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****************************************************************** CONSOLIDATED HOME ACCOUNTING SYSTEM for the IBM PERSONAL COMPUTER (or compatibles) Version 3.20 Copyright 1986,1987,1988,1989 by Kenneth W. Ruggles 25696 Tierra Grande Drive Carmel, California 93923 November 15, 1986 Revision 1 February 2, 1987 Revision 2 April 30, 1989 ****************************************************************** TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Copyright Information ........................ 1 1.2 Trademark Information ........................ 1 1.3 License Information .......................... 1 1.4 Warranty Information ......................... 1 1.5 Purpose of Program ........................... 1 1.6 Brief System Description ..................... 2 1.7 PC Configuration For Use ..................... 4 2. GETTING STARTED 2.1 Preparation of Program Disk .................. 5 2.2 Floppy Disk System ........................... 5 2.3 Hard Disk System ............................. 5 2.4 Program Configuration ........................ 7 2.5 Program Execution ............................ 8 2.6 Program Termination .......................... 9 3. BUILDING ACCOUNTS 3.1 General Discussion ........................... 10 3.2 Account Types ................................ 11 3.3 Account Organization ......................... 15 3.4 Account Entry ................................ 16 3.5 Combine Accounts ............................. 18 4. DATA ENTRY 4.1 Structure of Transactions .................... 19 4.2 Transaction Entry ............................ 19 4.2.1 DATE .................................. 20 4.2.2 PAYING ACCT ........................... 20 4.2.3 CHECK NUMBER .......................... 20 4.2.4 NR SHARES SOLD ........................ 20 4.2.5 AMOUNT ................................ 21 4.2.6 CREDIT ACCT ........................... 21 4.2.7 SHARES BOUGHT ......................... 21 4.2.8 ANOTHER CREDIT ACCOUNT ................ 21 4.2.9 ENTER AMT ............................. 21 4.2.10 DESCRIPTION ........................... 21 4.2.11 ENTRY CORRECT? ........................ 21 4.2.12 EXIT? ................................. 22 4.3 Account Reference Display .................... 22 4.4 What About Mistakes? ......................... 23 4.5 Share Values ................................. 24 TABLE OF CONTENTS (CONTINUED) PAGE 5. DISPLAY OPTIONS 5.1 General ...................................... 25 5.2 Scan Transactions ............................ 25 5.3 View Balance Sheet ........................... 25 5.4 Select Print Options ......................... 25 6. BUDGET AND ANALYSIS OPTIONS 6.1 General ...................................... 27 6.2 Budgeting .................................... 27 6.3 Budget Entry ................................. 29 6.4 The Analysis Options ......................... 30 6.5 Interpreting/Understanding Analysis .......... 30 7. MENU STRUCTURE 7.1 General ...................................... 33 8. ADVANCED TOPICS 8.1 General Caution .............................. 36 8.2 Data File Description ........................ 36 8.3 Advanced Diagnostics ......................... 37 8.4 Corrupted Data Retrieval ..................... 37 8.4.1 Use of AUDIT .......................... 38 APPENDIX A Use of CONVERT Program ............................ 40 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Copyright Information. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System documentation and the software described herein are copyrighted with all rights reserved. Neither the documentation nor the software may be reproduced in whole or in part, without prior written permission of Kenneth W. Ruggles except in the manner described in Section 2 of this manual. 1.2 Trademark Information and acknowledgements. A. IBM and PC-DOS are the registered trademarks of the International Business Machines Corp. Lotus and 1-2-3 are the registered trademarks of the Lotus Development Corporation. EPSON is the registered trademark of Epson America, Inc. B. A very special thanks to Bill Furst, whose hours of critical review and rewrite of this documentation has resulted in a much improved documentation. 1.3 License Information. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System is the copyrighted property of Kenneth W. Ruggles. You are granted a license to use this program for personal, non-commercial uses only unless a license fee is paid. The program is distributed via the "Shareware" concept for personal, non-commercial use, where a $25.00 licsense fee is requested. The program may be reproduced and distributed without any fees other than the licsense fees to Kenneth Ruggles for non-commercial uses. 1.4 Warranty Information. A. Kenneth W. Ruggles makes no warranties, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the warranties, of suitability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will Kenneth W. Ruggles be liable for damages relating to the use or sale of this program. 1.5 Purpose of Program. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System is a home money management program. It is designed for the home bookkeeper who finds that simple checkbook managers are not sophisticated enough for his or her everyday needs, but who does not want to become involved in complex business accounting systems. B. The Consolidated Home Accounting System is flexible. It allows the user to create accounting structures as simple or as complex as required. The program will manage up to 255 separate accounts, with provisions for taxable and non-taxable income, checkbooks, credit cards, stocks, bonds, real property and other major assets, mortgages, loans and other liabilities, and saving and expense accounts. In addition to the above, you can perform a net worth calculation in an instant. C. The Consolidated Home Accounting System provides budgeting capability for those who wish to track revenues and expenses through a budget. For users who do not need the budget features, they may be simply ignored. D. For the individual who has stocks, bonds, and rental property, the system provides an easy and convenient way to keep track of all money activity. It provides concise printed detailed data for tax preparation time. At the touch of a key, the program will provide a summary of all account balances. E. The system is largely self-structured. Other than defining the accounts you will need to keep your books, you have very little work to set up and maintain the system. All references, and related data between accounts are calculated and maintained internally within the system. Data entry has been designed to work on only a few key strokes to speed up entry. 1.6 Brief System Description. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System consists of one major program, ACCTS. There is also a utility program, CONVERT, designed to convert files from the earlier Version 2 data formats should you have such files. The CONVERT program is discussed in Appendix A. Additionally, there is a audit utility for correcting bad data or corrupted files discussed in Chapter 8. B. The ACCTS program provides for the complete management of home accounts by performing the following basic functions: 1. It creates individual accounts to keep track of your assets, income, liabilities and expenses. You have great flexibility in defining accounts for your particular needs, and you can add accounts easily as your requirements change. 2. It provides transaction processing to shift money between accounts. These transactions are designed to be single or multiple payment transactions, recognizing that often when we pay or receive money, the amounts are credited to several accounts. A good example of such a transaction is the mortgage payment to the bank. Part of the mortgage payment is paid to the bank as interest expense, and part of the payment decreases your mortgage liability. 3. It provides both printer and monitor display options which allow you to review the transactions on the screen or print them on the printer. If you have organized your books conveniently, this can be very useful at tax time. A printout for each account can provide all information required when figuring your taxes. 4. It provides complete capability to create and track a budget. If you are concerned with establishing a budget and then comparing your performance against that budget, the system has a complete analytical package built in for this purpose. 5. It provides a complete checkbook and bank balance tracking system. Check numbers can be entered as they are written and then checked off as they clear the bank. 6. It calculates net worth and cash flow. Net worth is a measure of your financial value. Net worth is how much money you would have remaining in your pocket if you were to pay all your bills, sell all your assets, and collect all the money due you. Your appreciation of net worth is an important tool in your future financial planning. Cash flow lets you know if you are spending less or more than you are earning. 7. The Program provides the capability to perform detailed analysis of accounts. The analysis routines allow you to compare accounts on a month-to-month basis as necessary to determine budgets and perform analysis of costs, revenues and status of assets. If the analysis routines are not comprehensive enough for your needs, the program will prepare disk files of the data records in a format that can be IMPORTED to and read by Lotus 1-2-3. 8. The system provides you with the capability to manage multiple sets of books should your needs require it. 9. The Consolidated Home Accounting System is designed to provide a simple bookkeeping system for the person who has limited needs, and then expand as your requirements become more complex. There are many features of the Consolidated Home Accounting System which you may not want to use when you first begin. However, part of the fun of using the system is learning more about your accounts and having the ability to do more detailed analysis as you become more comfortable with the program. 10. The system program uses simple menu-driven displays to allow you to enter data. Information that you need for data entry is easily displayed. Every step is self-coaching. Program execution is so fast you normally do not have to wait for the program when entering transactions. 11. The CONVERT program allows users of The Consolidated Home Accounting System Version 2 to convert their files to version 3. Version 3 uses entirely new file structures from previous versions. See Appendix A for detailed use of the CONVERT program. The two versions are not really compatible and must be converted in order to operate smoothly and accurately. 1.7 PC Configuration for Use. A. The computer. The Consolidated Home Accounting Program requires an IBM PC computer (or compatible) operating under PC-DOS 2.0 or higher. The program is configured for at least one floppy disk drive and 192K or more of memory. B. The monitor. The system will operate with a standard 80-column monochrome or color monitor. The first time the ACCTS program is executed, it will create a configuration file on the default disk. This configuration file contains all of the data concerning your computer, monitor and printer. The monitor type is automatically sensed each time the configuration file is created or changed. The user has full control over color selection when using a color monitor. The program provides for entering configuration information when you first run the program or at any time during the use of the program. C. The printer. Some features of the program require the use of a printer. Many of the print formats require printers capable of displaying a 132-column format. The program supports printer cofiguration strings to invoke compressed printing for those printers that have this capability, such as Epson dot matrix printers, or landscape printing on laser printers. The control strings required to invoke compressed or normal printing are entered during system configuration. This allows display of the page format on a standard 8-1/2 inch page. 2. GETTING STARTED. 2.1 Preparation of the Program Disk. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System comes with a instruction manual on a floppy disk which also contains the accounting program and utility programs. The disk may also contain a file labeled READ.ME which contains late information about the program or program modifications which are not contained in the printed documentation (instruction manual). B. If a READ.ME file is included, be sure to read this file FIRST. You can use the TYPE facility to display this file for changes to the procedures described in this manual. 2.2 Configuring for a Floppy Disk System. A. Format a new floppy disk using the /S option so your operating system is copied on to the new disk being formatted. B. Place the new (blank) disk in drive B. Place the Consolidated Home Accounting System disk in drive A. C. Type COPY A:*.* B:. This will copy the entire contents of the master disk to your new working copy operating disk. D. Place the master disk of the Consolidated Home Accounting system in a safe place. Place the new program disk you just made in the default drive and follow the instructions in Section 2.4. 2.3 Configuring for a Hard Disk System. A. Normally, one would create a unique directory on the hard disk to contain your home accounts, such as ACCTS. If you wish to make a directory, create your directory following the DOS manual, or follow these steps: 1. Make the hard disk (assumed to be disk C) the default disk by typing C: at the DOS prompt. 2. Create a new directory by typing MD \ACCT. 3. Make the new directory the default directory on the disk by typing CD \ACCT. B. Place the Consolidated Home Accounting System disk in the A drive. C. If you have named your new directory ACCT, then enter the command COPY A:*.* C:\ACCTS. This will copy the entire contents of the master disk to your hard disk. D. Place the master disk of the Consolidated Home Accounting System in a safe place. Make your new directory the active directory by typing CD \ACCT and follow the instructions in Section 2.4. 2.4 Program Configuration. A. Program configuration can be performed at any time. If you are going to convert files from version 2 of the Consolidated Home Accounting System, you must execute ACCTS and configure the system BEFORE running CONVERT. When the program is first installed, program execution and initial configuration is automatically initiated. To configure the system, execute the following steps: 1. Place the disk containing the accounting program in the default drive. 2. After the prompt, type ACCTS. 3. A message will appear 'ARE YOU USING A MONOCHROME GRAPHICS MONITOR?'. If you are using a monochrome graphics card in your computer, answer Y to this qestion. This activates special handling for the monochrome graphics devices. 4. The configuration system will inform you of the status of the speaker (beeps), and allow you to turn the beeps on or off. 5. If you use a color monitor, the program will sense this and allow you to select the color combinations you want. Test windows showing your selections will be displayed after your selection. If you do not like the way the windows look, you can change them. 6. Enter the printer code strings for compressed print and normal print. Normal text strings can be entered by typing them. To enter ASCII code sequences, however, they must be placed inside the brackets "< >". For example, the code for the Epson FX-80 printer for compressed print is ESC 15 which is entered as follows: <027> <015> The code for normal print for the same Epson printer is: <018> 7. After the system has been configured, the ACCTS program will try to read a data file. If none exists, it will create new data files for you. If you are going to use files converted from version 2 of the Consolidated Home Accounting System, enter N (for NO) when asked to create the data files and exit the program. See Appendix A on how to use the CONVERT program. 2.5 Program Execution. A. If the program has never been run before, follow the instructions in Sections 2.2 or 2.3 as applicable for your system. Otherwise type ACCTS from the DOS prompt to execute the program. B. If you have already opened a set of books, the program will load the books and proceed to the menu screen. If there are multiple sets of books to manage, the program will list them all and ask which set you want. C. If the program has not been run previously, the program will start by opening a set of books. It will ask for the name of the accounts, which drives and directories will be used for data, and the size of the account file. 1. Name of Accounts. Every set of books and their associated data files are given a unique name that will be displayed on the main menu screen to inform you of the active set of books. The same name will also appear at the top of all printed output. Enter the name you want to appear on the screen in this block. 2. Drives and Directories. The accounting files need not reside on the same disk file or the same directory as the accounting program. If you use a floppy disk system with 2 drives and want to use drive B as the drive containing the files for your books, then enter B:. If you keep your accounts on your hard disk in a directory called ACCTS, then enter C:\ACCTS. 3. Account File Names. Each of the file names for data files used by the Consolidated Home Accounting System consists of an 8-character name constructed from two numbers and six letters. The numbers are intended to reflect the year of the accounts, such as 86 for the calendar year 1986. The first four letters of the 6-letter portion of the file name is a unique file identity that you assign. The last two letters of the 6-letter group are assigned by the program to identify the type of contents in the file. For example, the filename 86ACCTTR.CHA identifies accounts for 1986 named ACCT by the user. The "TR"means the file is a transaction file. The CHA identifies the Consolidated Home Information file. The TR and the CHA are added by the accounting system. 4. Prompts. The program will prompt you during configuration to enter the date for the accounts, the name of the accounts, and will then create the account files. 5. Size of Account Files. To build the data files, the computer must know the maximum number of accounts you expect to ever use for the specific set of books. If you know the exact number, then enter that number. The maximum value is 255 accounts. The fewer accounts the program has to manage, the less memory it requires and the faster it will run. For most purposes, however, the saving in speed is insignificant. For computer systems with limited memory, the savings in memory can be an important constraint. 6. Main Menu. After the books are opened, the program will display the main menu page of the Consolidated Home Accounting System. On color monitors, if the program has not been previously run, the option to create accounts will be highlighted, since the FIRST step is to create your accounts. See Section 3 for details. 7. Existing or New Accounts. A. The system needs to know whether the new set of books you are defining to the accounting program is an existing set of books that you want to attach to the program or a new set of books which the program must build. B. Be sure to answer this request correctly. If you have an existing set of books and identify the files as new files, the program will erase your old files and build a new set of files with the same name. C. It is a good idea not to load an existing set of books until after they have been defined to the Consolidated Home Accounting System. 2.6 Program Termination. A. When you exit the program, a message will appear indicating that files are being written to disk. **WARNING** It is extremely important that the computer complete this file cleanup process. Should the program be interrupted before this process is complete, the data files will be either incomplete or corrupted. **SUGGESTION** A configuration file, ACCTSYS.CFN, is created with basic information aboiut your system at this time. It is a good idea to copy this file to your backup program disk as protection against its loss. 3. BUILDING ACCOUNTS 3.1 General Discussion A. This section discusses how to use the accounting system. B. The entire concept of an accounting system is based on a list of accounts. A list of accounts is a table of names describing where your money comes from, where is goes to, or where it stays. Before you can use an accounting program to maintain accounts, you must first define a list of those accounts you wish to consider. C. Defining accounts will take some thoughtful analysis of your needs. Of course you will want to define accounts for your income, your cash or checking accounts, and your expenses. But how about your assets, such as your house? And how do you define your liabilities, such as your home mortgage or auto loan? What are your assets worth? What other things do you want to keep track of? If you have never done a complete inventory of your financial status, the exercise of thinking through your account structure can be an illuminating experience. D. The Consolidated Home Accounting System does not need to know every account you may need at the beginning. Indeed, you can define new accounts any time you find a need for them. However, a well organized and thought through list of accounts implemented when you first open a new set of books will substantially assist you as the year moves on in the use of the program. Indeed, after you have used this program for a year and are preparing to create a new set of books for the coming year, you will probably have strong feelings and preferences about how you want to structure your accounts. Recognizing this, the program allows you to carry accounts and their balances forward from one set of books into another set and at the same time reorder and renumber the accounts. E. There are several important points about defining accounts in the Consolidated Home Accounting System. Once an account has been defined, it cannot be deleted from the list of accounts. You can define an account and then never use it. You can define a new set of accounts to take the place of an old set and then transfer the funds from the old to the new, but the accounts themselves and all transactions relating to them will continue to exist until you open a new set of books. See Section 4 concerning transactions. F. Accounts are organized by account type. There are 10 account types. Every account is assigned an account identity number (I.D.). The account I.D. consists of the account type number and a unique account number. When entering accounts into the accounting program, the program will first ask you to define the type of account you are creating. Account types are defined in Section 3.2. After you have classified the account by its type, the program will ask you for a name for the account, limited to 18 characters. Next you will be asked to provide the beginning value or balance in the account. A full description of how these entries are made is contained in the following sections. Also provided is information on options you have for organizing accounts to best meet your needs. 3.2 Account Types. A. To assist your defining accounts, the accounts have been structured into 10 account types under four major headings. The account numbering and typing is organized in a manner to assist you as you use the accounting program. Every account you create must fall into one of the 10 following account types: CODE ACCOUNT TYPE CATEGORY 1 Major Assets Asset 2 Stocks and Bonds Asset 3 Saving Accounts Asset 4 Checking Accounts Asset 5 Credit Card Accounts Liability 6 Accounts Receivable Asset 7 Taxable Income Income 8 Non-Taxable Income Income 9 Liabilities Liability 10 Expenses Expense B. An account I.D. is assigned to every account you open. The account I.D. will be a three or four⌐digit number. The first digit (or two digits in the case of code 10, expenses) is the Account Type. The second two digits are the account number assigned by the computer. Account numbers are assigned numerically within each account type. For example, account number 205 is the fifth account assigned in the stock and bond account - type 2. C. The following paragraphs describe each account type, and the use of the account type. These paragraphs are intended to help you organize your home accounts before you tackle the job of setting up your first set of books in the Consolidated Home Accounting System. Each of the account types are organized according to the major heading category for the account types. The numbers are the Account Type Numbers: ASSET ACCOUNTS 1. MAJOR ASSET. A. A major asset is normally a fixed asset, such as a home or a car. The "Book Value" of the asset is how much cash you or some competent authority thinks the asset would bring were you to sell it on the market. You can also include other personal property of value, such as valuable collections, silver, or other items of significant tangible value under this category. B. The present value for a new asset account should be the value you wish to assign. For people with valuable stamp collections into which they actively purchase or sell new items throughout the year, this is the account to use to keep track of your activity. One user suggested building a complete inventory of insurable property, such as silverware and jewelry, by entering major asset account transactions against non-taxable income as a basis for building, maintaining, and evaluating the property. 2. STOCKS AND BONDS. A. In accounting for stocks and bonds, we are concerned not only with how much money we spend or receive, but how many shares of stock we adjust from the account. The value of our portfolio is the number of shares we have times the value of each share. Stocks and bonds are carried at a share value and the cost of the entire portfolio. When you enter the value of the stocks or bonds, the program will ask you for the number of shares you have purchased or sold. You may enter any number of shares or fractional shares. If, for example, you enter fractional shares up to .001 of a share, the program will account for the fractional share but only will display the fractional shares to the nearest hundredth of a share. The share value for each stock and bond account is updated every time you make a purchase or sale, based on the value of that purchase or sale. See Section 4.5 for important details on transactions involving stocks and bonds. 3. SAVING ACCOUNTS. A. Saving accounts are the traditional bank savings, savings and loans, credit union or insurance savings funds. They are treated as cash assets by the program. If your saving account offers check writing services that you use, then the account should be treated as such and accounted for in category 4 and not here. 4. CHECKING ACCOUNTS. A. Checking accounts include standard bank checking accounts, money management funds, or other accounts which use checking instruments to pay bills. The checking account transaction provides for keeping track of the check number. Combination Check/saving accounts that provide checking services should be considered as checking accounts. The present balance of the checking account should be the balance at the time the accounts are activated (created). 6. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE. A. Accounts receivable include money due but not paid to you yet. This could include records on rental property you own, or loans that are due you. LIABILITY ACCOUNTS 5. CREDIT CARD ACCOUNTS. A. The credit card account is an account payable account. This account is usually the most difficult for the home accountant to treat properly. B. The Consolidated Home Accounting System handles credit cards as an accounts payable. When you charge to your credit card, you are making a contract to pay your credit card supplier in the future for value received. When you receive the bill for purchases you charged to your cards, the amount represents money you owe to the credit card suppliers. While many of us think of the credit card almost like a bank account, it is really a tab of money due which we must eventually pay. C. Since the credit card account in this system is treated as an accounts payable, it is a liability. Positive or credit entries reduce the amount payable, instead of increasing it. Money paid out of a credit card account to some other account increases the liability and thus the balance in the credit card account. D. There are several ways to handle credit card charges. If the use of a formal accounts payable type account, such as has been done in this system, is too complex for your needs, you have an alternative. Consider payments on a credit card as an expense under expense accounts, type 10. You could also treat a credit card account as a liability account. E. Why have a credit card account category? More and more people use credit cards to charge purchases. In some instances a lot of money is charged to credit cards each month. To ignore this category means to be not as thorough as one would like in accounting for cash flow. When you receive your credit card statement, it usually includes a list of your purchases. If you wish to distribute these purchase transactions individually to their appropriate expense accounts, then the credit card account is necessary to manage this detailed tracking. F. If you wish to consider your credit card expenses as an expense account, then enter an account called credit cards (or the name of the various credit cards) under expense accounts, type 10. If you wish a more complete treatment of your credit card expenses, a liability account is provided to permit itemized listings of all the various expenses you incur when you use your credit card. G. In a very general sense, the accounts labeled credit card accounts can be thought of and treated as a general accounts payable category if you wish to set up an accounts payable set of accounts. 9. LIABILITY ACCOUNTS. A. General Liabilities include the mortgage on your home, bank loans, auto loans, or other money owed. Normally you would list each liability and the unpaid balance of the liability as of the time the accounts are established. B. How you handle liabilities is a matter of style. There are several ways to treat a liability, either directly as a liability or as a negative asset. For example, you can either carry your home as an asset at its present market value were you to sell the home and then carry a liability account for the mortgage against the home, or you can carry your home as a net asset reflecting the sale price of the home less the amount of the outstanding mortgage. INCOME ACCOUNTS 7. TAXABLE INCOME. A. Taxable income is salary, rents, dividends and interest from savings, stock or other instruments of income you receive. You should create an income account for each source of income you expect to receive throughout the calendar year. 8. NON-TAXABLE INCOME. A. Non-taxable income includes dividends earned on I.R.A or Keogh accounts, retirement accounts with your employer, or dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for expenses or medical costs provided by your employer or insurance company. EXPENSE ACCOUNTS 10. EXPENSE ACCOUNTS. A. Expense accounts are accounts to show where you have spent your money. You can make the breakdown of expenses as detailed or as general as you like. If you itemize tax deductions, you will want to set up expense accounts for each of the tax benefit categories allowed by the IRS such as medical expenses, interest expenses, state and local taxes, contributions to charities, and professional expenses. You may also want to establish expense accounts for special items to keep track of how much you have spent for specific types of cost such as utilities, automobile repair costs, home improvements etc. Your particular situation will dictate how you set up of these accounts. 3.3 Account Organization. A. In an accounting system, money is never created or destroyed, it is merely moved from account to account. New money is drawn from an endless well we call INCOME, and money that we lose the use of is transferred into a bottomless pit we call EXPENSE. Money that hangs around for our continued use is stashed in asset accounts, and money we have to worry about paying in the future we keep track of in liability accounts. B. The most difficult step in performing home accounting is sitting down and defining to yourself what all of these accounts are and how you want to define them. The second most difficult job is placing a value on those accounts which have value, such as asset accounts. C. In order to have a viable accounting system, we normally want to create at least one account under each category; asset, liability, income, and expense. D. As an example to help you organize your books, let's consider a simple case. Suppose we work for ABC Company, own a $60,000 home with a $40,000 mortgage with the XYZ Savings and Loan, and bank with the First Local Bank. Let's see what accounts we should set up: Account Type Account Name Beginning Balance 1. To provide for our income from ABC company, we open an income account: Income ABC Company $0.00 2. When we receive our paycheck, we normally put it in the bank. Therefore we need a bank account to put it in. Our balance at the bank is $120.50: Checking First Local Bank $120.50 3. But not all of our pay goes to the bank. Some of it goes into a tax withholding fund, or a retirement fund, or a social security fund. For simplicity lets create an account to keep track of these items in an accounts receivable fund called "withholding": Accts Receivable Withholding $0.00 4. To account for our home and its mortgage, we create an asset account for the home, and a liability account for the mortgage and an interest expense account and property tax account to insure we keep track of our interest and tax costs for our income taxes: Major Asset Our Home $60,000.00 Liability Mortgage, First Bank $40,000.00 Expense Interest, Home Loan $0.00 Expense Property Taxes $0.00 5. As we write checks and spend money, we want to know where the money goes, so we create general expense accounts to keep track of categories of expenses, such as: Expense Food $0.00 Expense Clothing $0.00 Expense Automobile $0.00 Expense Entertainment $0.00 Etc. 6. And of course we want to keep track of those expenses we incur that are tax deductible: Expense Medical $0.00 Expense Business/Professional $0.00 Expense Charitable Contributions $0.00 Expense Taxes $0.00 Expense Interest $0.00 Etc. 7. We have now created all of the accounts we now need to keep track of our money, its income, outgo, and residence within our fiscal domain. We have accounted for all the major sources, sinks, and parking spots for our money and our obligations. Now we should enter our accounts. 3.4 Account Entry. A. To enter accounts, execute the ACCTS program. When the main menu appears on the screen, enter selection 5. MANAGE ACCOUNTS to access the ACCOUNTS MANAGER and then select: CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS. If this is the first time you have executed the program, the entry will have a distinctive color if you have a color monitor or blink on a monochrome monitor to alert you to the need to enter accounts. B. After you have selected the option to CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS, a new box appears asking you whether you want to CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS or COMBINE ACCOUNTS. Normally, select CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS. The action to COMBINE ACCOUNTS is used in cases such as at the end of the year when you want to use the balances in last year's accounts as the opening balances in the new year's accounts. C. When you select CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS, A box will appear on the right half of the screen listing the account types, conforming to the accounts listed in Section 3.2, with a number in front of each account type. The program will assign an account number to the new account and display this number on the screen in the form NEXT ACCOUNT NR:. This number is used internally by the program, and is listed on the screen for information only. D. ENTER ACCOUNTS TYPE [ ]. The program will ask for the account type to assign to the new account. Enter a number between 1 and 10 following the type definition in the box on the screen. After you enter the account type, the program will assigned an account I.D. to the account (ACCOUNT I.D. [ ]). The account I.D. consists of the number of the account type followed by a two digit account number identifier. E. ENTER ACCOUNT NAME: [ ]. The program next asks you to name the account. In the 18 character box provided, enter the account name. Select a name that is unique. If you have a checking account, a saving account, and a mortgage all at the same bank, use entries such as "First Bank Check", "First Bank Save", etc. It is important to choose names that will help you identify the account when you see it later. Also remember that the account will be carried EXACTLY as you entered it. If you want to use all lower case names, that is the way the account names will appear in all entries and printed reports. F. ENTER OPENING BALANCE [ ]. If there is a beginning balance for the account, enter this value, otherwise press return to enter the default value of zero. G. Throughout the displays, the default value for all entries, if applicable, is shown in a low video display within the brackets. Overwrite this value if you want to enter a value other than the default value. H. ENTRY CORRECT? [ ]. After the entry is made, you have one last chance to review, correct or reject an entry. Remember, once an entry has been accepted it cannot be changed. I. EXIT? [ ]. After the entry is entered/accepted, you are given a chance to exit. To exit from the account entry process, enter "Y" when asked if you wish to exit. J. When you finish entering accounts and exit to the main program, the Consolidated Home Accounting System will spend a few seconds protecting all of the files you have created by writing them to disk. To see your new accounts when you return to the main menu, SELECT PRINT OPTIONS. In the next print menu to appear, you can select either normal or compressed print, or select PRINT FILES. This selection will cause the files to be displayed. Select PRINT ACCT SUMMARY. The program will print out all of your accounts and the values you assigned to them. 3.5 Combine Accounts. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting System provides the capability to COMBINE ACCOUNTS. This option will allow you to combine two accounts into a single account or carry forward data from one year into the next. B. The COMBINE ACCOUNTS option will carry forward balances from the old set of books into a new set of books. It does not carry forward the transactions. Each of the accounts from the old set of books can be assigned new account numbers in the order of your choosing into the new set of books. 4. DATA ENTRY 4.1 Structure of Transactions A. To keep track of our money actions, we must enter transactions. After executing the program and establish your new accounts, select 1. ENTER TRANSACTIONS on the main menu. B. Transactions are records of your actions to interchange money between accounts. If you pay a bill, you transfer money from your check book to usually an expense account. If you receive money for services, this will usually be recorded as a transfer of money from income to your bank's checking account. The transaction records keep track of these transfers, and provide the basis to account for your money. C. The Consolidated Home Accounting System has the capability to record your actions with money so you know when you spent the money, how much you spent, and for what purpose. It also keeps track of assets and liabilities to any degree that you may wish to consider. Transactions are records that contains the following information: The Date of the Transaction The Amount of the Transaction Who paid the money Who received the money (what was the check number) (what was the number of shares bought/sold) Why the money was paid D. The transaction records internally have additional data in the form of cross reference information necessary for the Consolidated Home Accounting System to track your accounts. You can view this information using the diagnostic displays discussed in Chapter 7. 4.2 Transaction Entry A. Transaction entry keystrokes have been designed to be largely numeric. This allows you to use the numeric keypad on the right hand side of the keyboard, substantially speeding up the data entry process after a little practice. Find the NUM LOCK key on your keyboard. Toggle the NUM LOCK key to select numeric data entry using the keypad. Ignore this command if you do not wish to avail yourself of this feature for data entry. B. The following paragraphs describe in detail the entries required for each of the displayed blocks of data requested by the Consolidated Home Accounting System. Where appropriate, help prompts are displayed on the screen when each of these entries appears: 4.2.1 DATE MMDD [ ]. A. The Consolidated Home Accounting Program expects a three or four digit number entry defining the date of the transaction, such as: 412 for April 12 1217 for December 17 B. The date should be entered without blanks or any other separators between the month and the day. The program will check the numbers for gross validity. If the number you enter is not a valid date, the program will re-position the cursor at the entry block. C. If you want to enter today's date, just press RETURN and the computer will enter today's date. D. The date is the first entry of the transaction. Once you have entered the date, the program will require you to complete the transaction entry. You can exit the transaction session, however, by entering the number 0 instead of a date in the box for the date. 4.2.2 PAYING ACCT I.D. [ ]. A. As the name implies, this is the account that is paying the money, or is ending up with less money as a result of the transaction. The program expects a three or four digit number. The first digit(s) are the account type. The second two numbers designate the account number within that account type. B. If you do not know the paying account type, press the ENTER or RETURN key without entering any other numbers, and the account type reference display will appear on the far right of the screen. This display will list all account types. Select an account type, and a listing of all accounts within that type will be shown in a window in the center of the screen. Note that the first numbers of the account I.D. have been automatically entered by the program into the account I.D. entry section. You now need only enter the specific account number. The reference display is discussed in Section 4.3. C. If you know the paying account type but do not know the specific account number, then enter the account type number in the entry block and press RETURN. A display will appear in the center of the screen defining all of the accounts within that type. Select an account number and complete your entry. 4.2.3 CHECK NUMBER [ ]. A. The system will ask for the check number only if the paying account is a checking account. Enter the number of the check you are entering into the accounting system. 4.2.4 NR SHARES SOLD [ ]. A. If the selling account type is STOCKS AND BONDS, then the program will ask you to enter the number of shares sold. You can enter fractional shares if necessary, such as 23.56 shares for example. Be sure to read Section 4.5 to understand how the System manages the value of stocks and bonds. This entry can be a very important entry. 4.2.5 AMOUNT: [ ]. A. Enter the total amount of the transaction in dollars and cents including the period. 4.2.6 CREDIT ACCT [ ]. A. Enter the I.D. of the credit account, or that account that will gain money as a result of the transaction. Again, if you do not know the I.D. or the number of the account, press ENTER or RETURN to request the system to show reference displays. 4.2.7 SHARES BOUGHT [ ]. A. If the buying account type is STOCKS AND BONDS, the program will ask you to enter the number of shares bought. You can enter fractional share amounts if necessary. Be sure to read Section 4.5 to understand how the Consolidated Home Accounting System manages the value of stocks and bond. This is an important entry. 4.2.8 ANOTHER CREDIT ACCOUNT? Y/N [ ]. A. Normally, a transaction involves only two accounts, the account that pays the money and the account that receives the money. Occasionally, however, the money being paid is distributed between several receiving accounts. A typical example is the home mortgage. Part of the money paid is allocated to principal, and part to interest. B. The Consolidated Home Accounting System provides for distributing a single payment to as many receiving accounts as you want. If there is only one account involved, hit any key other than Y. If there are two or more accounts to be used to receive the money, then enter Y. If you select ANOTHER CREDIT ACCOUNT, after you complete the transaction into the currently displayed receiving account, a new transaction screen will appear. The new screen will display the remaining BALANCE [ ] of money to be allocated to additional accounts. 4.2.9 ENTER AMT: [ ]. A. Enter the amount to be credited to the credit account. This entry will be required ONLY if there is a need for distributing funds between more than one account. 4.2.10 DESCRIPTION [ ]. A. Enter a description of the transaction in 20 characters or less. For multiple entry transactions, you can enter a new description for each receiving account. 4.2.11 ENTRY CORRECT? Y/N [ ]. A. If the entry is incorrect, reject the entry by entering N, otherwise continue. Accepting the transaction will result in the transaction being written to the transaction file. B. For multiple-entry transactions, only the last screen of the transaction is rejected. Should you find that you want to cancel the transaction after you have entered it into the system, you can delete transactions using the SCAN TRANSACTIONS option. 4.2.12 EXIT? Y/N [ ]. A. If you want to enter another transaction, press any key and the process will be repeated. If you want to exit the transaction process, press Y. 4.3 Account Reference Display A. The account reference display is available at any time you have to enter an account I.D. It is accessed by pressing either ENTER or RETURN when asked to enter an account number. B. An account I.D. is a number that identifies the account type and the account number within that particular account type. Often you may remember the account type but cannot remember the full account number. The data entry routines for the account I.D. allow you to enter the entire account I.D. if you know it. Whenever you enter the full account I.D., a description of the account will appear of the screen to verify your entry. C. If you do not know the complete account I.D., you can enter either the account type if you know that, or press return, leaving the entry field blank. D. The account type reference display provides a complete list of all accounts by type if you press RETURN with a blank entry field, so you never have to remember your account types. The prompts will ask you to enter the account type after displaying the standard account types. The entry will be a one or two digit number corresponding to the numbers opposite the account types. E. All of the accounts under the selected account type will be displayed in a display in the center-right of the screen, along with their complete account I.D.'s. If there are more accounts than will fit into the space, you are provided the opportunity to continue scrolling and displaying more accounts. F. After you have displayed the accounts, the cursor is automatically repositioned to the proper account entry box for you to enter the account number. Note you only have to complete the account number within the field. The program has filled in the account type for you as you proceeded through the selection process. 4.4 What about mistakes? A. Correct data entry is essential to keeping accurate records. Several safeguards have been built into the Consolidated Home Accounting System to minimize the opportunity for errors. Even with the checks built in to the program, however, mistakes will occur. B. Before completing any entry on the transaction screen by pressing RETURN, you can correct your entry. This is the BEST place to proofread and correct your mistakes. C. You have several opportunities to cancel the transaction process before the transaction is recorded. The program will never record a transaction without you validating its accuracy. If you can catch the mistake before the transaction is recorded, it can be canceled and re-entered. D. Should you make a mistake, you are better off first backing out the transaction and restoring the accounts to their status before the transaction is accepted, and then entering a new transaction that will complete the transaction properly. A transaction is officially entered in the books after you enter Y in response to the ENTRY CORRECT? Y/N [ ] block. E. To abort a transaction before it is logged, take any one of the following actions: 1. Enter the character "0" in the date block. 2. Insert N in the ENTRY CORRECT? Y/N [ ] block. F. Once a transaction has been recorded, the only way to correct the mistake is to find the transaction by selection option 2. SCAN TRANSACTIONS, finding the bad transaction and deleting it. Transactions are deleted from the transaction file, but the transaction record will remain on the file. To purge the transaction record from the file, run the AUDIT option of the ACCOUNTS MANGER. G. To view transactions for possible errors you can select menu option 2. SCAN TRANSACTIONS. This option allows you to display the transactions you have entered on the screen and review them. Transactions are scanned by account I.D., with the latest transactions being viewed first. By entering the letter D when the transaction is displayed during the transaction scan, the transaction will be deleted. Be careful with this option as it can destroy valuable data if not used wisely. H. The option to scan transactions has several double-check features to insure correct entries. It will display the overall account balances, account share balances, and information such as price per share for share account transactions. You can print out the transactions and review them at your leisure by selecting PRINT OPTIONS and choosing one of the transaction print options displayed. I. The menu of the Consolidated Home Accounting System provides display and print options for the accounts. In addition there are additional diagnostic displays discussed in Chapter 8 to assist should problems arise in the file integrity. 4.5 Share Values. A. The value of a share of stock is established by the price you paid for that stock the last time you bought stock or the price you received for the stock the last time you sold the stock. Every time you buy or sell stock (or bonds), you establish a value for your entire portfolio of that stock based upon the latest buy/sell transaction. For purposes of calculating the value of stocks and bonds to determine net worth, the Consolidated Home Accounting System multiplies the total number of shares owned by the last buy/sell price to establish a portfolio value. Every time a transaction involving shares is entered, this value is altered to reflect latest market conditions. 5. DISPLAY OPTIONS 5.1 General. A. Display options include both screen and printer displays. The printer displays are for files of data maintained in the system. Under the printer display options is the ability to create disk files formatted in a manner compatible with LOTUS 123 IMPORT functions. There are additional printer outputs associated with the analysis options. 5.2 Main Menu Option 2. SCAN TRANSACTIONS. A. The Scan Transactions option provides a screen display of transactions by account. Transactions are displayed starting with the most recent entry first to the oldest entry last. After the display is initiated, the successively older entries are shown. Transactions are displayed until there are no more to display or until the scan is terminated by the user. B. The display provides some general account data such as account balances and share balances for stocks and bonds accounts. C. Scan transactions provides a delete utility allowing you to delete displayed transactions from the transaction record. Be careful in using this command. Once a transaction has been deleted, it cannot be recovered. It would have to be manually re-entered. 5.3 Main Menu Option 4. VIEW BALANCE SHEET. A. This is a two⌐screen display. The first screen shows the balance sheet with a calculation of assets, liabilities, and net worth. This display gives you a quick look at your overall financial position. B. The second panel is an analysis of what has happened to your net worth since opening the books. It lets you know if you are spending more than you are earning, or conversely increasing your value. A crude measure of how your fixed and liquid assets (Savings, checking accounts, stocks and bonds) have changed in value are shown. 5.4 Main Menu Option 7. SELECT PRINT OPTIONS. A. The SELECT PRINT OPTIONS selection provides for either printing files, or selecting printer format options. Under the sub menu option PRINT OPTIONS, There are three major print options and one disk file create option: 1. PRINT ACCT SUMMARY. (80-Column format). The PRINT ACCT SUMMARY option prints each of the active accounts on the list device. The account number, account type, account name, debit balance, credit balance and net balance for each account is shown. This listing provides a quick summary of the status of all the accounts. 2. PRINT TRANSACTIONS. (132-Column Format). The PRINT TRANSACTIONS option prints every transaction entered into the system. You have the choice of selecting either those transactions for a selected account or all transactions. The output provides a description of the transaction, the amount of the transaction, and all of the detailed data entered during data entry. If a check was involved, the check number is shown. Totals and an account balance are calculated. The transaction by account listing is designed to provide the detailed backup required as support for income tax information. There are two ways to display transaction entries if selected accounts are chosen as the print option. You can display all entered transaction values or only those values assigned to the specific account. 3. PRINT AUDIT FILE. (80-Column Format). The PRINT AUDIT FILE provides a listing of the initial values entered when you opened the books for each transaction. The format is the same as the account summary listing. 4. WRITE LOTUS IMPORT. (Disk File). The WRITE LOTUS IMPORT option creates a set of disk files which are re-formatted versions of the various data files of the Consolidated Home Accounting System to allow users to perform additional analysis of the data within the LOTUS 123 system. Refer to your LOTUS manual for use of these files in 123. 6. BUDGET AND ANALYSIS OPTIONS 6.1 General. A. Main menu option 8. BUDGETING/ANALYSIS is the entry point to a complete analysis capability. The system is comprehensive and some of the output may be unfamiliar to the casual user, so a chapter is dedicated to discussing these features. 6.2 Budgeting. A. If you really want to control your spending and know where your money goes, then you will want to create and use a budget. We all know what a budget is. Stripped of confusing accounting terminology, a budget is simply a plan for distributing the money you earn - a plan for living. The consolidated Home Accounting System provides an option to establish and maintain a budget. B. The budget option is closely linked with the analysis option in the belief that if you go to the effort of building a budget, you will want some payback from that effort through an analysis of the results of your actual costs compared to your plan. Therefore, the analysis option can employ the budget data and provide comparative analysis for your use. C. The Consolidated Home Accounting System maintains budgets by account by month. That is, for each account you create, you can assign a budget value for January, February,...etc. through December. The value you assign is the balance of the account at the end of the month. D. To create a budget: 1. Select Main Menu Option 8. BUDGETING/ANALYSIS. 2. Select Analysis Options Menu option 2. BUDGET OPTIONS. 3. If you have already created a budget, the budget session will allow you to modify and update your budget. Otherwise, it will ask you if you want to create a new budget. 4. Once you enter the budget module for the first time, you will have to create a budget for every account you have assigned. You can skip account items by entering NO BUDGET FOR THIS ACCOUNT, but the budget program will continue to the end. You can return to the budget later and update selected accounts which you may have skipped the first time through. 5. You may not want to assign a budget value to every account. Some accounts, such as checking accounts, usually have little meaning so far as a budget is concerned. The important accounts are those sources as sinks in our accounting system, income and expenses. Lets consider some examples by account type (Hint: It helps to have a printout of your initial entries from the PRINT AUDIT FILE option in front of you when making budget entries): a. MAJOR ASSETS. A major asset usually has a fixed value throughout the year. You can either ignore the budget entry for this account type or enter that fixed value for every month of the year. Select the value assignment option CONSTANT VALUE FOR ALL MONTHS and enter the value of the asset. b. STOCKS & BONDS. Stocks and bonds represent savings. What are your plans during the year regarding your stock or bond accounts? Are you going to sell the stocks and bonds, buy more stock, or what? If you reinvest dividends, how much do you expect in dividends? Enter a value for each month for each stock and bond account to reflect your expectations. Budgeting your stocks and bonds can be an important exercise, because at the end of the year, or at the end of some period, you can run the analysis portion of the Consolidated Home Accounting System and see if the stocks and bonds you own lived up to the expectations you had for them. If they didn't meet expectations, you may want to change your portfolio. c. SAVING ACCOUNTS. Budgeting for your saving accounts, (like budgeting for stocks and bonds) is an important family financial planning process. What are your savings balances now? What do you want them to be at the end of the year? Build a budget to reflect this thinking, so at the end of the year you can review how you were able to do. d. CHECKING ACCOUNTS . Budgeting for checking accounts usually has little significance in planning, unless you like to keep a minimum balance in your checking accounts. Enter this minimum balance in the budget line, enter an average balance for the checking account, or enter the option NO BUDGET FOR THIS ACCOUNT. Remember that some accounts you may call checking accounts are really savings accounts that issue checks. Use the same rule for savings accounts with these accounts. e. CREDIT CARDS AND RECEIVABLES. Usually, we hope to end the year owing no money on credit cards and not having anyone else owe money to us. You can either ignore these as budget entries or enter 0 as a value in the account. Of course, if you owe money to the credit card issuers or have outstanding loans, be sure to account for them. f. INCOME. Usually, our pay is expected to remain somewhat constant over the year or maybe hopefully increase a tad. Income other than pay should be estimated by account. For persons owning rental property, the expected rent is an important income feature. Enter the amounts you expect to receive in pay and other income. g. LIABILITIES. For major liabilities, if they are new liabilities, such as buying and financing a new home or car, show (by date) when the liability will be assumed. Once you assume the liability, you begin paying off the loan or liability, therefore your liability decreases. For a home loan the actual amount of the liability may vary a little from month to month. The best way to handle the reduction of liability (or contribution to principal) is to change the amount of the liability by a constant amount each month. h. EXPENSES. For most home budgets, this is the most important item. How much do you expect to spend each month for rent, utilities or for any other item of expense which you have to pay for through the year? Establish your figures realistically. Heating costs will be high in the winter months and will taper off and be very low in the summer months. Review prior year receipts and make sure you allow for increases which occur to most utility expenses each year. 6.3 Budget Entry. A. The budget entry session of the Consolidated Home Accounting system is simple and straight forward. The console screen is divided into two segments. The left hand part of the screen is the data entry segment. It displays the months of the year for which values are entered for each account. The right hand side of the screen displays options for budget entry, called value assignment options. these are: 1. SEPARATELY BY MONTH. Under this option you can put in a unique budget value for each month of the year. 2. CONSTANT VALUE FOR ALL MONTHS. This is one of the most widely used option in our experience. This covers income, expenses such as home expenses and assets. Just enter the values as indicated and all months of the year are assigned the same value. 3. FIXED INCREASE/DECREASE PER MONTH. This item is best for calculating liability decreases through loan payments, or the increase in a savings account into which you plan to make routine deposits. The program will ask you for your beginning balance and the amount to increase or decrease the balance by for each month. 4. NO BUDGET FOR THIS ACCOUNT. Ignores the account. No budget is created. The account is assigned a budget value of 0. B. The first time you enter the budget program, the program will require that all accounts assigned at that time be treated in some fashion with your budget input. If you do not know what your budget is for an account, enter 4. NO BUDGET FOR THIS ACCOUNT. After the first pass through the budget, you can then enter the budget routine later and selectively change or update budget numbers. C. After you enter a budget, you have the option of changing the budget before accepting it. After you have accepted the budget, you further have the option of recalling the budget and revising it as often as you wish. Just re-enter the budget option and select the budget update option. 6.4 The Analysis Option. A. The analysis option produces printer output in 132-column format. Before executing the analysis routines, be sure your printer is set to the right print format. B. The analysis option produces a two or more page printed output for all accounts. It is executed by making your printer ready and then selecting option 8. BUDGETING/ANALYSIS from the main menu, and then selecting 1. ANALYSIS OF DATA from the Analysis Options window. Each printed page will accommodate three months of data. Therefore a year's analysis will require four sets of 2 or more pages each, or 8 or more pages. C. Upon entering the analysis section, you will be asked to list the beginning month for the analysis output and the ending month of the analysis output. Once these are entered, the analysis program will produce a complete cash and assets analysis and print the output on the printer. 6.5 Interpreting and Understanding the Analysis Output. A. The printed output from the analysis utility produces 2 pages of output for each three months of the account. If the account listings are very long, each of the two pages may use more than a page of paper for output. Most home accounts, however, will fit nicely on two output pages. B. Page 1 of the analysis output lists all the accounts involved with income and expense. First, all of the income accounts (account types 7 and 8) are listed and totaled for the month. Then all the expense accounts (Account type 10) are listed and totaled for the month. The differences between total income and total expense is presented as `NET CASH'. The page 1 output is formatted as follows for each month: INCOME(+) ACCT / Name Actual Income Budget Income Variance EXPENSE(-) ACCT / Name Actual Expense Budget Expense Variance RESULTS(=) NET CASH FLOW Actual Budget Variance C. Page 1 compares the total money input into your home accounts against the total expenses. You will note your expenses do not include the money you paid out to reduce your mortgage or put into savings. These are not considered expenses, but merely a transfer of money from cash into another asset (which, in theory, you can recover at a later date). If you earn more than you spend, then the NET CASH FLOW number will be positive, and in a general sense you increase the amount of your personal wealth. If you spend more than you earn, the NET CASH FLOW will be negative, which in essence, says that you are spending part of your personal wealth to pay your bills. D. If you prepared a budget, the program will list actual values next to your budgeted values, and calculate the difference which is identified as the variance. By comparing the money you actually earned and spent with the amounts you anticipated earning and spending, you can better understand where your money is coming from and where it is going. E. Every income and expense account is listed separately on page 1, so you can see how each of your accounts contribute to your overall income and expenses. If you have to consider cutting expenses or ponder the results of new expenses or income, you can assess their impact at a glance. This allows you to play what accountants call "what if" games. F. Page 2 of the analysis package calculates your net worth by month, and shows how NET CASH FLOW from page 1 has impacted your assets and liabilities. In effect, page 2 is an analysis of your personal wealth on a month by month basis. The calculation is the same as the calculation you see when you VIEW BALANCE SHEET from the main menu, except that every asset and liability account is listed separately so you can see how the changes in each account has affected your personal wealth, or NET WORTH. The format of page 2 is as follows: ASSETS(+) ACCT / Name Actual Value Budget Value Variance LIABILITIES(-) ACCT / Name Actual Value Budget Value Variance RESULTS(=) NET WORTH Actual Budget Variance G. As in page 1, each of the asset accounts and each of the liability accounts are listed separately, so you can see if they increased or decreased in value from month to month. By comparing actual values against budget values, you can assess whether you are doing better or worse compared to your plans, and can watch savings accumulate or shrink. And what is most important, you will know where improvement may be required. H. In evaluating the balance sheet (Page 2), a few comments about stock and bonds are in order. Please read paragraph 4.5 carefully to understand how the Consolidated Home Accounting System handles stocks and bonds. The value of your wealth, or net worth, is based upon what the present market value of your stocks and bonds may be, not what you may have paid for the shares in the past. The program assumes that the price you paid or the price you were able to receive for the stocks during the last transaction entered is the present value of all remaining shares of like stock. If stock and bonds are a major part of your personal portfolio, check this value carefully. You may want to enter a transaction to create a dummy stock buy followed by a transaction with a dummy stock sell of say, one share, to cause the system to reflect current market value for your stock. 7. MENU STRUCTURE 7.1 General. A. To assist you find your way through the program, the following paragraphs describe the Consolidated Home Accounting System menu structure. The first level is the main menu level. Each indent is a sub menu under the main menu. A brief discussion of the menu options is included to help you find the right utility within the system to meet your needs. MAIN MENU: 1. ENTER TRANSACTIONS. Transaction Entry. No Sub menus. The transaction entry section is the most often used section in the Consolidated Home Accounting System. See Chapter 3. 2. SCAN TRANSACTIONS. Transaction display on screen. No sub menus. The scan transactions allows you to view transactions for a selected account, to view the overall status of the lected account, and to delete transactions from the transaction file. 3. BALANCE CHECKBOOK. No Sub menus. The balance checkbook option allows you to identify checks that have been entered and cleared through the bank, and resolve the checking account bank statement with your checkbook balance. 4. VIEW BALANCE SHEET. Displays balance sheet on the monitor. No sub menus. The balance sheet shows the status of accounts as of the last entry. 5. MANAGE ACCOUNTS. Add new accounts to the list of accounts; carries forward accounts from another set of books; and provides the capability to audit existing accounts. 1. MANAGE ACCOUNTS. Allows the user to create new accounts or merge several accounts. 1. CREATE NEW ACCOUNTS. Add new accounts to your list of accounts (set of books) from the keyboard. 2. COMBINE ACCOUNTS. Add new accounts to the list of accounts by using another list of accounts and by keyboard entry. 2. AUDIT ACCOUNTS. A utility routine to verify the accuracy of account values. This routine is particularly useful when you have had a system failure and corrupted your files. See Chapter 8. Note: Do not use this option unless you want to audit records. No built-in escape code. 6. MANAGE BOOKS. Maintains the master list of books that the ACCTS program will maintain and manage. 1. CHANGE ACTIVE BOOKS. Select another set of books to be opened and accessed by the program. You can easily change from one set of books to another. 2. OPEN NEW BOOKS. Create a new set of books for use, such as books for a new year, or alternatively restore a set of books that had been deleted and then restored to the system. 3. DELETE OLD BOOKS. Delete from the master list those books for which files are no longer maintained on the system. 7. SELECT PRINT OPTIONS. Generalized Output. 1. PRINT FILES. Select Output Options: 1. PRINT ACCT SUMMARY. 80-column listing of all accounts and balances. 2. PRINT TRANSACTIONS. 132-column listing of all transactions or subsets of transactions. 3. PRINT AUDIT FILE. 80-column listing of the beginning balances entered when the books were opened. 4. WRITE LOTUS IMPORT. Create disk file of files in the LOTUS.PRN format for import by LOTUS 123. This utility allows you to perform specialized analysis with the Lotus 1-2-3 program if you desire. 2. SET COMPRESSED PRINT. Send the compressed print string to the printer. If you have another print string you want to send, such as changing pitch for a daisy wheel printer, you can also enter this string set here. 3. SET NORMAL PRINT. Send the normal print string to the printer. 8. BUDGETING/ANALYSIS Enter the budget and analysis section of the program. 1. ANALYSIS OF DATA. Conduct an analysis of data. This utility produces output providing a detailed, structured analysis of accounts. See Chapter 6. 1. Select the beginning and ending months for analysis. 2. BUDGET OPTIONS. Enter to establish a budget or update a budget. If you want to maintain a budget, this utility provides you with this capability. 9. CONFIGURE SYSTEM. Change the system configuration, i.e., screen colors, printer options, Etc. 0. EXIT. Exit the system. 8. EXPERT TOPICS 8.1 General Caution. A. This section discusses program details and file structures. It also discusses the recovery of corrupted transaction files. The features described herein should be used with care. B. As a general operating practice, NEVER use your master data file when using these options. Make a copy of your master file and use the copy when executing commands in this section. That way, should you end up accidentally destroying your data, you still have a retrievable copy to return to. This applies to both data and programs. C. To copy files from your master accounts disk to a copy disk for audit functions, enter your master disk in drive A and a blank, formatted disk in drive B. then type at the DOS prompt: COPY A:*.CHA B: 8.2 Data File Description. A. There are five data files created by the Consolidated Home Accounting System; one which resides on the default drive and four that reside on the data drive: 1. ACCTSYS.CFN resides on the default drive. This file contains all of the drive/path definitions and the configuration of the program on your computer. 2. XXXXXXTM.CHA resides on the data file. This file contains up to 255 records describing the accounts, maintaining the data on account numbers, account types, account debit and credit balances, and entry pointers for use by the transaction processing program. In addition to the variables listed below, a number of variables have been reserved for future use. 3. XXXXXXTR.CHA resides on the data disk. The transaction file is the master file on the system. While the other files will remain unaltered once they are created, the transaction file will grow with use of the program. Each record in the transaction file defines a single transaction, and consists of 61 bytes. 4. XXXXXXAU.CHA is a file that contains the original balances and unvarying data for each data disk. Because the data in the audit file is unvarying, it is used extensively to reconstruct valid books if or when the files ever become damaged. 5. XXXXXXBD.CHA is the optional budget file that contains monthly budget data. This file will be created only if there is a budget. 6. All of the files are interlinked within the program, and data on one file is interrelated with data on the others. 8.3 Advanced Diagnostics. A. The program is provided with file diagnostic commands. These are hidden commands. They do not appear on the menu. You can execute the commands, however, while in the menu part of the program by typing the appropriate command letter. The file diagnostic commands show the exact transaction and balance records as they are entered into the computer data base. B. About the only time this capability would be of use is if you feel your data files have become corrupted. You can view the actual disk records and see if there is bad information entered in them. C. To enter the diagnostic routines, execute 9. CONFIGURE SYSTEM. At the prompt, PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE, enter the following commands: 1. To display the Transaction file data in raw data form press the capital letter W. 2. To display the Balance File data in raw data form press the capital letter Q. 8.4 Corrupted Data Retrieval. A. The transaction file can become corrupted if the program does not terminate normally. This is caused by the fact that as you update accounts, each new transaction is written to disk as it is updated. However, all other associated file information is retained in memory until the program is terminated. The new files are read to disk before the program execution concludes. Therefore when the program terminates abnormally (such as occurs in the event of a power failure) the information the program requires to find the proper transactions has not been copied to disk. B. The next time you run the program and enter transactions, all of the new transactions will be properly associated with the other account records on disk, but will not have proper record numbers. Further, the associated data on disk will have no history of the prior set of transactions. Therefore, when you run listing programs or transaction scanning options, you will see the Message, "BROKEN CHAIN". Additionally, when the program is executed after an abnormal termination, if the file structure does not pass a set of consistency checks performed by the program, a message will appear that the data files are corrupted. C. The AUDIT manager has been provided as a utility under MANAGE ACCOUNTS to restore bad files and to perform other functions in cleaning up your files. The AUDIT utility uses the XXXXXXAU.CHA file to re-establish your file baseline and rebuild your accounting files should they become corrupted. This makes the XXXXXXAU.CHA file very valuable. 8.4.1 Use of AUDIT. A. AUDIT methodically scans all files and rebuilds them. The utility first renames all of the .CHA files to CHX files. If there is a pre-existing set of CHX files with the same name on the disk, the program will halt and will not run until the old CHX files have been removed from the active directory. This happens to make sure that the program does not destroy files you may want to keep. B. After renaming files, the AUDIT utility will ask you to re-validate the beginning balances for the audit file. At this time you should check the beginning balances for all of your accounts for accuracy. C. After the audit file has been re-validated, the utility will build a new balance file from the list of transactions. If there are garbled or incomplete transactions, they will be deleted from the transaction file and a message will be shown on the screen. Messages will also be displayed on the screen should there be questionable but retained records in the transaction file. Should you have deleted transactions from the transaction record, the AUDIT utility will purge the deleted record from the file. A message will be shown that this has occurred. D. When the utility completes, there will be two sets of files on your disk. The set with the program designator .CHA will be the new files created by the utility. The old set remain unaltered and are given the designator .CHX. After the AUDIT process is complete, if you wish to save your old files, they can be renamed from CHX files to CHA files after you have moved them to a different disk. E. You will see a number of file handling screens displayed before you are asked to perform any actions. The AUDIT utility follows some elaborate procedures to assure safety of your files. The utility will also ask you to verify the requirement to run the program. F. First, the AUDIT utility will ask you to verify the beginning balances for all accounts. You may accept the balances as shown or modify the balances to a new value. G. Once the beginning balances are verified, the transaction files are scanned transaction by transaction, and new files are constructed. If there are questionable transactions that cannot be resolved, you will be provided a message on the screen identifying the transaction number. If there are deleted transactions, the records will be purged from the accounts and you will be shown a message so indicating. H. After the accounts have been audited and the system reverified, the program will make the new accounts the active accounts and return to the accounting program main menu. APPENDIX A USE OF THE CONVERT PROGRAM. A. The CONVERT program will convert files formatted for Version 2 of the Consolidated Home Accounting System into proper format for the Version 3 program. B. To use the CONVERT program, follow the below listed steps carefully: 1. If you have not installed and run the Version 3 accounting program ACCTS, first follow the instructions for running the ACCTS program outlined in Chapter 2. Be sure to exit the ACCTS program prior to creating a set of accounts. 2. If you create a set of accounts using the ACCTS program before running the CONVERT program, you can either keep them and use them as another set of accounts or delete them at your option later. 3. The CONVERT program, however, will create a new set of accounts and add them to the system. 4. Make the default disk and directory that directory containing the ACCTS configuration file and program. Usually this is the same disk and directory used for the CONVERT program if you followed the installation procedures in Chapter 2. 5. Execute CONVERT. 6. The CONVERT program will ask for two types of information. First, it will ask you to define the name and location of the files to be converted. It will then ask you for the name and location of the disk, directory and file name where you want the new files stored. You are also allowed to rename your accounts during the convert process. Neither of these locations need be the same file that the program is using. 7. Once the names have been properly specified, the program will create a new set of files for the Version 3 accounting system. The Version 2 files will remain unaltered.