PMT – Personal Money Tracker – Tutorial

This tutorial is designed to take you through the steps that define a few basic accounts and categories, enter some transactions, and look at the results. Comments in smaller type give you a little more detail about what’s going on at each step.

Getting Started

When you first launch PMT, you are presented with an empty Account List view. Tap the New Button to enter your first transaction. This brings up the Transaction Record entry form.

Creating New Accounts and Categories

1. Tap the Category trigger to see the Category/Account list. Two accounts are predefined: Cash, and Equity. 2. Tap on Edit... to edit the Category/Account list.

3) Tap the New button to add a new account. The buttons on the Edit Accounts form allow you to add new accounts (New), Edit existing accounts, and Delete existing accounts. Accounts must be defined with Assets first, then Liabilities, then Income categories, then Expense categories. The New button will add an account following the one currently highlighted. You should think about the order you want accounts listed in, because it is difficult to change the order once you have defined your accounts.

4) Type Check in the Name field, and tap OK (the type is already set to Asset, which is what we want for this account). For the Type selector, cash and bank accounts are Assets (money you have). Credit Cards and lines of credit are Liabilities (money you owe). Income is money you receive, such as salary or bank interest. Expenses are money you spend, such as rent or groceries. You can select the currency for Asset and Liability accounts if the account is held in a foreign currency. See the Reference Guide for details.

5) Tap the New button again to add an account called Credit Crd. Set the Type to Liability, and tap OK. Now highlight the Equity Account and tap New to add an account called Salary, with the type set to Income. Set the Budget to 24000.00 and tap OK. In the same way, add accounts with the Type set to Expense, and names Groceries, Rent, and Gas. Set the Budget for each of them to 6000.00. When you have completed these steps, the screen should look the same as the picture on the left. Notice that for Asset and Liability accounts, you can select a foreign currency for the account. For Income and Expense accounts, you can enter a budget amount.

6) Tap on Check to highlight it, and tap on OK. Tap on the Account trigger, and select Equity. Enter 1000.00 in the Amount. When you have completed these steps, the screen should look the same as the picture on the left. Tap Done. This transaction enters your starting balance for the Check account. It is entered with Equity as the "Account," because it isn’t income, it’s just your starting balance. Notice how the Category and Account labels change when you select an account to indicate the effect the transaction will have on the accounts you select.

Entering Starting Balances

You should have noticed that the transaction you just entered is not on the Account List! Don’t panic. The list being displayed is for your Cash account; we haven’t made any entries for that one yet. To make things easier, tap the word Cash at the top right. Tap on Equity. You are now displaying transactions for the Equity account, so now you can see your entry. If you want to see more, tap on the transaction to highlight it, and then tap on it again This will display the details (if you wanted to make changes to the transaction, tap the Edit button instead). Then tap Done. Now tap on New, and in the same manner as above, enter Cash as the Category (notice that Equity is already set as the Account; this is because you have selected Equity for the Account List), and 50.00 as the Amount, and tap Done. You now see both transactions. Now tap on New and enter Credit Crd for the Category and 200.00 as the Amount, and tap Done. Tap on Balances, and this is what you should see.

You have entered starting balances for Cash, Check, and Credit Crd. The Account Balances form shows you your "Balance Sheet", the balances as of the current date (shown top right) for each of your accounts. Before any income or expenses are entered, you have a Surplus of 0.00 – this represents your excess of income over expenses (none so far!). Your Equity is a kind of net worth, the money you have less the money you owe, but don’t worry too much about it – PMT looks after the details.

Entering Income and Expenses

In the above steps, the date for the initial balance entries was 11/1/2000. That was simply the current date in the handheld. In the following steps, different dates will be used. It doesn’t matter what dates you enter, but they should be different.

As you have just experienced, entering transactions is easy. So let’s enter some more. Tap on Account List. Then tap the trigger at top right and select Check. Tap on New, and notice the Account is already set to Check for you. Tap on the Date to select a different date in the future, select Salary for the Category, enter 500.00 for the Amount, and tap on Done.

Now enter some expense transactions. Enter transactions of 100.00 each for Groceries, Rent, and Gas, each on a different date in the future. When you do one any of these, tap on the Description trigger. Tap on Edit... to enter a series of forms similar to those you saw to enter Categories and Accounts. Descriptions are used for transaction descriptions that reoccur, so that you don’t have to retype them every time. For example, if you regularly buy Groceries at three different stores, you might want to create a Description entry with the name of each of them. Then to enter the name of the store into a transaction, you only have to tap on it.

When you have entered your transactions, it should look like this.

If you tap on Balances, you will see the same display you saw before. What happened to the entries you just made? This display is for today’s date; the entries you made were for dates in the future. But we can see balances for any date. Tap on Menu on the silk screen, and tap on Balances Date on the drop down menu. Select a date later than the latest entry you made (I selected November 13^th), and this is what you will see.

Tap on Income/Expense. This shows you the Income/Expense report, with the results of your transactions summarized, like the picture on the left. The numbers in the right column represent your budget figures, calculated to the end of the current month (remember we put salary 24,000.00, so to the end of November it is 22,000.00).

Entering Amounts in Foreign Currencies

PMT uses your local currency for each transaction by default. When you enter a transaction, the currency symbol is shown with a selector trigger to the right of the amount. Tapping this selector shows this display. As an experiment, tap on "Add.." to create a new currency name. Do so, and create a currency name for Japanese Yen using the ¥ symbol. Then tap on icon that appears to the right of the ¥ symbol.

The exchange rate dialogue appears. Enter the exchange rate from the foreign currency into your local currency. This rate will be saved with this transaction. When you tap OK and then tap Done, you will see the converted amount (8.48) on the account list.

Remember that because exchange rates change frequently, the exact exchange rate used must be entered for each transaction. However, if you do not enter an exchange rate for a transaction, PMT will use the exchange rate most recently entered prior to the date of the transaction you are entering. If you do not know the exact rate that will apply (when entering a credit card purchase, for example), then enter one that is close. You can always go back and correct it when you receive your credit card statement.

Your Next Steps

So now you see how easy it is to enter PMT transactions, and look at the results by account using the Account List, or in summary form looking at the Balance Sheet and Income/Expense reports. The Reference Guide fills in a few more details, and describes the menu commands that provide some more controls and features. Experiment with PMT a bit more before you start entering your own information, and you will master it in a very short amount of time.

© Copyright 2001 D. Joan McBride. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced without the expressed written consent of D. Joan McBride. PMT, Personal Money Tracker, and the PMT Conduit are trademarks of D. Joan McBride. HotSync is a registered trademark, and Palm is a trademark of Palm Inc. Third party brand and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.