith 00-0400 802.45 4 04/12/89 P 2726 Sally Smith 01-0300 1.20 5 04/15/89 P 2727 Brenda's Office Supp 02-0300 345.80 6 04/15/89 P 2728 Bob's Quick Service 00-0500 250.45 7 04/20/89 D Depos Deposit 00-1000 3,567.89 8 04/20/89 D Depos Deposit 00-2000 450.00 9 04/28/89 C Cred Refund From Rent 00-0100 195.00 If you make some mistakes (you probably will) use your cursor arrows to move back and forth across a line to make corrections. SUBSEQUENT DATES For dates other than the date on the first line you can save some keystrokes if you only type the day part of the date. For example, for the date on your third line try typing 12 <TAB>. As you will see, Mini-Ledger will get the month and the year from the line above. NEW PAYMENT CODES Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 18 After you finish with the first nine checks, let's type two more as follows: 10 04/28/89 P 2729 Void 00-0000 0.00 11 04/28/89 P 2730 IRS 00-0600 1,200.00 Notice that both have payment codes which we have not used before. When you type these codes in, you will get an error message in the box telling you that the codes do not exist and asking whether you want to use them anyway. If you answer that you do, you will be asked if they should be added to the code list. For the void check, with payment code 0000, answer that you want to use it but do not want it added to the list. (We'll see why later.) For the IRS check answer that you want to use it and that you want it added to the paycode list. When you are asked for a description for the code answer: FEDERAL INCOME TAXES <ENTER> The program will give you a chance to correct your entry and then will store it. Eventually the program will bring you back to the amount column and you can finish putting in the check. CODES FROM THE HELP MESSAGE Any time you would like to see an on-screen listing of your payment codes, move your cursor to either the sub-code or the main code field and press a / or a ? (slash or a question mark). The instruction box at the top of the screen will clear, and your codes will be displayed. Let's say you want to choose the utilities code. From the help message: Type: 2 <ENTER> That will result in the code 00-0200 being dropped into the code section of your input line. STOP ENTERING CHECKS When you have finished putting in all eleven checks, move your cursor to the line column (use your cursor arrow or control key to move backward). Then: Type: Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 19 0 <ENTER> That's a zero followed by a <ENTER>. The program will store what you typed and then ask: Return to editing same file (Y/N) <RETURN> means N This feature is for those of us who do not trust either the power company or computers. It allows us to store from time to time so that if the power goes off or the computer malfunctions, we will only lose what we typed in since we last stored. In our case, we are through entering checks, so answer with <ENTER>. You will again be asked if you want to create a file or edit an existing one. Since we don't want to do either, press <ENTER>. You will now be exposed to another feature of Mini-Ledger. Since we added a new code while we were entering checks, you will be given an opportunity to sort it into its proper place. When you are asked, tell the program that you want your codes sorted numerically. For almost all purposes, it is better to sort your codes numerically. PRINTOUTS After you finish typing in checks the program brings you back to the Main Menu. PRINTOUTS Let's go back to the printout menu and printout some of the files that exist. The shortest distance to the printout menu from the main menu is by way of the <UP ARROW>. Press it, and you will get to the Printout Menu. PRINTING MONTHLY FILES Let's print all of the monthly files we now have using the first option, with cumulative totals. Type: 1 <ENTER> You will now be shown a display of all your transactions files. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 20 Answer: 1 <ENTER> The program will respond with the same list and ask for verification of your choice. Answer by pressing <ENTER>. The program will next ask if you want to include/exclude all codes or codes. As you have probably deduced, this implies that you can select only certain codes for your printout. We will discuss this in some detail later, so for now, press the <ENTER> key. You will be asked if you want to include/exclude all payees or some payees. Again, this implies that you can make some selection on what you want included in your printout. The payee-descriptions the program is asking about are what you put in payee or description section when you were putting in expenses and income. Again, we will discuss this later, so for now, press a <ENTER> signifying that you want all payee descriptions included in your printout. The program will next ask if you want your output to the screen, the printer (single sheet or continuous feed). Let's put it on the printer. Make sure there is paper in it and then Answer: 2 <ENTER> You will be asked for the title you want on the printout. Now the program will prompt you to press any key to continue, if the printer is ready. Press <ENTER> and you should get a printout that looks like this: PAGE 1 Cumulative Totals JAN through JAN -- 01/31/89 Line Date T Check Payee or Description SB-Code Amount Balance 4,562.56 1 01/03/89 P 2710 Acme Property Manage 00-0100 788.00 3,774.56 2 01/03/89 P 2710 Acme Property Manage 00-0200 56.89 3,717.67 3 01/04/89 P 2711 Bob's Quick Service 00-0500 103.99 3,613.68 4 01/04/89 P 2712 Brenda's Office Sup 02-0300 56.23 3,557.45 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 21 5 01/10/89 P 2713 Sally Smith 00-0400 568.45 2,989.00 6 01/10/89 P 2713 Sally Smith 00-0500 34.56 2,954.44 7 01/10/89 P 2714 John's Office Supply 01-0300 45.12 2,909.32 8 01/23/89 D DEP DEPOSIT 00-1000 4,567.90 7,477.22 9 01/23/89 D DEP DEPOSIT 00-2000 500.00 7,977.22 What it shows you is that at the beginning of January we had a beginning balance of $4,562.56. After all the checks and deposits had been entered there was a balance of $7,977.22 PRINT WITH CHECK TOTALS The number two option, Print monthly files with check totals, provides a printout similar to the one you just did, but instead of a cumulative total it gives you a separate total for each check. PRINTING MONTHLY SUMMARIES When the printout is over you will be back at the printout menu. Answer: 3 <ENTER> Now, you will be shown the transactions file index. Since you are most familiar with the April file answer: 4 <ENTER> The program will respond the transactions file list, showing your choice of April (file 4). Answer: <ENTER> The next question the program will ask is whether you want main payment codes and sub-codes as well. This option allows you to examine your monthly activity with only main codes or in more detail with sub codes included. On our code list we have two sub-codes for office supplies. Let's have the program lump them together for us. Choose: 1 <ENTER> As when you were printing monthly files with cumulative totals, the program will again ask whether you want selected descriptions and/or selected codes. Again, let's print all Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 22 descriptions and codes. In response to both questions press the <ENTER> key. The program will then ask: The program will next ask if you want your output to the screen, the printer (single sheet or continuous feed). Let's put it on the printer. Make sure there is paper in it and then answer: 2 <ENTER> The program will now print out April. Your printout will include the paycodes, the descriptions for the codes, and the amount for each code. What you have gotten is a very concise summary of your month's expenses and income showing you your net for the month. UNCODED ITEMS Notice that below the printout there is a listing of Uncoded items. Uncoded items can exist for two reasons: (1) You used a new code during input but didn't add it to the list. Remember when we didn't add the code for the void check when we were putting checks in? This is the result. (2) You made a change to your code list after entering checks and income. This is something most people do at some time because of rethinking their codes, and is not some thing you should a void. It is better to have usable codes and make a few corrections than to have a code list that you're unhappy with. PRINTING YEARLY SUMMARIES After the printout is over, you will be taken back to the printout menu. This time we want to print a yearly summary. Answer: 4 <ENTER> The program will take you through the same set of questions as when you were printing a summary of some months. This time tell it you want to include months 1-4. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 23 WIDE OR NARROW SUMMARY After you have told the program where you want your printout, you will be asked if you want a wide or a narrow yearly printout. The program comes with two overlay files which control the yearly summary printouts: led-wsum and led-nsum. If the program finds both on the disk it asks which you want to use, the question above. If it finds only one of the two, it uses it. If you have a wide printer, one capable of printing 132 columns or more, you should delete the overlay file led-nsum.ovr from your working program disk. Not the original disk! If you have a printer capable of printing only 80 columns, delete the wide overlay (led- wsum.ovr). That will avoid the above question. In the setup part of the manual you will see that you have to configure the program for your printer. One part of the configuration has to do with compressed print, usually 15 characters per inch. The yearly printout is the only printout which uses compressed print. (This is for wide printers only.) On some printers you can vary the number of characters per inch in compressed print. The yearly printout at 15 cps (characters per inch) will fit onto an 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper put into the printer sideways. At 17.5 cps it takes up about 9 inches. If you set your compressed print to be the same as elite (12 cps) it needs legal-size paper put in sideways. If you have a narrow printer, 80 columns, don't worry about it. It will print in PICA and will print the left half first and then the right half. FISCAL YEAR Before the printout starts you will be asked one last question, which is the month your fiscal year commences. This allows the printout to be configured differently for different fiscal years. For this exercise, however, let's accept the answer the program has provided. Press <ENTER> and the process will start. The wide printout is too big to show here, but it will look some thing like a spread sheet with the months across the top and the codes down the left edge. After the printout is finished you will be taken back to the Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 24 printout menu. This time press <ENTER> to choose none of the items and you will be taken back to the main menu. ABOUT 80-COLUMN PRINTERS If you have an 80-column printer and are using the narrow printout option Mini-Ledger will first print the months January through June and then July through December. The two printouts can then be put together to look like the one above. NON-EXPENSE ITEMS In this training session we have not used any "non-expense" items, but if we had, they would be displayed at the bottom of both the month-summary printout and the yearly printout. They would be totalled separately. NOTES ON PRINTING INTO FILES For each of the printouts you are given the option of printing into a disk file. This is to allow you to work on your printouts with your word processing program if you want to do something like make some changes on the labels or select only part of a printout to include in a separate report. If you choose to print into a file you will be asked what you want to call your file. The program uses the left eight characters of your answer, adds either .OUT or .SUM to it and makes a new file on whichever drive you have designated as your storage drive. Since MS-DOS allows file names of only eight characters, if you want your file name to make sense, be sure to limit the length of your file name. Beyond that, there's not much to it. Go ahead and try it. If you include any "illegal" characters such as spaces or # symbols, or commas, Mini-Ledger will replace them with dashes. (--) INTERRUPTING PRINTOUTS On all of the printouts, whether on the screen or on the printer, if you want to temporarily interrupt the printing, press any key. The printout will stop and wait for you to press any other key. If you want to abort a printout, press the ESCAPE key. The printout will be aborted and you will be taken back to the menu. CREATE A NEW SORTED OUTPUT REPORT First, what is a "sorted output report?" A sorted output report is a printout which shows you each entry which was Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 25 assigned to a particular payment or income code. For example, if you wanted to see all the rent payments for the year displayed together, a paycode report would give them to you. To use this feature, choose number 6 from the printout menu. You will be shown an index of your transactions files. Answer: 1-4 <ENTER> The program will ask you to verify your entry. Answer: <ENTER> You will then be given the opportunity to select or exclude payee descriptions and payment codes the same as if you were printing a report with cumulative totals or one of the two summary reports. (See previous section) You will then be asked what you want to call your report. Let's call this SORTED, and press <ENTER> Now you will be asked how you want the totals to be reckoned. Choose 2. The program will take over at this point and: (1) Print the monthly files you chose into a file called SORTED.OUT (2) Sort all similarly coded items together (3) Put a total line at the bottom of each category which will show you the code, what it means, and the amount of money allocated to that code. You will then be taken to a menu which gives you further options to work with your sorted file. The help messages for this menu explain that you can use the same sorted file to prepare other reports and save some time by not going through the sort routine again. Go ahead and look at them if you want. When you're finished, choose: 5 <ENTER> You will then be asked where you want your printout. Make Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 26 sure there's paper in the printer and choose: 2 <RETURN You should get a printout with all similarly coded entries sorted together. WHEN YOUR DISK GETS FULL Each time you create a sorted output report Mini-Ledger creates two new files, one with the name you give your report plus the ending .OUT and one with an ending of .TOT. If each time you create a new report, you give your report a different name, eventually, if you are using floppies for storage, your disk is going to get full. When it does, Mini-Ledger will tell you about it and stop. When that happens you need to look at your storage disk and take off all the old .OUT and .TOT files. The process is: (1) dir b:/p (2) del b:*.out (3) del b:*.tot assuming that these files are on drive b. That generally will create enough disk space for the program to run. CHECK NUMBER SORT Above when you were creating your paycode report you were presented with a menu giving you further options to work with your sorted report. If you choose number 1 from this menu your report will come out with all the entries sorted in check number order, rather than in main-code/sub-code order. The report will also have a cumulative total running down the right side. If you choose number 4, your report will also come out sorted in check number order but totals lines will be inserted each time the left two characters of the check number changes. You will find more on this feature in the section on advanced uses. VENDOR SORT We haven't discussed vendors yet, but you have no doubt noticed that the program allows you to sort and get totals by vendor. Since we have not put in any vendor information at this Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 27 point, the pro gram will tell you that if you choose number 7 from the above menu. PRINTING AN OLD SORTED OUTPUT REPORT Printout menu item 7 allows you to printout an old sorted output report. Above, you learned how to create these reports. Occasionally, you will want to come back and do another printout of one. PRINTING A PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT The final printout is the profit and loss statement. To do it, choose: 8 <ENTER> You will next be shown your monthly file index and asked which files you want in your profit and loss statement. Answer: 1-3 <ENTER> indicating that you want to include months one through three from your index or JAN through MAR. INCOME CODE RANGES After Mini-Ledger has verified that those are indeed the files you want included, you will be asked for the lowest main code for income. Take a look at your printout of the demonstration paycodes or hit the ? key for an on-screen listing. Notice that we have two income codes, 1000 and 2000. Your answer should be: 1000 <ENTER> Now you will be asked for the lowest main code for income. If you had only one income code you could press <ENTER>, but since we have two income codes, you need to tell the program that your highest code is: 2000 <ENTER> The program will then let you verify your choices. Since 1000 through 2000 is what we intended, press <ENTER> to indicate "YES." Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 28 Now you will be asked about your highest and lowest expense codes. They are 0100 through 0600. After Mini-Ledger confirms your expense categories you will be asked if you want your expense percentages expressed as a percentage of income or as a percentage of total expenses. This allows you to calculate your expenses a percentage of either income or expenses. After you have made your choice, you will be asked where you want your printout. Whether you choose the screen or the printer, you will get a profit and loss statement with the income at the top and the expenses at the bottom. The print out will also show you the percentage each category represents. SELECTED CODE OR DESCRIPTION PRINTOUTS Now that we have run through all of the printouts from this menu, let's take a few minutes and discuss some of the finer points. There will be times when you will want only a very selective printout or summary. For example, you might want to only print items which have to do with payroll, or sales commissions, or perhaps only bank checking charges. Or maybe you will want to look at all payments made to a particular person or company. Mini-Ledger allows you to do that. SELECTED CODES Above, when you were printing monthly files with cumulative totals and when doing a yearly summary and a summary of some months, you were presented with the question of whether you want all codes or include or exclude selected codes. Let's say you have set up your chart of accounts to include, among others, the following: 00-0500 COMPANY CAR EXPENSE 01-0500 COMPANY CAR #1 02-0500 COMPANY CAR #2 Now let's say that you want to see all expenses coded to company car #1 but don't want to have to wade through a printout of all categories to find them. You would answer the above question with: 2 <ENTER> You will now be asked for the lowest sub-code-main code to be included. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 29 Answer: 01-0500 <ENTER> Now you will be asked for the highest sub-code-main code to be included. Since we want only one code, press <ENTER>. This tells the program that you want your highest code to be the same as your lowest code. The program will now give you the opportunity to verify your selection. If you answer with anything other than an N to indicate that you want to change one of your answers, the program will go on to the question about where you want your printout. In this example we wanted only one code in our printout. You can also get a range of printouts. For example, if you had wanted information on both cars, you would have told the program that the highest code you wanted was 02-0500. When selecting codes, you should bear in mind that Mini-Ledger will include your lowest selected code, your highest selected code, and all codes between. Mini-Ledger will also allow you to exclude a code or range of codes. In that case all codes except the ones you designate, and those between, will be included in your printout. SELECTED DESCRIPTIONS You can also include only certain payee or descriptions. Mini Ledger will ask how you want to set that up. Let's say you wanted to list all the payments you have made to Bob's Quick service. You would select number 2 from the above menu. You will next be asked what payee-description you want to include. Answer: bob <ENTER> Mini-Ledger will include all entries whose description includes the three characters, "bob." Don't worry about whether they are capitalized or not, Mini-Ledger will find them. You could also find the same entries by answering, quick or service if you were sure you included either or both words in all entries having to do with bob's quick service. There is an implied problem here: Let's say that sometimes you type the entries for Bob's as "Bob's" and sometimes you type Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 30 them in as "Bobs" (without the apostrophe). Mini-Ledger will search for exactly the letters you type and will skip those entries which do not exactly match. That means you should attempt to be consistent when you are entering expenses and income. Once you have entered the description you want included, Mini Ledger will verify your answer. You can answer with either a Y or a <ENTER>. Mini-Ledger will also allow you to exclude entries meeting a particular description. The process is exactly the same except that you will be asked what description you want to EXCLUDE instead of INCLUDE. THINK ABOUT YOUR CHART OF ACCOUNTS By using a combination of included or excluded payee-descriptions along with included or excluded payment codes, you can get some very specialized reports. This implies a need for some thought, however, if you want Mini-Ledger to be as valuable a tool as it is capable of being. For example, for the profit and loss statement you were asked for a range of income codes and a range of expense codes. If those ranges had overlapped, you would have gotten very strange results. Obviously, it makes sense to group your expense codes together with similar numbers, perhaps one main code and several sub codes. This whole subject should be discussed with your account ant when you get through learning Mini-Ledger and start setting up your chart-of-accounts. There is more on this at the end of the manual. BANK STATEMENTS RECONCILING WITH YOUR BANK STATEMENT Look at item number 2 on the main menu: Choose number 2 and you should get a help message. Take a couple of minutes to look at it. It explains that reconciling to your bank statement is a two-step process; the first of which is to mark the checks and deposits which have been returned by your bank. When you are finished reading the help message you will be presented with your file index. Since we have not marked any of the returned items, we do not want the program to search any of the files. Press <ENTER> Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 31 to indicate none. That will take you back to the main menu. From the main menu choose #1 "Enter expenses and income?" At the next question answer that you want to edit an existing file and choose: #1 (JAN) Now let's take a moment to lay out some rules for a pretend session. Let's pretend that you have gotten your bank statement during the first couple of days of April and that you haven't put any new entries in the April file. Let's also pretend that all but one of your January checks and deposits have cleared, all but two from February have cleared, but only a few from March have cleared. MARKING & UNMARKING First, let's mark the items which have cleared. When the program asks you if you want to change the beginning balance of Jan answer with either an n <ENTER> or simply with a <ENTER>. In a few seconds the January file will appear on the screen and your cursor will be sitting on line #10. Let's first mark all of the items as having been returned and then go back and unmark #7. While your cursor is still on line #10, type 01, that's zero one. Your cursor will now be on line #1. Now type mr (Mark remainder). Your cursor will again drop to line #10. Notice that the slashes in the dates have been replaced with dashes. (01/23/89 has been replaced by 01-23-89) That's how Mini-Ledger marks re turned checks. Now let's unmark #7. Type 07. Your cursor will move on to line #7. Now type u <ENTER>. U means unmark one check. Your cursor should now be on line #8 and the date on line #7 should have slashes in it, indicating that it has not been cleared by your bank. We're now through with January, so type 0 <ENTER>. That's zero <ENTER>. That will store your entries. When you are asked, answer that you don't want to return to editing the same file. That will take you back to a menu which will ask you whether you want to create a new file or edit an existing file. Again, we want to edit an existing file, this time # 2 (FEB). When our February file is on the screen, again get your Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 32 cursor on to the first line by typing 01. Again, let's mark all the checks as having been returned and then go back and unmark #7 and #8. When your cursor is on line #1 type mr. That will mark all the checks and deposits. Now put your cursor on line #7 (type 07) and unmark it by typing u<ENTER>. Then unmark #8 by typing: u <ENTER>. Then store the February file. (zero on the line number) Now let's get the March file on the screen, and pretend that only the first three items have been cleared by the bank. Type 01 to get your cursor on to line #1. Then type m<ENTER>. That marked the deposit and put your cursor on to line #2. Again type: m <ENTER> Notice that both #2 and #3 were marked. That's because they were the same check. Now store the March file by typing a zero on the line number. We're now through marking returned items, so keep pressing <ENTER> until you get back to the main menu. Now choose #7. RECONCILIATION Since we have already read the help message, we can skip it by pressing <ENTER> or any other key. That will bring us an index of our monthly files. We want to search months 1-3 (JAN-MAR). Type 1-3 <RETURN>. After the program confirms your answer you will be asked how you want the output directed. Answer: 2 <ENTER> You will now be asked for the ending balance as shown on your bank statement. Let's pretend that our bank statement had an ending balance of 10,749.15. Type 10749.15<ENTER>. You should get a printout that includes all unreturned items and tells you whether your account balances. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 33 If this were not a pretend situation you would staple this printout to the back of your bank statement and next month you would already have your old list of unreturned items to work from. REBALANCING REBALANCING A GROUP OF FILES People make mistakes. Probably the most common one associated with accounting is transposing numbers. For example, let's say you write a check for $54.00 but enter it into Mini-Ledger as $45.00. You go merrily along until three months later when the check finally clears the bank. Suddenly you have a $9.00 mistake which is three months old. For the sake of an example, let's say you made that mistake in January and have gone ahead to post entries for February and March. There are two ways to handle the problem: (1) You can make an entry in March something like this: Mistake on January Check 1234 9.00 (2) You can go back into your January file and change the incorrect entry. That creates a new problem: Your February and March beginning balances are now wrong because February's beginning balance was based on the ending balance in January, (which is now different) and March's beginning balance was based on the ending balance in February which will need to be changed. Item number 3 on the main menu allows you to correct balances. Let's assume you decide to go back into your January file and change the check which was $45.00 to $54.00. This is the process: (1) First choose number 1 on the main menu to enter expenses and income. (2) Next tell the program that you want to edit an existing file and choose your January file. (3) Find the check to correct, and change the amount from 45.00 to 54.00. (4) Put your cursor on the line number column and type 0. That's a zero. (5) Work your way back to the main menu by pressing <ENTER> Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 34 at each question. (6) Choose number 3 from the main menu. You will be presented the index of your monthly files. Let's rebalance all of our files. Choose: 1-4 <ENTER> The program will take over and automatically update the balances in FEB, MAR and APR. The reason you chose JAN as your first file to include in the rebalancing operation was because, after you made your correction, it then had a correct balance. When the rebalancing is finished, you will be taken back to the main menu. NOTE Be careful! If you have more than one account operating on a disk, make sure you don't overlap them in the rebalancing operation. WRITING CHECKS WHAT KIND OF CHECKS? From the utility menu choose: 3 <ENTER> SETTING UP A CHECK FORMAT After a couple of seconds you will be asked whether you want to create or modify a check form or test a check form. Choose: 1 <ENTER> That will bring you to a display of the check printing setup menu. Your settings will all be zero. Now you should probably make some photo copies of the check you want to use as a pattern. We will ask you to do some experimenting to get things to fall on to the right places on the check. Let's assume we are setting up a form for the series 73-801 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 35 checks first. Let's guess that we can probably start our voucher information on LINE 2 COLUMN 1. On your computer Type: 1 <ENTER> Your cursor should jump up to the numbers opposite the word Voucher. Enter 02 for the line number. Your cursor will jump to the column number. Enter 01. Now let's guess that we should put our check number at LINE 12, COLUMN 45. Let's make those settings. Type: 2 <ENTER> Your cursor should jump to the number opposite Check Number. Enter 12 for the LINE and 45 for the COLUMN. Now put in the settings for the date, payee, amount, address, and written amount. When you are finished, your table should display your settings should be correctly set out. Now press <TAB> to indicate that you want to make no further changes to the table, and your settings will be saved. What we have done is enter some approximations of where we want our variables to appear on the check. The only thing we guarantee at this point is that the settings we have made will not be correct. They will, however, be fairly close. The reason they will not be completely correct is that every printer loads paper in a slightly different place, and every user lines the top of their paper up differently. TEST YOUR SETTINGS Now put one of the copies you made of the check into your printer. Line it up the way paper normally lines up in your printer. We are now ready to test it. You should be back to the create/modify/ test your check form menu. Choose: 2 <ENTER> The program will now ask if you want the test printout on the screen or printer. Let's do it on the printer. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 36 Type: 2 <ENTER> When the printout is finished, you will be able to see how far off your line and column settings were. From this menu you can choose #1 to go back and make changes. With a little experimentation you will be able to get the settings to work correctly. ITEMS ON THE SAME LINE Note that on the above table the payee and the amount will be on the same line. This is not at all unusual. In fact, some checks ask you to put Check Number, Date, Payee, and Amount all on the same line. There is no problem with this as long as you don't crowd them too close together. Mini-Ledger reserves space for the variables as follows: Voucher 74 spaces Check Number 6 spaces Date 8 spaces Payee 20 spaces Amount 14 spaces In the case of Voucher there is no problem because each voucher item is on a separate line. The other items can, however, appear on the same line. If you try to put them too close together and they will not fit, Mini-Ledger will arbitrarily put them on different lines. ITEMS YOU DO NOT WANT INCLUDED The form we experimented with has a place to put the check number. Some check form manufacturers expect you to supply the check number and others send the checks to you pre-numbered. Some manufacturers give you the choice. Let's say you have pre-numbered forms and do not want Mini Ledger to print it. Remember the message "If any item has a setting of ZERO, it will NOT PRINT the check"? The message gives you the solution: Reset the Check Number settings to zero and the check number will not be printed on the check. The same holds true if you want to use a check form with no room for the voucher information at the top or the bottom. Put the Voucher settings at zero and no voucher information will be Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 37 printed. FORM LENGTH The bottom item on the check format is form length. If you are planning to print your checks one-at-a-time, that is, have the printer stop between checks, the form length is not important. However, if you are going to print a continuous series of checks, you will have to experiment with form length to get the checks to roll into the proper place on the printer. WHEN YOU ARE THROUGH EXPERIMENTING When you finish testing the settings for your check forms you will get back to create/modify/test menu. WRITING CHECKS WRITING CHECKS Press <ENTER> and you will be taken back to the utility menu. This time choose: 4 <ENTER> For the purposes of this manual we will assume that you are working with the test data we provided. If you want, however, you can work with your own Mini-Ledger files. They will not be changed in any way. In any case after you choose #4 from the above menu, you will get a display of your transactions files. Choose: 1 <ENTER> In a couple of seconds you will get the data entry display. MARK THE CHECKS FOR PRINTING First type: 01 to get your cursor to item number one. Now type MR (MARK REMAINDER) to mark the checks for printing. (Mini-Ledger will only print checks which have been marked.) When your cursor gets back down to the bottom of the screen you will notice that the dates on lines 5, 6, & 7 have been changed to 01:03:89. That means those three items can be printed. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 38 ITEMS WHICH CANNOT BE PRINTED Now press the / key to get a help message. You will get a list which tells you what kind of items cannot be printed, including returned items, deposits, void checks and cash items. Now look down at the entries. Notice that many of them have transaction types of R. That means they were marked as having been returned by the bank. (When you get back to input you will find that the transaction types have not really been changed, so don't worry.) PRINTING CHECKS First, let's print one check. Put one of the check copies into the printer and then type 05 to get your cursor to line #5. Now type: p <ENTER> That means print one check. Notice that the message box at the top of the screen has a message, giving you the options of printing one check or continuous checks. Press S and your check will be printed. MULTIPLE CHECKS Now let's print all the checks that are marked. Type 01 to get your cursor to line number 1. Put another check copy in the printer and type: pr That means print remainder and instructs Mini-Ledger to print all checks from the cursor position down. At the printer-ready question press S. The check to Sally Smith will be printed again and then the message box at the top of the screen will inform you that it is ready for another check. Put in another check and hit any key except <ESC> and the next check will be printed. CONTINUOUS PRINTING If you trust your printer enough, you can ask Mini-Ledger to print continuously without stopping between checks. When the message box gives you a choice of single check printing or Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 39 continuous printing hit c and Mini-Ledger will print continuously. STOPPING THE PRINTOUT At either of these messages which prompt for printer ready or ready for the next check, you can hit the <ESC> key and check printing will stop. During continuous printing, if you press the <ESC> key printing will stop as soon as the current check is finished -- unless you have a buffer on your printer and Mini-Ledger has already sent it the whole list. In that case you will have to stop the printout at the printer. PRINTING CHECKS WITH ADDRESS Notice that the box at the top of the screen tells you that to print a check with an address you press PA. Let's do that now. First, move your cursor to line 5 then press: pa That should result in an input screen for entering check addresses. The program is asking you to put in the address you want on the check. You are given five lines for the address. The dotted line tells you how far to the right you can extend the address. While entering the address, you can move up and down within the address lines by pressing your <UP ARROW> and <DOWN ARROW>. Let's fill in the address so that it looks like this: Address-1 Sally Smith Address-2 123 Some Street Address-3 Oakland CA 94512 Now press <ENTER> to indicate you want to make no more changes and your check along with the address will be printed. NOTE: Any address you put in this way will override an address taken from the vendor file. (You will learn about vendor files later.) WHEN YOU'RE FINISHED When you finish printing the checks in JAN Type: Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 40 x <ENTER> and you will be taken back to your monthly index. Press <ENTER> and you will be taken back to the main menu. PRINTING CHECK FROM INPUT SCREEN The above exercise showed how to print checks from the check printing module. Since on many printers it is rather cumbersome to take regular paper out of the printer and put checks in, you will probably choose to print checks in groups most of the time. However, if changing paper is not a problem, and you want to print checks one-at-a-time, it can be done directly from the regular input screen. After you have entered the information about a check, put your cursor on the line number of the check and press: p <ENTER> That will print one check and bring you back to the input screen. Limitations: The only significant limitation to this method of printing checks is that you cannot add an address to the check as you print it. STORAGE SUB-DIRECTORIES The first item on the utility menu is: Go to the setup menu? You probably explored this item when you looked at the setup manual, but there is one additional idea which is worth looking at: Storage sub-directories. Mini-Ledger allows you to choose different sub-directories for storage. One reason for doing this would be to have different accounts on your hard disk. For example, you might name a sub directory "Business" and store your business Mini-Ledger records in it. You might name another sub-directory "Personal" and store your personal Mini-Ledger records in it. At the bottom of the "main" menus, at the far left, the program shows you the name of the current storage drive and sub-directory. If you want to change this, choose number one from the utility menu. That will get you a sub-menu which asks you whether you want to: 1 - Change the colors for your menus. 2. Setup the program for your printer. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 41 3. Designate the storage drive. 4. Change the storage subdirectory. If you want to change your storage sub-directory, choose number 4. That will get you a prompt to enter the name of the storage subdirectory. You can then type in the name of the sub-directory you want to store in. One thing to remember: the storage drive is changed by choosing number 3 from the above menu. PAYCODE FILE CREATING PAYCODE FILE When you finish practicing with the Mini-Ledger program, you will be faced with setting up your own paycode (chart of accounts) file. Before you do, however, we suggest that you read this entire section and then come back to here. From the utility menu: Choose: 2 <ENTER> You will be taken to a new menu which asks you if you want to create/edit or print out a paycode file.: Take a few minutes and look at the help messages for this menu. When you are finished with the help messages you will be back to the above menu. Let's create a new list. Answer: 1 <ENTER> BE CAREFUL You will be warned that this will destroy the paycode file which currently exists so if you really want to add to an existing one, make sure you give the right answer. After you give your answer, you will then be shown a display which looks a lot like the display for putting in checks. In fact, the process is very similar. Type an <ENTER> or a <TAB> on the line number and the cursor will jump to the sub-code column. Press <TAB> there and the sub-code becomes 00. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 42 REPEATING All items, sub-code, main-code, and description can be copied from the line above. If you find that you have left out a code which you want in a specific place, type an I and a <ENTER> or <TAB> on the line number where you want the additional code. Space will immediately be provided for your new code. DELETING CODES If you discover that you have a code in your list which you don't want, type an asterisk (*) on the line number and the code will be deleted. LIMITATIONS Beyond that, the only thing to keep in mind is that you have only 35 spaces for your description. SORTING YOUR PAYCODES Generally speaking it is convenient to have your paycodes sorted so you will be able to find a particular code quickly. Most people who use Mini-Ledger keep two copies of their code list near their work station; one sorted numerically, and one sorted alphabetically. The absolutely organized people usually carefully lay out their codes alphabetically and then assign numbers to them so that only one list is necessary. That usually holds up for a time until new codes are added. As you can see from the message box at the top of the screen, typing SA on the line number results in an alphabetical sort. Typing SN will sort them numerically. After the sort is completed you can get a printout either on paper or on the screen. Many of the features of Mini-Ledger make sense only if the paycode file is sorted numerically, so if you do sort it alphabetically (so you can have two lists) remember to sort it back into numerical order. SOME IDEAS Now that you're through with all the exercises let's think about your chart-of-accounts (paycode file) and how it should best be organized: First, for the profit and loss statement feature to work properly, your income codes must be at either the top or the Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 43 bottom of your list. If they are interspersed among your expense codes you will get a very strange profit and loss statement. Next, you may have an income or expense category which for one reason or another you don't want to show up in your profit and loss statement. For example many people have two or three checking accounts and at least one savings account. They often transfer money between these accounts and don't want it to show up as income or as an expense. That type of category should be put at the bottom of your expense codes and called something like TRANSFER OF FUNDS. Then when you are giving the ranges of your income and expense codes, give a range which does not include TRANSFER OF FUNDS. Obviously, if you have several such codes, they should be grouped together where they can be excluded easily. Most people find it is easier to organize their codes if they first define their categories and then go back and assign numbers to them. That is, assign every code a number of 00-0000 and then a description. Once that is done, sort your codes alphabetically and then go back and assign real numbers. Usually, that results in a list which is both alphabetical and numerical and you can find things on it quickly. Remember, your final sort should always be numerical unless you have a list which sorts numerically and alphabetically the same. That is very rare because income has a nasty habit of sorting between advertising and rent. SUB AND MAIN-CODES Generally speaking, your accountant is not interested in as much detail about your operation as you are. That's why we have both sub and main codes. For example, if you have three company cars, your accountant at tax time only wants to know what your company car expenses were as a group, not what they were for each car. The IRS tends to look at things the same way. On the other hand, you are probably very interested in which cars are costing you the most money. If the expenses of one particular car get out of hand, you want to be able to pinpoint that quickly and find out why. With that in mind, we recommend that you set up your codes something like this: 00-0500 COMPANY CAR EXPENSE 01-0500 BLUE RABBIT 02-0500 YELLOW VOLKSWAGEN 03-0500 JOHN'S SPORTS CAR Then when you pay expenses you would never code them to 00- 0500 but to one of the sub-codes. If you remember the questions Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 44 you were asked when doing printouts, one of them was whether you wanted all codes, or to include/exclude selected codes. If you answer that you want main codes-only, all the sub-code expenses will be totalled and reported under the main code, 00-0500. If you answer that you want sub-codes as well, you will get a separate amount for each sub-code. That allows you to satisfy your accountant who doesn't want to wade through pages of endless detail while at the same time satisfying yourself when you want to pin down something very specific. In any case, when you are through experimenting with your code list, type a 0 on the line number. (That's a zero). The program will store your new code list. The next few pages include some paycode files which might be helpful. PAGE 1 Paycodes Printout as of 01/27/89 SUB-CODE DESCRIPTION 00-0000 VOID 00-0010 ACCOUNTING COSTS 00-0020 ADVERTISING 00-0030 COMPANY CAR EXPENSES (GAS OIL ETC) 01-0030 COMPANY CAR EXPENSES (CAR #1) 02-0030 COMPANY CAR EXPENSES (CAR #2) 00-0040 COMPANY CAR INSURANCE 01-0040 COMPANY CAR INSURANCE (CAR #1) 02-0040 COMPANY CAR INSURANCE (CAR #2) 00-0050 COMPANY CAR PAYMENTS 01-0050 COMPANY CAR PAYMENTS (CAR #1) 02-0050 COMPANY CAR PAYMENTS (CAR #2) 00-0060 CONTRIBUTIONS 01-0060 BOY SCOUTS 02-0060 UNITED WAY 00-0070 CONVENTION FEES 00-0080 EMPLOYEE RELATIONS 00-0090 ENTERTAINMENT (MARKETING) 00-0100 INSURANCE 01-0100 INSURANCE (FIRE & CONTENTS) 02-0100 INSURANCE (GROUP/LIFE) 03-0100 INSURANCE (LIABILITY) 04-0100 INSURANCE (WORKERS' COMPENSATION) 00-0110 JANITORIAL 00-0120 LEGAL COSTS 00-0130 OFFICE SUPPLIES 00-0140 PAYROLL 01-0140 PAYROLL (NON-OFFICER) 02-0140 PAYROLL (OFFICER) 00-0150 RENT 00-0160 TELEPHONE Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 45 00-1000 INCOME FROM SALES 00-1001 INCOME FROM CONSULTING 00-2000 INCOME FROM APARTMENT RENTALS 00-2001 INCOME FROM HOUSE IN FREMONT Paycodes Printout as of 01/27/89 SB-CODE DESCRIPTION 00-0000 VOID 00-0010 ADVERTISING 00-0020 CHECKING CHARGES 00-0030 CONFERENCES 00-0040 CONSULTATION 00-0050 DONATIONS 00-0060 ENTERTAINMENT 00-0070 INSURANCE 00-0080 LEGAL & ACCOUNTING 00-0090 LICENSING FEES 00-0100 MEMBERSHIP FEES 00-0110 MILEAGE 00-0120 OFFICE EQUIPMENT 00-0130 OFFICE SUPPLIES 00-0140 PARKING & TOLLS 00-0150 POSTAGE 00-0160 PUBLICATIONS 00-0170 RENT 00-0180 TELEPHONE 00-0190 THERAPY SUPPLIES 00-0200 TRAVEL & LODGING 00-0900 TRANSFER OF FUNDS 00-1000 INCOME (GENERAL 00-1001 INCOME-COUNSELING PAGE 1 Paycodes Printout as of 01/27/89 SB-CODE DESCRIPTION 00-0000 VOID 00-0010 ADVERTISING 01-0010 ADVERTISING (ART WORK) 02-0010 ADVERTISING (MAGAZINES) 00-0020 BANK CHARGES 01-0020 BANK CHARGES (CHECKING) 02-0020 BANK CHARGES (SAVINGS) 00-0050 CONTRIBUTIONS 00-0070 ENTERTAINMENT 01-0070 ENTERTAINMENT (EMPLOYEE) 02-0070 ENTERTAINMENT (MARKETING) 00-0090 INSURANCE 00-0100 LEGAL & ACCOUNTING 00-0110 LICENSES 00-0150 OFFICE EXPENSES 00-0160 PARKING & TOLLS Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 46 00-0170 PERSONAL CAR EXPENSES 00-0180 POSTAGE 00-0190 RENT 01-0190 RENT (FREMONT) 02-0190 RENT (SACRAMENTO) 00-0200 SALARIES 01-0200 SALARIES (NON OFFICER) 02-0200 SALARIES (OFFICER) 00-0230 TAXES 01-0230 TAXES (FEDERAL INCOME) 02-0230 TAXES (STATE INCOME) 03-0230 TAXES (SALARIES FEDERAL) 04-0230 TAXES (SALARIES FICA) 05-0230 TAXES (SALARIES SDI) 06-0230 TAXES (SALARIES STATE) 00-0240 TELEPHONE 00-0950 TRANSFER ACCOUNT 00-1000 INCOME-OTHER (CONSULTING) 00-2000 INCOME SOFTWARE 00-2001 INCOME SOFTWARE (DEALERS-CAL) YOUR MONTHLY FILE INDEX The fourth item on the utility menu is: 4 - Change or reorganize your monthly file index? Choosing that item will give you a menu with these choices: delete a file, rename a file, reorganize the index or reconstruct the index. Take a couple of minutes to look at the help messages. As you will see, you need to be very careful with number one. Once a file is deleted, it is gone! It is so dangerous that we make this very strong recommendation: BEFORE YOU DELETE ANY FILES, LEAVE THE MINI LEDGER PROGRAM AND MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR STORAGE DISK That is, unless you enjoy redoing work you have already done. DELETING AND RENAMING Whichever of these two items you choose, you will be shown the index of your monthly files and will be asked to type in the number of the file you want to either delete or rename. You will then be asked to verify that you have chosen the correct file. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 47 If you are deleting a file, the file will then be deleted and the index updated. The program will then re-display the index of the files and ask which file you want to delete. If you want to delete none, press <ENTER> and you will be taken back to the menu above. If you are renaming a file, you will be asked for the new name. The program will check for a valid file name, make sure there isn't already a file by that name and then rename the file. You will then be shown the new index and asked which file you want to rename. Again, if you want to rename none, press <ENTER>. REORGANIZING YOUR FILE INDEX Mini-Ledger allows you to have more than one account and more than one year on the same storage disk. Let's say you have two checking accounts, one with Wells Fargo Bank and one with Bank of America. You might want to name your monthly files some thing like this: JAN-WELL FEB-WELL MAR-WELL JAN-BA FEB-BA MAR-BA Now let's say you create a new April file for the Wells Fargo account. When you do, Mini-Ledger will put the new name APR WELL at the bottom of the index below MAR-BA. Since many of the printouts require that you choose a block of files which must be together, you will want to move APR-WELL up under MAR WELL. For now, let's just play with our existing menu. From the above menu choose: 3 <ENTER> That will result in the transactions file index display. As the messages in the left side of the box indicate, this part of the program is much like the part of the program in which you enter expenses and income. That is; when your cursor is in the line number column you use zero to store, x to abandon and type another line number to jump to a particular line. The message at the right side of the box tells you how to move a file name. Let's move APR to the top of the list. (1) Press your <RIGHT ARROW> key. That will move your cursor on to the file name APR. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 48 (2) Now press your <UP ARROW> key. That will move APR above MAR. (3) Press the <UP ARROW> key again and APR moves above FEB. (4) Press the <UP ARROW> key again and APR is at the top of the list. You can move it back down by pressing the <DOWN ARROW> key. When you are finished, press your <LEFT ARROW> key to put your cursor back in the line number column. Now you can either store or abandon your revised index. RECONSTRUCT YOUR FILE INDEX Horror of horrors! You were deleting some files from your storage disk and inadvertently erased the file called FILE.IND. That was the index to your monthly files. Follow these steps: (1) Go back to the main menu. (From the above menu press <ENTER>) (2) Leave Mini-Ledger. (From the main menu choose S) (3) Delete the file index. del b:file.ind) (4) Restart Mini-Ledger. (type ledger u <ENTER>) (5) Choose #4 from the utility menu. (6) Choose #4 from the index handling menu. The program will search your computer's disk index for all files ending with .LED and add them to your file index. Since your computer's disk index has files on it in the order they were created, your monthly file index will be somewhat scrambled. You can fix that by going back to item number 3, reorganize your monthly file index. SEARCH & REPLACE After most people have used Mini-Ledger for a short time, they discover that they wish they had set up their chart of accounts a little differently. That part is easy. (See the previous chapter.) What is not so easy is finding all the items you put under one code and changing them to another. The fifth item on the utility menu is designed to do just that. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 49 Choose 5 <ENTER> That will take you to your file index. Let's say you want to do the same search and replace operation on all four of your files. Type: 1-4 <ENTER> That will take you to a display which asks you for the description to take out/put back in; the sub-code to take out/put back in or to replace without a prompt. As you can probably gather, you can change both descriptions and sub-code/main-code combinations. You can also have the program do it automatically (without asking), or you can ask to verify each replacement before it is done. CHANGING CODES Let's start by changing all the code 00-0300s to 00-0400. Fill in the chart so that it looks like this: sub-code/code to take out: 00-300 sub-code/code to put back in 00-400 Notice that we have left the "replace without asking" question answered as N. Now press <TAB> and the process will start. When the program finds the first entry with a code of 00-0300 it will present you with the opportunity to verify the change. If you want this entry changed, press Y <ENTER> and it will be changed. The program will repeat this process through all four files until it is finished. CHANGING DESCRIPTIONS The process of changing descriptions is exactly the same except that you fill in the first two questions on the table instead of the second two. REPLACE WITHOUT ASKING If you are absolutely sure you want to change all codes or all descriptions which meet your criteria, you can save time by telling the program to make the changes without asking you to Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 50 verify that you really want it done. This is a bit more dangerous, so use caution. THE VENDOR FILE WHAT IS IT FOR? Up to this point the vendor file has been mentioned only in passing, so perhaps an explanation of what it is for is in order. So, what is the vendor file? The vendor file is a place for Mini-Ledger to store the names and addresses of people or companies to whom you make repeated payments. All told the vendor file contains: (1) The vendor's name. (2) An identifier or sort key so you can find a particular vendor more easily. (3) The vendor's social security or employer number in case you want to use Mini-Ledger information for filling out federal 1099 (independent con tractor) forms. (4) The answer to a question about whether you want the vendor included on your 1099 list. (5) The amount of money to show on the 1099 form. (6) As many as 10 Mini-Ledger entries which can be imported to your monthly files. We can explore these ideas as we go along, so from the utility menu choose #6. That will take you to a sub-menu from which you can choose to add to the list, correct the vendor information, print the index, reconstruct the index, delete inactive vendors or print envelopes for the vendors. Whether you are adding to your vendor list or correcting information about one of your vendors, you will get a screen to fill out which allows input for the name, address and other data relating to a vendor. At the top of the box are two numbers, RECORD and MASTER. RECORD is the number the program assigns the vendor. The first person you put in on this screen will be vendor number 1. The second will be number 2 and so on. MASTER is a number the program uses to determine if a vendor Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 51 is active or inactive. More about that later. Item #1 in the box is the vendor name. This is the description which will usually show up on Mini-Ledger monthly files. Item #2 is an identifier or sort key which will allow you to sort your vendor index into some order which makes sense to you. If you look at the menu above, you will see that #4 provides for sorting your vendor index. When you do that, you can sort by either vendor name or by identifier. Since most people will put their vendors in first name first, sorting by vendor name, will create chaos. However, if you put in an identifier last name first, you can get an alphabetical sort of your vendors by last name. Item #3 in the box calls for the social security number. If you do 1099 forms you will need this information for the form. Item #4 tells the program whether you want to include this vendor on your 1099 list. We had once planned to write a program called TEN99, but not enough people showed interest in it. This item was to allow that program to work correctly. ADDRESSES Items #6 through #10 provide five lines for the address. This address is important for more than the 1099 forms we mentioned above. It can be used in the check writing part of Mini-Ledger. Later you will see how to import information from your vendor file into monthly files. In that process the vendor number is stored along with the other monthly information. When you print checks, the check writing program uses the vendor number to look up the address to put on the check. NON-PRINTING ADDRESSES The program provides for five lines of address. If you don't need all five lines, you can use the unneeded ones for comment lines by putting a period as the first character of the address line. When the check writer sees that period, it will not print that line of address. PUTTING IN LEDGER INFORMATION Choosing #11 out of the box will result in this display, much like entering expenses and income in Mini-Ledger monthly files, except you don't put in a date or check number. You get a total of 10 entries, which can be spread any way Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 52 you want them. LEAVING OFF THE AMOUNT You can put in the amounts of the check. This is fine for someone to whom you always pay the same amount, but what about someone like the telephone company who gets a different amount each month? In that case you would put in everything except the amount. Then when the information is imported into a Mini-Ledger monthly file, Mini-Ledger will stop and wait for you to put in the amount. FINISHING THE INPUT Just as when putting information into a monthly file, when you have finished, you move your cursor to the line number (to the far left of the screen) and type a zero and <ENTER> or two zeros. That will take you back to the main vendor screen. From there you store all of the vendor information by pressing <TAB>. If you don't want to store the changes you made, press x <ENTER> and the vendor information will be left as you found it. SPECIAL FEATURES Because on some checks the address is placed away from the payee, and on others it is placed right under the payee, there is a special feature you should know about. When your cursor gets to item # 6, if you want to copy the vendor to that line, press <TAB> and whatever you have put in the vendor spot will be copied. If you want to type in a street address instead, just type it in. When you are putting in ledger information, if you want the first description to match what you put under vendor above, press <TAB> and the vendor description will be copied to the first description. CORRECTING VENDOR INFORMATION When you add new vendors to your list, you are taken by the program directly to the vendor information screen. However, when you correct information on vendors, you are presented with a screen first which allows you to look at your vendor index, search for a vendor, or simply enter the vendor number you want to look at. VENDOR INDEX This example is showing that we currently have 15 vendors on our list. Looking at the index, we see the numbers at the left Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 53 of the index which are the record numbers of the vendors. The numbers at the right are the index line numbers. Since we have only 15 vendors on our list, we can't go beyond #15, but if we had, say, 200, we might want to jump immediately to index line 150 rather than paging down, 16 lines at a time. That is what "Enter a line number to jump to" means. Once you have determined the record number of the vendor you want to look at, press <ESC> and you will be taken back to the selection box. From there you can enter a record number to call up vendor information. ACTIVE & NON-ACTIVE VENDORS Sometimes you stop paying vendors during the course of the year. In that case you can mark a vendor as inactive so Mini-Ledger won't let you accidentally import vendor information into a monthly file. You will see a message (at the bottom of the vendor information screen) which lets you store or abandon vendor information. Instead of either storing or abandoning, you can change the active status of a vendor by typing: a <ENTER> A message at the top of the vendor information box will then show you that this vendor is inactive. Typing: a <ENTER> again will change the vendor back to active status. RECONSTRUCTING INDEX The vendor sub-menu has several more items, some of which are self-explanatory and some of which are not. The first one which is not is: 5 - Reconstruct the vendor index? This item has two purposes: (1) In case your vendor index get accidentally deleted or damaged. (2) In case you want an unsorted vendor index. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 54 DELETING INACTIVE VENDORS Sometimes it is nice to get rid of dead wood; in this case inactive vendors. CAUTION:If you plan to do 1099 forms, don't delete inactive vendors until you are finished. Assuming you have heeded this caution, the process of deleting inactive vendors is very automatic. You just choose #6 from the vendor menu and the program takes over and does its thing. The program is so automatic, in fact, that here is another very strong caution. BACK UP YOUR: (1) Vendor files (VENDOR.LST, VENDOR.IND & VENDOR.CNT) (2) Monthly files (*.LED and FILE.IND) BEFORE YOU DELETE INACTIVE VENDORS. In the process of deleting inactive vendors the program first takes inactive vendors out of the vendor list. Then it goes through the monthly files and changes vendor numbers. PRINTING ENVELOPES Someday you may want to print either envelopes or mailing labels for some or all of your vendors. Number 7 from the vendor menu provides for this. Choosing #7 will allow you to choose the vendor and the print layout on the envelope. VENDORS TO INCLUDE As the table is set above, the program will print an envelope or label for each vendor. If you want to include only some of the vendors there are two ways to do it: (1) You can put in a range of record numbers such as 5-20 and envelopes will be printed for just those vendors. (2) You can change the word ALL to LIST and you will be presented with a matrix. On this matrix you can put in the record numbers of 50 vendors. (The example shows that we want to print envelopes for vendors 2 & 5.) If you want to set all the numbers of the matrix to zero, Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 55 put your cursor on one of the numbers and Type: cl <ENTER> OTHER ITEMS IN BOX Most of the other items in the box are self-explanatory. One which may not be is: Empty lines at top If you are printing one envelope at a time, this setting is irrelevant. The printer will stop after each one to allow you to put in a new one. However, if you are using continuous form envelopes or labels, or if you have an envelope feeder on your printer, setting the number of empty lines at the top will allow the program to roll each envelope or label into the proper position before printing. IMPORTING VENDOR INFORMATION And now it's time to see how we get information from the vendor files into Mini-Ledger monthly files. To do that you act as if you are simply going to input expenses and income. From the main menu choose 1 <ENTER> Then choose to make some more entries in the April file that you worked on earlier. Eventually, you will get a screen which shows the current transaction file for April. Now let's make another entry. For the date press <TAB> to copy the date above. For the type P, and for the check number press <ENTER> to get the next check number. Now your cursor should be sitting under the description column. Hit the <?/> key to get a help message. The first help message should be the standard one telling you about the special features of the <TAB> and <ENTER> keys. Now press any key except the <ESC> key. That should result in a listing of the vendors you have put in. On the assumption that you have put in a vendor like the one in the earlier example, choose the number of that vendor. That should result in the entries for that vendor being imported into your April monthly file. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 56 So, the way to import information from the vendor file is to type in the vendor record number instead of a regular description. If you cannot remember the vendor number, the help message for the description column will list your vendors. When you store the entries, they will be stored along with the vendor number. This means that when you write checks, the program will be able to call up the address of the vendor to put on the check. It also means that you can get a sorted printout showing how much you have paid each vendor. ASSIGNING VENDOR NUMBERS TO OLD ENTRIES Let's say you bought this version of Mini-Ledger in the middle of the year and have a few months of entries which you would like assigned to the proper vendor. There is a way to do that: (1) Put your cursor on the line number column of the entry screen and move it to the line entry you want to assign. (2) Type v <ENTER> That will show you the current vendor number, probably zero, and give you the chance to change it. So, if you wanted to change the vendor number to 2, you would type 2 <ENTER>, and that entry would be assigned to vendor number 2. ADVANCED CONCEPTS Over the years users of Mini-Ledger have discovered uses for the program which were not originally contemplated. Others have run into problems which we decided not to cover in the main part of the manual for fear of cluttering it with details to the point that you would not be able to find your way through it. Here are some ideas which have come up. BUDGETING Mini-Ledger does not include a budgeting module. However, some users, primarily school districts and government agencies have done this: Once their chart-of-accounts has been set up they create a file which contains their yearly budget figures. Let's call the opening file: JAN-OPEN Then for each expense category on their chart-of-accounts they make a deposit in the amount of their yearly budget. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 57 Then, throughout the year if they want to know if they are within their budget, they do a summary (# 3 on the printout menu) and include the file JAN-OPEN in the months they want the summary for. Any code that shows a negative amount in the summary is over budget. One thought about naming your files if you use this idea: Do not give them a name that begins with "DUM." Mini-Ledger will not include files that are named DUM in any multiple-month printout. HANDLING PAYROLL CHECKS Keeping accurate payroll records is one of the more important things accounting departments must do. Here is the way we recommend putting in payroll checks: First put in the gross amount of the check as a payment, then put in the withholding amounts as credits. We use the same check number for all the entries. Later, if you want a printout which includes gross payroll, you ask for a report including only code 00-1000. At the end of the year, your actual payroll cost would be the total of codes 00-1000 through 03-1100, if that is the sequence on the chart of accounts for payroll. GETTING EXTRA PAYCODES This idea first came about because of a user who was using Mini Ledger to keep track of the expenses and income from a small apartment complex. He was using the program under CP/M where he could get only 99 codes. His first thought was to set up codes like this: 00-0100 UTILITIES 01-0100 UTILITIES (APT 1) 02-0100 UTILITIES (APT 2) However, since he had several apartments, it became clear that he would soon run out of codes. Then we came up with entering checks like this: DATE T CHK# PAYEE OR DESCRIPTION SB-CODE AMOUNT 01/01/89 P 2435 Electric Co (01) 00-0100 15.00 01/01/89 P 2435 Electric Co (02) 00-0100 15.00 01/01/89 P 2435 Electric Co (03) 00-0100 15.00 01/01/89 P 2435 Electric Co (04) 00-0100 15.00 Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 58 The (01) in the description means that part of the check was for apartment #1, the (02) was for apartment #2, etc. Then when he wanted to get a listing of all expenses for apartment #1 he would specify that he wanted payee descriptions containing the description (01). In effect this gave him an unlimited number of pay codes. PUTTING A CODE IN THE CHECK NUMBER This feature came about because a contractor wanted to use Mini Ledger for job costing. Hiding extra codes in the description proved to be too cumbersome because he needed to get better summaries than he could get that way. He requested that we put a feature in the program which would let him put a two-digit prefix on his check numbers which corresponded to his job numbers. (01-2345) He then needed summaries for those prefixes. Remember the question when you were doing sorted output reports? The one about how you wanted your totals? Choosing number 4 takes advantage of this feature. There is one feature you lose if you use prefixes on your check numbers: Mini-Ledger will not correctly automatically number your checks as you enter them if it finds prefixes. QUICK DISPLAY During the input process if you want a quick display of your entire page of entries, you press Q or Q+ when your cursor is on the line number. This results in a help message which says you are about to get a quick display of your entries. The last line of the help message says: Press any key to continue If the key you press is p, either upper or lower case, your display will go to the printer. Any other key sends the display to your screen. NOTES ON DUMMY FILES Mini-Ledger allows you to copy entries from existing files into another file. Earlier in the manual we suggested that you might want to set up some files with the name DUM-XXXX so you would always remember that these are dummy files. Another advantage of this is that dummy files cannot inadvertently be included in a printout. During multi-file printouts, if the program finds a file name which begins with DUM it is skipped. Dummy files can be printed one-at-a-time. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 59 NOTES ON COPYING FILES As you have probably already discovered, when you copy entries from another file, the new entries come in with their check numbers designated as COPIED. The purpose of this is to remind you that these entries need new check numbers. Also, when you copy entries from another file, Mini-Ledger does no checking to see if you have exceeded the maximum number of records in a file, 350 under MS-DOS and PC-DOS. When the file you want to edit is brought into memory, only the first 350 entries will be brought in. Any over that amount will be discarded. SKIPPING THE MAIN MENU One of the problems with menu-driven programs is that you have to wait for the menus before you can make a choice. There is a way to skip the sign-on message and the main menu if you know what you want to do before you start the program. For example, if you know that you want to go directly to inputting income and expenses, instead of simply typing ledger <ENTER> Type: ledger i <ENTER> That's ledger (space) i <ENTER>. That will take you straight to input. If you want to go straight to the printout menu Type: ledger p <ENTER> That's ledger (space) p <ENTER>. Here's a summary: Ledger c takes you to your paycodes, Ledger i takes you to input, Ledger m takes you to the main menu, Ledger u takes you to the utility menu, Ledger p takes you to the printout menu, Ledger v takes you to the vendor menu CHAINING TO PAYABLES AND RECEIVABLES Most Mini-Ledger owners end up buying Mini Payables/Receivables as well as Mini-Ledger. If you don't want to take the time to leave Mini-Ledger and then restart payables/receivables, from any of the "main" menus: Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 60 Type: r <ENTER> to get to receivables or Type: p <ENTER> to get to payables. Unless you have a hard disk you will probably get a message that the programs are not on the logged drive. If so, take the Mini Ledger program out and replace it with Mini-Payables/Receivables. Then try again. PRINT CHECKS FROM INPUT SCREEN As mentioned in the section on check printing, you can also print one check at a time from the input screen. Put your cursor on the line number of the check you want to print and Type: p <ENTER> Mini-Ledger will load a program to print one check and then come back to input. The only thing you cannot do using this method is add an address to the check you are printing. FUNCTION KEYS The use of function keys is slowly creeping into Mini-Ledger. For example, while inputting expenses and income, you can press [F10] and your entries will be saved. [F7] allows you to abandon your entries. Mini-Ledger Manual 06.04.90 Page 61