Share Gallery 1

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ Share Gallery 1 / share_gal_1.zip / share_gal_1 / BF / BF010B.ZIP / BILL.DOC next >

Wrap

Text File | 1989-08-03 | 109KB | 2,485 lines

.mt 0 .mb 0 .op ### ### ####### ## # # ## ## ## ## # # ## ## ## ## # ## ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ### ## ## ## ## * tm ####### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ######## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ## ######### ######### MR. BILL programs and manual copyright 1985, 1987 by David M. Alexander NO WARRANTY -- YOU USE THIS PROGRAM AT YOUR RISK, NOT MY RISK. NO WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS. AT THIS PRICE, IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG, THE RISK IS YOURS. MR. BILL is a Trade Mark of David M. Alexander MS-DOS is a Trade Mark Of MicroSoft Inc. This manual is copyrighted by David M. Alexander 1985, 1986 All of the programs beginning with the letters BILL and referred to in this manual are copyrighted by David M. Alexander 1985. No part of this manual or these programs may be copied without the written permission of David M. Alexander. DAVID ALEXANDER 2600 EL CAMINO REAL SUITE 506 PALO ALTO, CA 94306 415-857-9233 Print the manual through your wordprocessor (WordStar, WordPerfect, PC-Write, etc) OR by typing: A>COPY BILL.DOC LPT1: [RETURN] OR A>PRINT BILL.DOC [RETURN -- BE SURE TO HAVE THE DOS PRINT.COM FILE ON THE A: DISK] Have continuous form paper in your printer (about 90 pages) NOTE: FOR USE ON FLOPPY DISK MACHINES, AFTER PRINTING BILL.DOC, COPY BILL.DOC TO ANOTHER DISK, DELETE BILL.DOC FROM THE REPORT DISK #2 AND COPY BILL.EXE FROM THE INPUT DISK #1 TO THE REPORT DISK #2. IN THIS WAY, EACH DISK CAN BE RUN INDEPENDENTLY. i T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S SECTION I --- WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT -- OVERVIEW 1A -- What MR. BILL Does ............... 1 - 2 1B -- Hardware Requirements ............ 3 SECTION II --- GETTING STARTED -- INSTALLATION 2A -- General Rules For Using MR. BILL .. 4 - 7 2B -- Turning On Computer & Copying Disks 8 - 10 2C -- The Main Menu Explained .......... 11 -12 SECTION III -- FIRST USE -- SETTING UP YOUR FILES 3A -- Setting Your Subtotal Categories .. 13 - 17 Billing Code File Name ------- 13 Picking Subtotal Categories -- 13 Derived Subtotal Categories -- 14 Plus & Minus Signs In Subtotal 14 Finance Charges -------------- 15 Discount Categories ---------- 15 Changing Subtotal Entries ---- 16 Ledger Card Headings --------- 16 3B -- Setting Billing Codes & Rates ..... 18 - 25 Three Letter Billing Codes --- 18 Fixing Typos ---------------- 19 What To Do When Rates Entered 19 Billing Category Headings ---- 19 Different Entry Styles ------- 20 Non Printing Headings -------- 20 Total Units To Left Of Heading 20 Heading Summary -------------- 21 Billing Rates ---------------- 21 Conversion Factor ------------ 22 Subtotal Category ------------ 22 Changing Codes & Rates ------- 23 Management Reports ----------- 23 Different Rate Schedules ----- 24 Printing List Of Rates & Codes 25 Order Charges Appear On Bill - 25 --- SHAREWARE FILE 'BILL.DOC' ENDS HERE --- --- BELOW MATERIALS FURNISHED WHEN PROGRAM REGISTERED --- 3C -- Entering Client Addresses ......... 26 - 32 Files Created ---------------- 26 Billing Name ----------------- 27 Copying An Address ----------- 27 Entering The Address --------- 28 Entering Regarding Line ------ 29 ii Entering A Previous Balance -- 29 Selecting Billing Rate Table - 29 Done With An Address --------- 29 Changing Addresses ----------- 30 Deleting Billing Name -------- 30 No Duplicate Billing Names --- 30 Scanning Addresses ----------- 30 Changing The Previous Balance 31 Printing Addresses ----------- 31 Rolodex tm Function ---------- 32 SECTION IV --- DAY TO DAY USE - DATA ENTRY, PRINTING BILLS 4A -- Entering Charges & Payments ....... 33 - 44 Printed Record Of Input ------ 33 New Or Old Report ------------ 34 File Name Of Billing Data ---- 34 Begin & End Report Dates ----- 35 Drive To Save Files ---------- 35 Entering Billing Name -------- 36 Fixing A Mistake ------------- 36 Entry Numbers ---------------- 37 Exiting When Done ------------ 37 Entering Billing Data -------- 37 Entering Date ---------------- 37 Entering Amount & Code ------- 39 Narrative Description -------- 40 Checking Previous Balance ---- 41 Checking RE Line ------------- 43 Help ------------------------- 43 Finished With Data Entry ----- 43 Summary ---------------------- 43 4B -- Preparing Bills & Reports ......... 45 - 53 Printing Bills To Disk File -- 45 Printing To Printer ---------- 45 Report In Date Order --------- 45 Changing Report Paper Size --- 45A - H Changing Report Date Format -- 45A - H Audit Trail Of Entries ------- 46 Ledger Cards ----------------- 47 Management Reports ----------- 47 Ageing Reports --------------- 47 Other Reports ---------------- 48 Background On Reports -------- 48 All Bills Or Selected Bills? - 49 Headers & Footers ------------ 50 Drive To Save Bills ---------- 50 Sorting Your Entries --------- 50 Subtotals On Separate Page? -- 52 File Where Bills Saved ------- 52 iii 4C -- Joining Small Files Into A Big One 54 - 56 Joining Several Files Together 54 Different People, One Bill --- 56 SECTION V --- BACKGROUND -- PROGRAM DETAILS; BILLING HINTS 5A -- Bugs, Breakdowns & Troubleshooting 57 - 60 Questions I Have Been Asked: Data Too Old, No Previous Bal? 57 How Do I Print It? ----------- 57 Can't Find Address File ------ 57 Put My Address On My Bill ---- 58 $'s Not Appearing On Bill ---- 58 & 59 How Do I Change "Total Hours"? 58 Error 67??? ------------------ 58 Non Printing Heading Printing 59 Bills Don't Print At Right Page 59 Can't Find My Billing Codes -- 60 Error 25? -- Error 72? ------- 60 String Space Corrupt? -------- 60 Error 63? What's That? ------ 60 & 60A 5B -- How It Works; What Can Go Wrong ... 61 - 67 Billin Module ---------------- 62 Narrative Descriptions ------- 62 Files Created By Mr. Bill ---- 63 Erasing An Entry ------------- 63 Report Dates ----------------- 64 Sorting Billing Names -------- 66 Sorting Billing Entries ------ 66 First Time User Messages ----- 67 About Color ------------------ 67 File Format For Programmers -- 67 5B -- Suggested Billing Techniques ...... 68 - 72 iv ---- BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE --- READ THIS!!!! Before you do anything else, read this: 1) Print this manual. Let me repeat that: Print this Manual! This manual is just like any other file that you print with your word processor. If you have typed a letter to your mother with WordStar or Word Perfect or MS Word or whatever and you have called it MOM.LTR you know that you call up your word processor print menu, you tell your word processor to print the file MOM.LTR and out comes your letter. Okay, do the same thing except tell your word processor to print the file BILL.DOC (shareware) or BILLMAN.UAL (registered user). If you can't handle that, put continuous paper in your printer and at the DOS prompt type: A>COPY BILL.DOC LPT1: [return] If your printer prints a few pages and stops, you have possibly encountered a DOS timeout error. Go to the subdirectory where you have your DOS files and type: C:\DOS>MODE LPT1: 132,,P [return] This tells your printer to print lines up to 132 characters wide (substitute 80 if you want a narrower line) and to ignore timeout errors. Now the file should print all the way through. If it does not, it is not a problem with MR. BILL! It is a problem with the way your printer is connected to your computer. 2) Read the manual after you print it and BEFORE you run Mr. Bill. Let me repeat that: READ THE MANUAL FIRST!!!! 3) If you have a hard disk, use it! Put all your Mr. Bill programs in a BILL subdirectory and also put your data files in the same subdirectory. When you start, make your computer display which subdirectory you are in with the Prompt command: C>prompt $p$g [return] C:\> Now, make a bill subdirectory: C:\>md bill [return] C:\> -v- Now, go to the bill subdirectory: C:\>cd \bill C:\BILL> Now, copy all your files from the floppy disks to your hard disk: C:\BILL>copy A:*.* [return] When done, put the next Mr. Bill disk into the A: drive and copy it to the C: drive the same way. If you want your data files in a separate subdirectory, make a subdirectory called BILLDATA and use the DOS 3 SUBST command (if you have DOS 3.0, 3.1 or 3.2) to assign the BILLDATA subdirectory to the letter D: or E:. If you do that, you can tell Mr. Bill that your data disk is drive D or E. Example: C:\DOS>SUBST D: C:\BILL\BILLDATA [return] Now, DOS will treat the BILLDATA subdirectory like a separate drive D: and so will Mr. Bill. Put this SUBST command in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. 4) Set up your subtotal categories; then set up your billing codes; then enter your addresses. Mr. Bill will take you through these set ups automatically. For some reason, some users immediately exit the subtotal setup module without setting up any subtotal categories. Then they try to immediately enter billing activities or even print a bill. Of course that won't work. You MUST first (a) set up your subtotal categories under your chosen Billing Code Name (e.g. MYBILL), THEN (b) set up your billing rates under your chosen Billing Code Name (again, the SAME name, MYBILL) THEN (c) enter your addresses under your chosen Billing Code Name (still the same name, MYBILL). Only now can you enter the activities you want to bill for. 5) Make life easy for yourself --- enter your client names as names, not numbers. Yes, you can enter your client identification code for John Smith as 100456, but doesn't the code SMITH-J make much more sense? 6) Again, make life easy for yourself. Don't print an audit trail as you make your entries unless you really, really need one right then and there. It's easy to print the audit trail later from the Print menu (P on the Main Menu). 7) Be smart, print your bills to a disk file, then print them to the printer from your word processor or DOS after you have reviewed them in your word processor. Why print all that paper, find your mistakes, fix your entries, then print all the paper all over again? Find your mistakes on screen by looking at your file of bills in your word processor, then fix the mistakes, then let WordStar or PC Write or Textra or whatever print your bills to the printer. For example, in WordStar, all you need to do is -vi- Get into WordStar. Press D to Display your file of bills. File name to edit is JAN-87.BLS (or whatever). Scroll through the file and make notes in SideKick or whatever of any mistakes you will need to change in Mr. Bill. ^K^Q to quit the file. X to exit to DOS. Call up E on the Mr. Bill Main Menu. Use FIX to make your changes. F on the Mr. Bill Print Menu to print your bills to a disk file. Get into WordStar. Press P to print your bills. File to print is JAN-87.BLS (or whatever). Press Escape and WordStar will print your bills. Folks, if you don't have a word processor, get one. Textra is only $20 from Ann Arbor Software in Ann Arbor, Michigan. PC-Write is $10 or less from shareware distributors. PFS First Choice is only $100 and it includes word processing, database, report generator, spread sheet and communications. MicroPro Easy, Webster's New World Writer and PFS Professional Write are all very good and very easy word processors and they can be purchased at discount software outlets for about $100, or less! If your word processor ends the pages at different places than Mr. Bill, you need to adjust your top and bottom margins. Mr. Bill wants a top marin of five lines and a bottom margin of no more than six lines. Mr. Bill wants the word processor to break the page at line 55 or higher. This will insure that Mr. Bill will end the page before your word processor does. In this outline, I have talked about making subdirectories; about copying files; about changing subdirectories; etc. THIS IS IMPORTANT!! LEARN HOW TO USE YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER. YOU SHOULD KNOW HOW TO USE THE FOLLOWING DOS COMMANDS: COPY DIR DEL MD [make directory] CD [change directory] If you don't have some idea about how to use these commands, stop right here, get out your DOS manual or get a DOS primer from your local computer store and learn how to use your machine. It is your responsibility to learn how to use your computer. - vii - You wouldn't drive a car without knowing whether it takes gasoline or diesel fuel or how to turn on the headlights or how to read the gas or temperature gauges. Give your computer the same consideration. One other point: If you insist upon using numbers instead of names to designate your clients, at least put a letter as the first character of the name, e.g. S10233 for John Smith and A11345 for Bill Adams. Mr. Bill will sort up to 2000 activities in a data file in one "in memory" pass. If you have more than 2000 activities in your data file, Mr. Bill breaks the file into A's and B's and C's, etc. and sorts each letter in memory. If you begin each client code as a number '1' (10233, 11345, 17642, etc.) you will not be able to sort activity files with more than 2000 entries because all entries will begin with the same character, a '1'. -------- !!IMPORTANT!! ERROR #67 ----- You MUST have a CONFIG.SYS, Repeat, you MUST have a CONFIG.SYS file on your floppy boot disk or hard disk root directory with the line FILES=20 [or greater]. If you don't, you will get an ERROR 67 when you run the print module, TOO MANY FILES. FILES=20 in the config.sys file tells DOS to allow 20 files to be open at one time. If you don't have a config.sys file, create one like this: C\>COPY CON: CONFIG.SYS FILES=20 BUFFERS=20 ^Z [press control Z then return] 1 file(s) copied C:\> [NOW RE-BOOT THE SYSTEM BY SIMULTANEOUSLY PRESSING THE CONTROL AND ALT AND DEL KEYS] If you have a Leading Edge computer with a monochrome screen or color card connected to a monochrome monitor, you may get a "peculiar" display. Change the color setting as described later in this manual to bright white (color 15) on a black background (color 0). GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT BILLING Every bill in every business has the following general parts: (1) Someone to send the bill to, that is, the customer (2) the charges and credits on the bill, that is, what you are billing for; (3) the summary of your charges and credits, that is, how much they owe from last month, how much they have paid this month, the totals of the various costs and charges this month, and the balance now due. You must adapt your business to this format. What does that mean? It means that first: you must determine the general categories that vii-a make up your summary of charges and credits. You might receive money in cash, by check, by credit card, by money order but all of those credits would fall under the general subtotal heading of "Payments". You might charge for widgets, bolts, wheels, gears, and brackets. These would all fall under the general subtotal heading of "Merchandise Sold". You might charge for hours in court, hours in conference, documents prepared, days in trial. All of these would fall under the general subtotal of "Fees Charged". You might charge for pages of photocopies, shipping expenses, publication fees, filing fees, and consultant's fees. All of these would fall under the general subtotal category of "Costs Incurred". So, first, figure out the general subtotal categories that will hold the summaries of your credits and charges. Second, you have to break down what you charge for in your business and what types of payments you receive in your business into specific entries which will appear on your bills. If you sell twenty kinds of hardware then you would want to have 20 billing codes, one for each type of hardware, for example, "widget" for widgets; "gear-a" for gear a, "brack" for brackets, "bolt" for bolts, and so on. Also you may want to make up a code for each type of payment: "mc/" for master charge; "cash/" for cash; "pay/" for generic payments, "red/" for reduction in price, etc. In short, you will have to make up a code for each thing you want to charge for and a code for each payment type you receive. If bolts are $.05 each, then the charge per bolt is $.05. If you sell 200 bolts, then you enter "200 bolt" and the program will charge $10 for that entry. So, first you figured out the summary categories for your charges and credits that will appear as a summary at the bottom of the bill. Next, you figured out the codes for each individual, specific item, both charges and payments, which will appear on the bill. Next, when you tell the program what these charge and credit codes are, you assign each of these items to one of the summary categories, the subtotal categories. Remember that you may have billing codes for bolts, nuts, brackets, washers, etc. All of these codes fall under the general subtotal category which you created which you decided to call "Merchandise". When you create these billing codes, you assign each one to have its charges added to the "merchandise sold" subtotal category at the bottom of the bill. Every billing code (you can have up to 65 of them) must be assigned to the subtotal category which it fits under (there are five credit and four debit subtotal categories which you can create.) Okay, you have created your major, general summary categories, your subtotal categories. Then you created your individual billing codes. Then you assigned each billing code to one of the subtotal categories. Now, you still have to bill your customers. That means that you must enter the names and addresses of the people to whom you want to send bills. vii-b Lastly, you must enter the charges and credits which will appear on a client's bill. If you sold Ms. Smith some merchandise, you would first tell Mr. Bill her name, SMITH-M. Then you would enter your charges and credits by typing in your quantity followed by the billing code you set up for each type of charge or payment, for example, "200 bolt" then "45 washer" then "100 widget" then "50 pay/" then "5 ship". Now that you have set up the program and entered some charges for some clients, you want to create a bill. Go to the print menu, and print the bill to the printer or to a disk file. WHAT'S NEW Beginning with Ver. 3.24, billing codes can be from one to seven characters long instead of a fixed three characters as in prior versions of Mr. Bill. Thus, now the code for "fees" can be FEES, "telephone" can be PHONE, "letters" can be LETTERS. I have added a sample subtotal file, billing code file and add- ress file called SAMPLE on the REPORT disk. Copy SAMPLE*.* from the viii Report Disk to the disk you set up as your data disk. If you want, when asked for your Billing Code file name, you can enter SAMPLE and you can view the sample file. Note that the billing code MINUTES in the file is set up to take your time in minutes. It takes your entries and divides by 60 to translate them to hours. All the other hourly entries in the sample file take time in tenths of hours. This is to show you how you can set up the program to take time in either minutes or tenths of hours. If you want, you can modify the sample files for your own billing use. Note client JONES-J uses rate table 1 while the rest of the clients use rate table 0. PRINTING YOUR LETTERHEAD ON YOUR BILLS One major addition to Mr. Bill 3.26 is the ability to print your own letterhead on the top of the first page of each bill. If you run Mr. Bill without using this feature, it will space down eight blank lines before printing the first line of your customer address to the disk file of bills. Because your word processor will provide for a top margin of four or five lines, your customer address will appear in just the right place to appear in the window of a #10 window envelope. When printing bills directly to the printer, Mr. Bill will normally print twelve blank lines before printing the first line of the customer address. I use an HP LaserJet II and this setting is perfect to put the customer address in the window of a window envelope. If you use an impact printer, you can adjust the top of the first page three to four lines above the printhead and your customer address will appear in the right place for the window in the envelope. This is because the page length for a LaserJet is 62 lines while the page length for a daisy wheel printer is 66 lines. When you set up Mr. Bill you create a series of billing code files which contain addresses, rates, work descriptions, ageing data and the like. When you do this, you choose a billing code file name. In this manual I use my billing code file name, DMA, as an example. I have also included a sample billing code file set called SAMPLE with these programs. When it begins printing your bills to a disk file, Mr. Bill will look for a file with your billing code file name and the extention .LHF (Letter Head to a File). For example, DMA.LHF or SAMPLE.LHF. When Mr. Bill prints directly to the printer it looks for a file called DMA.LHP (Letter Head to Printer) or SAMPLE.LHP if SAMPLE is your billing code file name. If it finds one of these files, it prints the contents of the file to the top of the first page of each bill. Because Mr. Bill will print eight blank lines at the top of each bill it puts in a disk file, DMA.LHF can have up to eight lines of text which will print in your file of bills. ix Because Mr. Bill will print twelve blank lines at the top of each bill it prints directly to the printer, DMA.LHP can have up to twelve lines of text which will be printed to the top of each bill created on the printer. If your .LH file contains less than the maximum number of lines of text, Mr. Bill will fill out the top of the bill with blank lines. If you want to position your letter head, you can include lines of spaces above your letter head text and Mr. Bill will print the lines of spaces, then print your text. You can include WordStar "dot commands" in the .LHF file and Mr. Bill will not count them in computing the number of lines to print. For example, if you have five lines of dot commands and five lines of text, Mr. Bill will still print all five lines of text to your file as well as all five lines of dot commands. It does this because it knows that WordStar will not print the dot commands to the printer and that they will not take up any room on the top of the actual printed bills. You can have a maximum of eight lines of text and eight lines of dot commands in the .LHF file. Mr. Bill will not print dot commands to the printer. If it encounters a line of text beginning with a period "." in the .LHP file, Mr. Bill will not send that line to the printer and it will not count that line toward your maximum of 12 lines of text. You can have a maximum of twelve lines of text and six lines of dot commands in a .LHP file. For example, I have 18 point Times Roman and 12 point Times Roman in my LaserJet. My DMA.LHF file looks like this .ps ON [turn on proportional space] .cw 18 [select 18 point type] [blank line of spaces] David M. Alexander .cw 12 [select 12 point type] Attorney At Law 2600 El Camino Real Suite 506 Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 857-9233 .ps off [turn off proportional space] Note: all dot commands are on their own line. Also note, that 18 point type is larger than 12 point so my name has to be shifted to the left to get it to print centered. Mr. Bill will also print Escape codes to the file and to your printer if you want to control the printer directly. For example, The LaserJet uses an Escape(s3B to change from regular Courier to boldface Courier. x If I wanted to print directly t∩ the printer and have the letterhead appear in Courier Bold theε switch back to regular printing, I would create a file DMA.LH╨ that looks like this: [blank line of spaces] [blank line of spaces] ^[(s3B [switches printer to bold] David M. Alexander Attorney At Law 2600 El Camino Real Suite 506 Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 857-9233 ^[(s0B [switches back to normal print] NOTE: the escape codes will also print a blank line on your paper. If you want to avoid these blank lines, put the escape code on the same line and directly in front of text. It is also possible to access other LaserJet fonts be prepared to spend a few hours with the HP manual to figure out how to do it. One tip: proportional fonts treat "spaces" very differently from characters. You will likely have to enter an Escape(s0P to turn off proportional spacing, then enter a lot of spaces to position your print in the center of the page, then enter Escape(s1P on the same line and just in front of the text to turn proportional spacing back on for each line of text you want to center. The .LHF and .LHP files must be ASCII files without WordStar, WordPerfect or the like special format codes. If you use WordStar, create the files with the N option at the main menu. If your word processor is unable to create a pure ASCII file, use the COPY CON: method shown above with regard to the creation of the CONFIG.SYS file. If you use WordStar and you want to put an escape code in the file, you first type a Control P then you hold down the ALT key, and while holding it down type 27 on the numeric keypad then let go of the alt key. You should see a ^[ in the file which is the symbol for Escape. If you are using the COPY CON: method, you don't need to first press a Control P. Just hold down the ALT key, type 27 then let go of the Alt key. (ALT27ALT) Once the codes are in the .LHP file, they will be sent to the printer. For example, my old Okidata 92 turns on Double Width printing with an ASCII 30 followed by ASCII 31. I opened DMA.LHP in WordStar in the Non Document Mode. Then I typed a control P immediately followed by ALT30ALT then Control P followed by ALT31ALT. Then I typed my name. Then I typed a control P followed by ALT30ALT to return to normal width text. When I ran Mr. Bill and printed a bill directly to the printer, my name printed double wide followed by the address in single width type. xi Again, you don't have to create these files for the program to work. They are optional if you want your printer to print your letterhead on the first page of each bill. Beginning with Ver. 3.28 I have made the following changes: In the Client Address Module, C on the Main Menu, you can now find and display a client by a partial name. Previously, to start the display at the first client who's name began with "S", you would press "L" to Look at a name and then type "/S". Now, to start at "S", you type L to Look at a name, they enter a plain "S". To look for "Jones-C" you can type "Jon". If you use client numbers and you want to find 1034521, you can enter "10345". Thus, partial searches are now supported and the "/Letter" combination is no longer needed or allowed. In the Print Bills Modules, B and P on the Print Menu, you now have three choices: 1) Print All Bills; 2) Print Selected Bills with 2a) Begin printing at a name and continue to the end of the file, e.g. start at Potter and continue to Zuber and 2b) Print up to 30 specifically named bills, e.g. Adams, Jones, Morris, Thompson. I have "cleaned up" all the menus. The menus actually displayed may not match the text in the body of this manual. For example, now "X" is only used as a menu choice to Exit to DOS. To abandon a submenu, you now will use, in all cases, "Q" to Quit. I believe that the new menus are more readable and easier to understand. LISTING OF SELECTED ERROR MESSAGES Error #7: Out of Memory. Your file was too big to fit into the memory in your machine. This should not happen but if it does, remove some memory resident programs and/or add more memory to your computer. Error #9: This may occur if a record in your billing data file has been "trashed" by your system. If strange garbage values get entered into one of the fields in the trashed record they can be out of range of what the program expects to see and thus may generate this error. If this happens go to your backup copy of your billing data file. Error #14: This is similar to Error #7 above. Error #24: Device Time-out. Your computer has tried to send data to a printer port and not received an acknowledgement within the specified time. Try setting the DOS MODE command to ignore time-out errors. MODE LPT1:132,,P Consult your DOS manual. Error #25 or #27: Device Fault. This usually means that your printer ran out of paper or out of ribbon or was turned off. xiii Essentially, it means that the printer told the computer that it could not continue to function. Error #57: Device I/O error. Again, a hardware problem has occurred usually in connection with communication with either a disk drive or a printer. Error #61: Disk full. Delete some files to make more room on the disk. Error #63: This error occurs when some of your data in a disk file has been trashed by your machine. The program expects to find a particular value in a file and the value is instead a zero because the record was damaged. This zero is unacceptable to the program and it generates a "bad record number" error. Use the back-up copy of your file. Error #67: Too many files open. Again, this will occur if you do not create a CONFIG.SYS file in the root directory which file contains FILES=20 and BUFFERS=20. áááá FIL┼ DAMAGE─ -¡ IMPORTAN╘ INF╧ LOST If you ever get a message that important information has been damaged in your data file, here is what has happened. The first record in each data file, each .BIL file contains the record number of the last record in use. If this field in the first record is trashed by DOS, Mr. Bill will not know how long your file is or where your data ends. If that happens, you can repair the problem. Here is what you do: 1) do a dir on the data file to see how big it is. For example, C:\BILL>DIR DEC87.BIL [return] may tell you that this file is 9450 bytes long. Divide this number by 42, which is the length of each record to find out that the file contains 225 billing entries. 2) call up BASICA or GW-BASIC and write the following short BASIC program: 10 CLOSE #1:OPEN "R",#1,"C:DEC87.BIL",42 20 FIELD #1, 2 AS REXC$,8 AS DATX$,12 AS NAMX$,8 AS UNT$, [CONTINUE ALL ON ONE LINE] 2 AS CATX$,8 AS AMTX$,2 AS DESC$ 30 GET #1,1:LSET REXC$=MKI$(226) 40 PUT #1,1:CLS:SYSTEM SAVE "FIX",A [return] RUN [return] xiv The file name in line 10 is the name of your damaged file. In this example I used "C:DEC87.BIL". You would use whatever your drive and file name are for the .BIL file which is damaged. In line 30 I used the next record after the end of the file, that is 225 + 1 = 226. If your file had 305 records (12810 bytes), then you would use 306. This little program puts the right value back into the destroyed field so that Mr. Bill can find the end of your file again. When the program is written as shown above, type RUN and press return. The program will run, clear the screen and return you to DOS. Now load BILL and call up the previously damaged file. It should work. This little program was saved under the file name: FIX.BAS. You can reload it again some other time, if necessary, change the file name and record number, and rerun it. There is no room in this DOC file to give you the details but I have added to version 3.29 the ability to use different paper lengths, e.g. 7 inches or 12 inches, and different date formats, e.g. MM-DD-YY or DD/MM/YY. Full details are in the manual, but generally, you create a file similar to your letter head files which files Mr. Bill reads at print time to determine your settings. I have added a program to the manual disk (which you will receive upon registering the program) which will convert the address file to a quote and comma delimited ASCII format which can be read by most data base programs. See the README file on the manual disk when you register Mr. Bill. IMPORTANT: I have included SAMPLE files on the disks. If you want, when starting out, instead of entering "S" on the menus to set up your subtotals, income and expense codes and addresses, you can type "D" to Display your entries and when asked for the name of the file to display, give the name SAMPLE. The sample data will appear on screen and you can review or modify it as you wish. xv Sec. 1 A Overview -- What MR BILL Does SECTION 1 WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM WHAT MR. BILL tm DOES You tell MR. BILL the work you did, the items you sold, the costs you incurred and the credits you received and MR. BILL prepares itemized invoices/bills on 8 1/2" by any length paper. You tell MR. BILL the addresses of your clients and cus- tomers, any heading and footing message you want typed on the bill, the dates of the billing period, any regarding line for the customer, and MR. BILL will prepare a bill with the cus- tomer's name and address, the proper dates, headings, re lines, balance forward, finance charges, subtotals and balance due. MR. BILL will prepare a report showing what items you billed and what credits you received in date order for each day in the billing period. MR. BILL will prepare an ageing report for each of your clients showing the total now owed and how much of that total was due last month, the month before, the month before that and prior to that. MR. BILL will also create your ledger cards. MR. BILL will print an audit trail of all your billing entries. It will also prepare a summary at the end of each set of bills showing total previous balances, total credits in each of 5 user selected subtotal categories, total finance charges, total balances forward, total debits in each of four user selected debit categories and total balances now owed. MR. BILL allows you to set up nine "derived" subtotal categories, i.e. if one of your debit categories is "Taxable Sales" you can choose to multiply that total by 6% and create a new subtotal category called "Sales Taxes" or you can multiply "Settlement Checks Received" by -33% to create a subtotal cate- gory called "Attorney's Contingent Fee". You can have 5 credit categories and 5 derived credit categories plus 4 debit categ- ories and 4 derived debit categories plus a finance charge calculated on the "New Balance Forward". MR. BILL will print your reports to the printer or to a disk file. It will create bills for only some of your customer or for all your customers. It will automatically forward the 1 Sec. 1 A Overview -- What MR BILL Does old balance from last month's bills and will automatically re- bill next month. It will print your summary of debits, credits and balances due on the itemized bill or on a separate page. It will show the charge for each item next to that entry or not show the charge. It will accept narrative entries to display any kind of type of charges and credits. You can print messages on each bill of up to thirty lines for each date of the billing period. MR. BILL allows you to set your own charges and will add together files of bills by different people at different rates into one file for the creation of one integrated bill. It also allows the combining of several months of data into one complete bill. MR. BILL allows you to charge different rates to different clients for the same work; for example, you can automatically charge Mr. Jones $50/hour and Mr. Smith $75/hour for the same services. You have ten different rate structures simultaneously available. MR. BILL works with client names or client numbers and allows several bills at different addresses for one client. You can have 1000 different billing addresses in one file and as many different files as your disks will hold. MR. BILL is intended for small to medium size businesses and professional organizations including lawyers, accountants, engineers and the like. You can use it to create invoices for products or for time billing. MR. BILL allows you to assign each type of work to one of ten headings on a management report. Thus, you can create reports showing total hours billed, unbilled time, total costs, etc. MR. BILL is not copy protected. It can be put on any disk in your system and will use data files located on any disk in your system. Each entry takes up 42 bytes of disk space if no narrative description is used. Each narrative takes up 64 additional bytes of disk space. Each charge and each credit item is a separage entry. Each billing file can have up to 16,000 entries (depending on available RAM -- 256K should be enough). MR. BILL can function like a Rolodex tm. You can get a client's name, address, phone number and current balance directly from the operating system in about 3-4 seconds on a hard disk system without going through any menu's. Turn to Section 5, Chapter B "OTHER USES FOR MR. BILL" for examples of other things the program can do. 2 Sec. 1 B Overview -- Hardware Required HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS MS-DOS and two disk drives. 256K RAM Memory If all of the MR. BILL programs are saved on one disk, they take up about 430K bytes of disk storage. MR. BILL can be run without all of the programs on the same disk. MR. BILL consists of 14 separate programs called from the Main Menu. You put MR. BILL into your computer, type BILL and press return --- that's it. Mr. Bill is compiled with Borland Turbo Basic. The main program, "BILL", is an EXE file. So is the address module, BILLADD. The rest of the modules are .TBC files, Turbo Basic Chain files. They will be run from the Main Menu but cannot be called directly from DOS. They are small, efficient and fast. If you are running Mr. Bill from floppy disks, then make sure that you have empty space on the disks. If not, delete the BILL.DOC file from your working disk to make some room. 3 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules SECTION 2 GETTING STARTED *** !!! IMPORTANT !!! *** When you first get them, Your Mr. Bill disks should NOT, repeat NOT have a file called DISKDRVE. If that file is on your disks when you first get Mr. Bill (before you have run it on your machine), delete DISKDRVE. Mr. Bill will automatically create a custom DISKDRVE for your system. If you do not have a file called ORD on your disk when you first get the disks, then use your word processor to create a file called ORD on your #1 disk, the input disk. Put only the number 1 in line one, column one of ORD, save the file, exit to DOS and run BILL. ORD should be on your input disk when you first get Mr. Bill. Mr. Bill will erase ORD automatically when it is finished with it. * * * BASIC ASSUMPTIONS MADE IN THIS MANUAL GENERAL RULES FOR USING YOUR COMPUTER WITH THIS PROGRAM It is probably a good idea to make clear some basic assumptions about how your computer works. I will put all of them here so that I don't have to repeat them in each chapter and so you won't have to re-read them in each chapter. First: MR. BILL doesn't care if you type in UPPER CASE or lower case. Except for the "Narrative Description" lines and mailing addresses, MR. BILL automatically translates all lower case entries to upper case. Therefore, all your file names, your disk drive designations, Y's and N's for YES and NO, cate- gory codes, customer names, everything except narrative descrip- tions and street addresses are always converted to upper case. If it is easier for you to type everything in lower case, please feel free to do so. 4 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules Second: Throughout the manual I will tell you to press certain keys and I will give examples of things to type. I will give you these instructions by putting quotes around the word. Don't type the quotes, just the letter or word inside them. Third: The control key is usually at the lower left of the keyboard and is often labeled "CTRL". The control key is similar to a "shift" key. You know that if you press a key on a typewriter, it will print a lower case letter. If you hold the shift key down and at the same time press a key, it will type an upper case letter. The control key works the same way. If you hold it down and at the same time press another key, the keyboard will send a special code to the computer. If I want you to hold down the control key and at the same time press a P, I will say: Type a control "P". (Don't type the quotes, just the P). MS-DOS uses certain conventions with control keys. The backspace moves the cursor back one space and erases as it backspaces. If you are typing an entry and you make a mistake, press the backspace and it will move the cursor backwards and erase things as it moves. If you are in the middle of a program and you want to get back to the operating system right away, you can press a control "break". This is for emergencies ONLY. It may cause data loss. Most of the programs offer you an easy way to return to the program's menu where you can press X to eXit the program. Usually, you need only keep pressing the return key until you reach the menu which gives you the exit option. This is a better way to get out, though a control Break will usually work. If you don't have a word processing program and you want to print your reports, you may press a control P when the A> shows on the screen. From that time until you press a control P a second time, everything which appears on your screen will also be typed on your printer continuously. To pause the print and halt the display, in other words to "freeze" things, press a control S. Everything will halt until you press control S again. BUT, the best way is to use your word processor, WordStar, WordPerfect, or whatever, to print your reports. DOS has something called a "Type" command. If you say A>Type FILENAME then everything in the file called FILENAME will appear on your screen. If you have also pressed a control P, FILENAME will also be printed on your printer as it appears on your screen. If your file called FILENAME is on the B drive, then you will have to say: A>Type B:FILENAME. If you say: A>copy FILENAME LPT1: everything in your file will be printed on your printer. 5 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules Fourth: To be "in MS-DOS" or "in the operating system" means that the operating system is ready to take your commands. You know it is ready because you will see the letter of the drive the operating system is using and a pointy bracket called a "prompt" on the screen. Don't try to figure this out except to know that if you see: A> or B> or C>, etc or the like, then the operating system is ready for you to give it a program name, like BILL [Return] or a Type command or whatever. Fifth: Every place in the program where you have to answer a question and your answer will always be the same number of characters, e.g. one character like a Y or an N those are entered by just typing them. You don't have to press Return. As soon as the proper number of characters has been typed, the program will proceed automatically. Sometimes, the number of characters you will type cannot be known in advance by the program. For example, if you are asked for a file name, that name could be anywhere from one to eight characters long. In that case, you will have to type your answer and then press Return to let the program know that you have completed your entry and that it can now proceed. Sixth: Filenames: MR. BILL allows you to pick your own file names for your data files. It is usually helpful to pick a name that describes your data. If you have a file of billing data for the month of April 1987, then good file names would be 4-87 or APR87. Don't use slashes "/" or back slashes "\" or spaces in the file name. DOS does not allow them to be part of file names. The file name CANNOT be more than eight characters long (ABCDEFGH) and it CANNOT have a decimal point in it. For example ABC.DEF is not a legal file name in MR. BILL. You can't do this because MR. BILL automatically puts the extension .BIL after the name of every file of billing entries. Seventh: MR. BILL sees all money charged, that is all debit items, as positive numbers and all money received, that is all payments to you, all credits for the benefit of the people you are billing, as negative numbers. If you ever see a nega- tive number as a dollar amount, that means that MR. BILL is treating that entry as a credit to the client/customer. Eighth: A few paragraphs ago I used the word "extension" in connection with a file name. An "extension" is the three characters following the decimal point on a file name. For example the .DOC of WILL.DOC is an "extension" of the file WILL. Last: When in doubt, press RETURN. Suppose you want to work with a file but can't remember your file name. Type in a 6 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules garbage name in response to the file name question and press return. MR. BILL will automatically display your list of files. What if the file you want is not on the list? What do you do? Press RETURN. In most of the modules, a return to a question will "return" you to the previous question or to a menu which will allow you to leave the module. So, even though the question may not tell you that pressing a return will return you to the previous question or to a menu, it usually will. When in doubt, press RETURN. MR. BILL is meant for small business and professionals. I am a lawyer and I use MR. BILL to create itemized bills for my clients. You may be a supply company and use MR. BILL to create invoices for your customers. Instead of saying "client/custo- mer" throughout this manual -- that's kind of long winded -- I will settle on the word "client". MR. BILL can be on any disk in your system and your data can be on any disk in your system. If you want MR. BILL on your D drive and your data on your F drive, well and good. But, for the sake of ease of description, I will talk about MR. BILL being on the A drive and the data files being on the B drive for floppy systems and Mr. Bill program files and data files being in the BILL subdirectory of the C: drive (C:\BILL>) for hard disk users. This is merely a convenient way to describe it. Please understand that it does not have to be this way for you. Please, PLEASE, learn how to use your computer. I get calls from people who don't know how to copy files; who don't know what a subdirectory is, leasewise how to use one; who fill up their disks and then wonder why the program won't work when the disk is full; who don't know the difference between DOS, Mr. Bill and WordPerfect; essentially, who don't know the first thing about how to use their computer except how to turn on the power. And they think that they have a right to expect to be able to use the machine with that level of knowledge!!! They do not. You do not. Your computer is not a toaster. It takes training to understand it. If you are going to use your computer for business it is your obligation, your duty, to learn how to use it. If you call me with a problem which turns out to be that you don't understand how to copy a file or how what the difference is between the root directory and the Bill subdirectory, you will get no sympathy from me. It is your JOB to know these things. So, bite the bullet and buy a book; buy a VCR Tape; go to a class; hire a kid from the computer store to train you, but learn the basics of DOS!!! 7 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program TURNING ON COMPUTER AND COPYING MR. BILL For Floppy Disk Machines (hard disk people skip this) Take a blank disk from your box of disks and "format" it. This means you must run the "format" program which came with your machine. If you don't know how to do this, read your DOS manual about formatting disks. Put Mr. Bill Disk #1 into the A drive and your new disk into the B drive. Now, type: A>copy A:*.* B: Disk Number 1 will be used to set up your programs, to enter billing data, to add and change addresses and billing codes and rates, and to add files together. Repeat for disk #2. Disk Number 2 will be used to write your bills to a disk file, to the printer, to prepare ageing reports, to prepare audit trails and to prepare a report of your charges in date order. To use either disk just type BILL and press return. NOTE: make sure there is space left on the disk!!!! Again, use disk #1 to input your data and disk #2 to prepare your reports. Okay, so much for the disk(s) holding your MR. BILL programs. Now you must format a new disk to hold your data. This will be your data disk. Most people will put the data disk into drive B. Label the program disk(s) as "MR. BILL PROGRAM DISK (#1) --DRIVE A" and in our example, the data disk as "MR. BILL DATA DISK--DRIVE B". Note: your program disk does not have to go into drive A. You can put your programs on any disk. Also, your data disk does not have to go in drive B. You can choose any drive as your data disk drive. 8 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program So, although I use B as an example, you are free to put your programs on any drive and you can designate any drive as the drive to hold your data files. Hard Disk Users Put disk one in drive A and type: C:\BILL>COPY A:*.* [RETURN]. Now, put disk two in drive A and type the same thing again. In our example, we have the program disk in A and the data disk in B. If you have a hard disk, you should put everything on drive C. To begin type A>BILL [Return] or C:\BILL>BILL If this is the very first time you have used MR. BILL it will ask you what drive you want to hold your data disk. In our example we will tell it B. If you use a hard disk, you would probably tell it C. Mr. Bill will create the file DISKDRVE and put the letter B or C into the file so that it can remember which drive you chose. MR. BILL will now give you a message about subtotal cate- gories. If you press return, MR. BILL will automatically take you to the module which allows you to set up your subtotal categories. If you press X instead of Return, you will exit to the operating system. The next time you type BILL you will be shown the same message about subtotal categories. Once you have set up your subtotal categories, you will press M to return to the main menu. Now, MR. BILL will display a second message about setting your billing codes and rates. After you have done that and returned to the main menu, you will get a message about entering your client addresses. After you have done that, you will get a "farewell from MR. BILL" message and will be shown the main menu. WARNING: Always keep a backup of your data files. Disks do have a habit of dying. If yours gets its directory damaged it may not be salvageable. Every week, it would be a good idea to copy your data files onto a backup disk. IMPORTANT: if you are using a floppy disk machine, copy the file DISKDRVE which Mr. Bill just created on your Disk #1 to your Mr. Bill program disk #2. ALSO IMPORTANT: Mr. Bill looks at a file called ORD on disk #1 to generate these startup messages. When it is done, it erases ORD. If you want to run the start-up proceedure again, go the Mr. Bill input disk #1 and type: A>COPY CON: ORD [return] 1 [return] ^Z [control Z then return] [return] 9 Sec. 2 C Getting Started & The Main Menu FIRST USE & THE MAIN MENU The first thing you do to use MR. BILL is have your program disk in the computer and the A> or C> showing the the screen. Now you type BILL [return]. As soon as BILL.EXE has been loaded, you will be asked for the name of the disk drive which you want to hold your data disk. What is your data disk? MR. BILL saves all kinds of files which it uses to prepare your bills. It has a file of your billing codes, your client names and addresses, your aging information, the dates of your reports, your list of subtotal categories, etc. These are all kept on your data disk. MR. BILL needs to know what drive will hold this data disk. You can choose any drive between A and L. Let's assume you choose the C drive. You will type the letter C in response to this first question. MR. BILL will save this disk name in a file called DISKDRVE. NOTE: You MUST have DISKDRVE on every program disk. If you split your programs up onto two floppy disks, be sure to copy DISKDRVE onto to each and every program disk. OK, now that you have given MR. BILL your data disk drive location, MR. BILL will save it and won't ask for it again. Next, MR. BILL will sign on with an introductory message and will tell you that it will take you to the module used to set up your billing subtotals. We will discuss this module in the next chapter. You MUST set up your subtotals before you can prepare any bills. The next time you type BILL after setting up your subtotals, MR. BILL will give you another message, telling you that it will take you to the module used to set your billing codes and rates. You MUST set up your billing codes and rates before you can create any bills. Use the SAME NAME you used when you set up your subtotals. The next time you call MR. BILL after that, it will take you to the module used to set up your client names and add- resses. You MUST enter at least one client name and address before you can create any bills. When you have done that, the next time and every time thereafter that you type BILL, MR. BILL will present you with the main menu. If you want MR. BILL to go through this first time walk through routine again, open a file on the program disk called ORD and put the number 1 into the file. 10 THE MAIN MENU EXPLAINED The Main Menu looks like this: Copyright David M. Alexander, 1986, 1987 For This Program And For ALL Programs Called From This Program **** MAIN MENU **** S SUBTOTAL Categories B BILLING Codes C CLIENT/Customer Addresses E ENTER Billing Data P PRINT Menu A AGEING Report M MERGE Several Billing Files Into One X EXIT To The Operating System When you want to enter, change, delete or look at your Subtotal categories, type S and MR. BILL will call the module BILLSUB. This is the first thing you do when you install Mr. Bill. When you want to set, change, delete or look at your billing codes and rates, type B to set the Billing codes. MR. BILL will call up the module BILLSET. This is the second thing you will do when you first install Mr. Bill When you want to enter, change, delete or look at your Customer names and addresses, type C and MR. BILL will call up the module BILLADD. This is the third thing you will do when you install Mr. Bill. When you want to Enter, change or delete your charges and credits, press E. MR. BILL will call up the BILLIN module and ask for billing charges and credits. When you want to create an Ageing report showing how long each client has owed you money, type A and MR. BILL will call up BILLAGE. When you want to Merge several small files into one big file, i.e. use the billing data from several people or several months to create a consolidated bill, type M and MR. BILL will call up the BILLMERG module. 11 Sec. 2 C Getting Started & The Main Menu When you want to Print your bills or if you are unsure how to print a hardcopy of your reports, press P and MR. BILL will give you a menu offering these choices. When you want to eXit to the operating system, press X which will call up the A> or C> and put you back into MS-DOS. 12 Sec. 3 A - First Time Use -- Subtotal Categories SECTION 3 MAKING A LIST OF YOUR SUBTOTAL CATEGORIES Key to press on the Main Menu: S This is the module which allows you to create, display or change a list of up to 9 different subtotal categories. BILLING CODE FILE NAME The first thing that MR. BILL will do after you press S to set up your subtotal categories will be to ask you for the name of the file where you will store your subtotal categories and billing codes. This name can be up to seven characters long. The modules in MR. BILL usually call this the billing code file. Since you will use this name often, I suggest that the shorter the name the better. A good choice for a name is your initials. This keeps your billing code file separate from that of others who might use the program. You can have as many different files of billing codes as you please. Each file can contain different rates and types of charges. If you are John T. Smith you might want to call your file JTS. Suppose you have an associate whose name is Mary J. Jones. Hers could be MJJ. One thing you may not do: You may not use a period in your billing category file name. You may not call it JTS.XXX. MR. BILL will reject any suggested name that has a period in it or which is longer than seven characters. And, No Slashes (/) or back slashes (\) or SPACES in the name! PICKING YOUR SUBTOTAL CATEGORIES Now you will be asked to set up your subtotal categories. What are they? Everything you bill for and all credits you receive must be assigned to a subtotal category. For example, a lawyer might bill for FEES and COSTS. A doctor might bill for DRUGS, LAB FEES, ORTHO APPLIANCES and TREATMENT. Each business has its own categories that its charges fall into. Also, each business has its own categories that credits fall into. For example, a lawyer might show the following 13 Sec. 3 A - First Time Use -- Subtotal Categories categories of credits: PAYMENTS, SETTLEMENT CHECKS, MONEY FROM 3RD PARTY (sheriff's levy), REFUNDS. A doctor might show: INSURANCE PAYMENT, PATIENT PAYMENT, MEDICARE PAYMENT. MR. BILL assigns subtotal categories 1 through 5 to credits. Any types of payments received should be assigned to categories 1 to 5. MR. BILL assigns subtotal categories 6 through 9 to charges. Any charges made must be assigned to subtotal categories 6 through 9. For example, a lawyer might have the following subtotal categories: 1. - Client Payments: (credit) 2. - Settlement Checks: (credit) 3. - 3rd Party Payments: (credit) 4. - Refunds/Bill Reduction: (credit) 5. - Payment To Trust: (credit) 6. + New Fees: (charge) 7. + New Costs: (charge) 8. AVAILABLE 9. AVAILABLE DERIVED SUBTOTAL CATEGORIES Each of the subtotal categories can be multiplied by a number to yield another category. For example, a lawyer might multiply credit category #2, - SETTLEMENT CHECKS by -.33 to create a derived subtotal category he would call + CONTINGENT FEES. A business man might have a debit category #6 called + TAXABLE SALES which he would multiply by .065 to create a new category called + SALES TAXES. Each of the nine subtotal categories can be multiplied by any number between -100000 and +100000. Each of the results of that multiplication can be given a heading and will be printed as a subtotal category on the bill. PLUS AND MINUS SIGNS MR. BILL is set up to put plus, minus, and equals signs in front the subtotal headings. You should consider making your subtotal heading "Payments Received" as "- Payments Received:" and making "New Fees" as "+ New Fees:". If done this way, your subtotals will look like this: 14 Sec. 3 A - First Time Use -- Subtotal Categories Previous Balance: $100.00 - Payments Received: $50.00 = New Balance Forward: $50.00 + New Fees: $150.00 + New Costs: $75.00 = BALANCE NOW DUE: $275.00 If you don't want the +'s and -'s, then start your subtotal heading with two spaces, that is " New Fees" NOT "New Fees". This is to shift the heading two places to the right to keep the subtotals even with the beginning of the "Previous Balance:" line above. FINANCE CHARGES MR. BILL has a tenth category which it allows --- "+ FINANCE CHARGES". When a bill is created, the old balance is shown. Next, all payments received since the last billing are sub- tracted from the old balance. If there is still something owing, it is called "= NEW BALANCE FORWARD". This amount will be multiplied by any number you choose. The result of the multiplication is a new subtotal category. You may give this new category any heading you wish --- "+ FINANCE CHARGES" or + LATE CHARGES or whatever. If you wish to charge 1%/month as a finance charge and if you bill on a monthly basis, you will enter .01 as the amount by which you want to multiply the New Balance Forward. If you have some clients whom you want to exempt from finance charges, then, when you enter their names and addresses a little later, make the first character of the "Regarding Line" which will be printed on the bill a hyphen "-". For example, if you have a client Mary Jones whom you do not want to be charged a finance charge, make a "RE" line on her bill like this: -RE: Business Advice The hyphen tells Mr. Bill, not to charge her a finance charge. If you don't want to change anyone a finance charge, just leave the amount to multiply the new balance forward by as zero and no one will be charged any finance charges. ($500 X 0% = $0) DISCOUNT CATEGORIES Remember, items 1 through 5 are credit items. If you multiply #1, PAYMENTS RECEIVED, by .05 you can call the resulting category 5% DISCOUNT and the customer will receive a 15 Sec. 3 A - First Time Use -- Subtotal Categories further credit of 5% of the payments made. If you multiply it by -.05, you will create a resulting category which will debit the customer by 5% of the payments made. This is because a payment is seen as a negative number. If the payment is $100, MR. BILL sees that as -100. -100 X -.05= $5. Since positive numbers are charges, this would result in a $5 charge. If you multiplied #6, + NEW PURCHASES, a debit subtotal, by .05 you would create a new charge, i.e. 100 X .05=$5. On the other hand if you multiplied #6., + NEW PURCHASES $100 by -.05 you would get 100 X -.05= -$5, that is a credit result. You could call that 5% "- QUANTITY DISCOUNT". You need not create any derived subtotals and you need not charge a finance charge. This is completely optional. CHANGING YOUR SUBTOTAL ENTRIES When you have entered all the subtotal categories you wish, you can view them and change them any way you like. If your billing category file name is DMA, then this program will save your subtotal categories on the data disk under the file name DMA.LST. You can print out this file for a list of your subtotal categories. MR. BILL will also create a file on the data disk for its own use and call it DMA.TOT. Don't do anything to DMA.TOT. That is for MR. BILL's use. To create these subtotals, follow the menu directions. MR. BILL will go through the subtotals one by one. Any time you are finished entering your subtotal categories, type /// in answer to the question asking you for the next subtotal cate- gory. Type a return to skip ahead to the next category. If you make a mistake don't worry. Go ahead and finish your list. When you are done, MR. BILL will show you what you have typed and give you the chance to change anything you like. To make a change you need only type the number of the subtotal which you want to change and MR. BILL will ask you for the new entry for that subtotal category. LEDGER CARDS Mr. Bill will create your ledger cards for you, but this will take up a good bit of disk space. Mr. Bill uses 114 bytes for each client for each month shown on the ledger card. If you create 100 bills a month then 100 x 12 months x 114 = 136,800 bytes to store your ledger card data. So, creating ledger cards is optional. Mr. Bill will ask you if you want to create/re-create your ledger card headings. If you don't want Mr. Bill to create your ledger cards, just type "N" for "NO". If you type "Y", for yes, Mr. Bill will take up to ten of your 16 Sec. 3 A - First Time Use -- Subtotal Categories subtotal headings for inclusion on your ledger card. If you have set up more that ten subtotal headings, you will have to delete some or not have Mr. Bill create your cards. Ten is all there is room for. If you later decide to change your subtotal headings, you will have to allow Mr. Bill to create a new table of headings so that it can print the new headings on the cards. The creation of this new table will WIPE OUT all your existing ledger card data. So, if you add or subtract headings, print your ledger cards out, because Mr. Bill will proceed to start fresh with the new headings on new, blank, cards. If you decide you don't want Mr. Bill to create any ledger cards for you, that's okay. You can change your mind later, come back to the subtotal category module, press "D" to display your subtotals, then, before you exit, Mr. Bill will ask you again if you want to create these card headings. You can now say yes with no harm done. 17 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories MAKING A LIST OF YOUR INCOME AND EXPENSE CATEGORIES Letter To Press At Main Menu: B When you press B at the Main Menu, MR. BILL calls up the program which sets up, displays and changes your billing codes and rates. This program will give you a menu of choices: D to display your codes, S to set up your codes, C to change your codes, M to go to the Main Menu and X to exit to the operating system. The first time you use this module you will press S on this menu for a first time Set Up of your billing codes and rates. You will be asked for the name of the file you want to use to hold your billing codes. This billing category file name is the SAME NAME you gave when you set up your subtotal cate- gories. In our example it is DMA. Now you begin to make your list. You will be asked five questions over and over again. MR. BILL will want to know (1) the three character code for the billing category, (2) the heading for the category, (3) the rate you want to charge for that kind of work, (4) the "conversion factor", and (5) the subtotal category that this item should be shown under. There are sixty-five categories you can set. BILLING CODES Previous versions of Mr. Bill limited you to a three character billing code. Starting with Version 3.24 your billing code can be as little as one or as many as seven characters. Don't mix letters and numbers in a code. That is, X15 is a BAD billing code. Make it VWXYZ or XYZ or 15 or 12345 but DON'T make it X12345. It WON'T work correctly that way. All codes for bills, that is charges you make against the client, are one to seven letters or numbers long. For example, a code for a charge for a telephone call could be TEL or PHONE or T or TELEPHN. If you wanted to show calls to the opposing attorney, you might use TTATN and for calls to the client, TTCLNT. Whatever codes you want. All codes for credits, that is payments for the benefit of the client, MUST end with a slash (/). Whenever MR. BILL sees a code that ends with a slash, for example 125 PAYMT/ or 125 SETLE/ or 125 REFND/, it knows that you have received $125 as a payment or received $125 as a settlement amount or credited $125 to the client as a refund paid to you. 18 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories You can use any codes you like. Payments don't have to be PAYMT/. They can be XXXXXX/ or X/ if you like so long as you keep to the convention of ending all codes for credits, for money received for the client's benefit, as contrasted with money charged, with a slash, that is a /. MR. BILL considers all charges against the client to be positive numbers and all credits to the client to be negative numbers. TYPOS WHILE ENTERING BILLING CODES & RATES If you make a typo while entering your billing codes and rates, don't worry. For any one code, you can press "P" [return] and you will be returned to the Previous question. If you have finished the questions for any one code and then realize a mistake in a previous entry, just go on and enter the rest of your codes. When you are finished MR. BILL will display what you typed in and allow you to change anything you like. WHEN DONE ENTERING CODES & RATES After you have entered all the codes you want to use, 20, 30, 40, 65 --- however many you want to use, you tell MR. BILL that you are done entering your income and billing abbreviations by typing /// in answer to the Billing Code? question. MR. BILL knows that means you are done, for now at least. Don't worry, you can come back later and enter more later if you want. BILLING CATEGORY HEADINGS The second question (the first being the 1-7 letter code) is what heading you want to give that item. For example, you might give TEL the heading "Telephone Call(s)". You might give PY/ the heading "PAYMENT RECEIVED -- THANK YOU". You will see a line in the screen like this: X_____________ with the cursor indicated by the mark at the beginning of the line. The line indicates how long your heading can be -- (30 characters). Your heading does not have to have words in it. If you want a blank heading, you can enter several spaces for a heading. Headings can also be in lower case. Press "P" [return] to go to the billing code question. DIFFERENT ENTRY STYLES Numbers To The Left Of The Heading If you want to have numbers printed in front of the headings on the bill, for example, if your heading is Hours In Conference, and you want the number of hours to print to the left of the heading, then just enter the normal heading description, namely, Hours In Conference. The same applies to categories for the number of pages or the number of widgets. 2 CNF might thus print as: 19 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories 2.00 Hours In Conference $200 No Numbers To The Left Of The Heading If you don't want a number to print to the left of the heading, for example, payments or certain costs, then begin your heading description with a '-' (hyphen). If you received $500 and you didn't want the 500 to print to the left of the heading, you would enter your heading as -Payment Received. Thus, when you entered 500 py/ as a payment entry, it would print on the bill as -Payment Received $500 NOT AS 500.00 Payment Received $500. Thus, payments and these sorts of no leading number entries would be entered with a hyphen (-) as the first character of the heading description. NON-PRINTING HEADINGS Don't Print The Heading At All Sometimes you have types of charges which you don't want to print on the invoice at all. For example, UNBILLED TIME. Any heading that has a slash (/) as the first character will not print on the bill at all. I use slash headings for /MISCELLANEOUS FEES, /MISCELLANEOUS COSTS, /MISCELLANEOUS CREDITS and /MINUTES CHARGED. You could have /UNBILLED TIME with a rate of 0 dollars. If you use the B instead of the P option (explained below) and don't enter a date or a narrative at the time of billing, then nothing will appear on the bill. NOTE: the amount entered will be used in calculating the total billed and can be included in management reports. So, to create a category in which the heading line will not print on the bill, make the first character in the heading a slash (/). ADDING UP THE NUMBERS TO THE LEFT OF THE HEADING Printing "Total Hours:" At The Bottom Of The Bill Some users want to be able to print 2 hours of this, 3 hours of that, half an hour of something else, and then print: Total Hours: 5.50 at the bottom of the bill. If you want to total "widgets" instead of "Hours", use your word processor to do a global search and replace on your file of bills, finding "Total Hours:" and replacing it with "Total Widgets:" on each bill in your file. 20 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories So, many of you may want to total some of the units shown on the bill, whether those units are hours, widgets, pages or whatever. You have to do something to tell Mr. Bill that you want the units in any particular category added together to get this total. You do that by making the first character in the heading a space. Let's go over that again. Let's say that you want to add all your hours together and show the total at the bottom of the bill. Let's also say that you will be billing for Hours In Conference, Hours In Research and Hours In Court. Okay. When you create your headings, you type them as: " Hours In Conference" NOT "Hours In Conference" " Hours In Research" NOT "Hours In Research" " Hours In Court" NOT "Hours In Court" Notice that you made the first character of each heading a blank space. That space tells Mr. Bill: "Take the number of units for this category and add it all the units for all the other categories that also begin with a space." Now, when you create your bills, Mr. Bill will ask you if you want to show "Total Hours" at the bottom of the bill. If you say, Yes, you do, then Mr. Bill will take the total it has added up and print it at the bottom of the bill. HEADING SUMMARY A Regular heading prints units to the left of the heading and does not add up the units to print as a total at the bottom of the bill. A Heading beginning with a space, prints units to the left of the heading AND adds those units up to be printed at the bottom of the bill. A Heading beginning with a hyphen does not print numbers to the left of the heading and does not add up units at the bottom. A Heading beginning with a slash does not print the heading at all; it does not print numbers to the left; it does not add up numbers on the bottom of the bill. BILLING RATES The third question asks for your rate. For example, if you charge $15 for a phone call, then the rate would be 15 (No Dollar Signs, please). If your code is COPY and your heading is PAGES OF PHOTOCOPIES then your rate might be .10 or ten cents per page. MR. BILL multiplies the number of units you enter when you prepare your bills, e.g. 4 TEL (for four telephone calls) times the rate (4 X 15) and comes up with a charge of $60. 100 COPY means 100 copies at ten cents each or 100 X .10= $10. 21 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories If you will be entering a dollar amount when you do your bills, that is, 115 FIL for $115 for filing fees or 500 PY/ for a $500 payment, then your rate will be 1. A rate of 1 passes through whatever number you enter when you do your billing entries as the amount to be charged in dollars. 1 X 115= $115. 1 X 500= $500. A rate of 0 always results in a zero charge. 500 x 0 = 0. Press "P" [return] to go to the Heading question. CONVERSION FACTOR The fourth question asks for a "conversion factor". This is not as ominous as it sounds. If you want to have the bill show "HOURS IN CONFERENCE" but you want to enter your time in minutes, i.e. 37 CNF, then you want to convert the minutes you enter into hours on the bill. The conversion factor is 60. MR. BILL divides the units you enter by the conversion factor and prints the result on the bill. 120 minutes divided by a conversion factor of 60 yields 2 hours. If you consider eight hours to be a working day, you might enter your time in hours and use a conversion factor of 8. The bill would then print out your charges in units of working days. You must NOT consider the conversion factor when you enter your rates. Suppose you want to enter your time in minutes --- 5 minutes for this 10 minutes for that. That is fine. Suppose you want the bill to show your time in hours. Fine, select a conversion factor of 60 and your time will be shown in hours. Suppose you charge $90 per hour. Enter your rate as 90. MR. BILL multiplies the units entered times the rate and THEN divides by the conversion factor. So, 15 minutes divided by 60 times $90 per hour will yield a charge of $22.50. Thus, 15 CNF will show as: .25 HOURS IN CONFERENCE $22.50. So, even if you enter your time in minutes, give your rate in hours because your conversion factor converts the minutes to hours. In summary, your billing entry is divided by your conversion factor and multiplied by your billing rate. Press "P" [return] to go to the previous Rate question. SUBTOTAL CATEGORY The fifth question wants to know the subtotal category you want this entry included in. For example, if subtotal category number 1 is PAYMENTS RECEIVED, and if your code is PY/ for PAYMENT RECEIVED, the subtotal category you want to enter for the code PY/ is 1. If HOURS IN CONFERENCE is a fee charge and subtotal category number 6 is NEW FEES CHARGED then the CNF code would be included in subtotal category 6. 22 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories In other words, this question wants to know what subtotal category you want this charge or credit assigned to. All charges and credits must be assigned to one of the subtotal categories that you set up. If you forget what they are, just press a ? and they will be displayed on the screen. MR. BILL allows you to print the dollar amount of the charge on the bill or not as you desire. For example, 15 CNF could be shown as: .25 HOURS IN CONFERENCE $22.50 [6P] or .25 HOURS IN CONFERENCE [6B] For each and every billing code you can decide if you want to print the charge for that service on the bill or leave the charge blank. In answer to the fifth question you say 1P to put the entry into the first subtotal category and Print the dollar amount of the charge to the right of the heading or 1B to put it into the first category and leave the charge Blank. For the CNF example above, you would use 6P to put hours in conference in subtotal category 6 and print the charges for that item on the bill to the right of the heading or 6B to leave the charge blank. Press "P" [no return needed] to go back to the Conversion Factor question. This was the last of the five questions. MR. BILL will now start over with question number one, Billing Code. CHANGING YOUR CODES & RATES Once you have entered as many charge and credit codes as you like, you can view the list and change any entry you want. If you wish to add more codes, then type C to change the next avaliable code from an unused code to whatever you want to add. When you are all done, MR. BILL will write your list alphabetized by the category headings under the file name (in our example): B:DMA.HED. MR. BILL will write your list alpha- betized by the three letter codes in the file: B:DMA.ABV. MANAGEMENT REPORTS MR. BILL will allow you to assign each of your billing codes to one of ten different management report headings. Suppose you want to summarize all of your hourly entries to determine how many hours you billed this month. You can assign each of your codes that relates to hours to a Hours Worked heading in the management report. 23 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories Also, suppose you entered a code called UNB for unbilled time as a non printing entry. You could set the billing rate as zero (so the bill would not reflect a charge for these hours). Now every time you did work on a client and didn't charge for it, you could enter, say 2.5 UNB or whatever the number of unbilled hours was. You could assign this code to the heading Unbilled Time in the management report. Now, when you run the management report from the audit trail module, MR. BILL will show the total of unbilled hours entered for the month. DIFFERENT RATES FOR DIFFERENT CLIENTS You can have up to ten different rates for each type of work. MR. BILL saves the basic rate, rate table 0 in memory, and alternate rates, rate tables 1 through 9, in disk files on your data disk. Thus your basic rates are saved, in our example, in file DMA0.CDE and the alternate rates in DMA1.CDE through DMA9.CDE. When you set up your rates for the first time, they are saved (for example) in DMA0.CDE. DON'T YOU PUT IN THE 0 (ZERO). Mr. Bill will do that all on its own. Suppose you are charging $100/hour for consulting. Suppose you have a special client whom you want to give a break to and charge $50/hour for the same consulting work. Maybe you have a third client whom you want to charge $125/hour. Here is what you do: First, enter your codes and rates for your general charges of $100 per hour. Exit to the operating sustem and make a copy of the file DMA0.CDE (or whatever you named your billing code file) as DMA1.CDE. For example: C>COPY C:DMA0.CDE C:DMA1.CDE Now, type BILL and press B to enter Billing Codes. Next, press D to display your codes. Give DMA as the billing code file name you want to work with. Now, you will be asked which rate table, 0 through 9 you want to work with. Since you have just created DMA1, press 1. Mr bill will display your rates. You now enter the number of each rate which you wish to change from $100/hour to $50/hour. Press R to change the rate to $50/hour. DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE RATE. Make a note on a piece of paper that 0 = $100/hour; 1 = $50/hour. Repeat the proceedure for each additional rate table you want to create up to DMA9.CDE. When you enter your addresses, you will be able to enter a number from 0 through 9 for each billing name. If you want to charge Tom Smith $50/hour and you have set up rate table 1 as $50/hour, then enter a 1 as the Tom Smith rate table. Now, when you enter charges for Tom, Mr. Bill will automatically bill him at that rate without any action at all on your part. 24 Sec. 3 B - First Time Use --Billing Categories PRINTING YOUR LIST OF CODES & RATES You can print these lists of codes and rates either by calling up DMA.HED or DMA.ABV on your word processer and having it print them or by printing these files through DOS. If you print in DOS, your printer will print the list on one continuous piece of paper. I suggest that you have a long piece in the printer as the list will be 65 lines long. MR. BILL will create for its own use the file DMA0.CDE containing the codes and rates and DMA.TBL containing the headings, subtotal categories and conversion factors. Don't mess with these data files! ORDER CHARGES WILL APPEAR ON BILL For any given date, the categories you choose will be printed on your bills in the same order that you entered them when you set up your list. That means that if the first cate- gory that you entered was for "PHOTOCOPY EXPENSES" and the second entry was for "HOURS IN CONFERENCE" and the third entry was for "TELEPHONE CALLS" then when a bill is written, the first entry for, say 11-1-86, will be "PHOTOCOPY EXPENSES", (if there were any), the second for 11-1-86 will be "HOURS IN CONFERENCE" and the third for 11-1-86 will be "TELEPHONE CALLS" and so forth. NOTE: these headings don't have to be in all capitals. If you want your categories to appear on your bill in alphabetical order, then you must enter them in alphabetical order. If you want your bill to show all your costs first then all your fees, you must enter all your cost codes first, then all your fee codes. In that way, each date billed will first show the costs charged on that day, then all the fees charged on that day. If you want to see your codes in exactly the same order that you entered them, type control P then type TYPE C:DMA.TBL (or whatever name you used) and press return or have your word processing program print out your file DMA.TBL which will be found on your data disk. WARNING: print DMA.TBL if you will, BUT DON'T MESS WITH IT. If you make any changes to it or even re-save through your word processor, you may make it unusable by the program. If you must edit it, use the "N" option in WordStar. 25 QUICK USE OUTLINE FOR MR. BILL tm You start MR. BILL by typing: A>BILL [return] Your disk has a file called ORD with contains the number 1. This starts the getting started "tutorial". You will be taken to the following modules: 1) BILLSUB, to set up your (up to) nine subtotal categories 2) BILLSET, to set up your billing codes and rates 3) BILLADD, to enter your client/customer addresses When these have been set up, Mr. Bill will erase ORD and take you to the Main Menu. You can now press 'E' to Enter your charges and credits. After entering your billing data (activities) you can press 'P' at the Main Menu to get information about how to print your bills and reports. Let Mr. Bill take you through the set-up modules, then enter some data and print some bills. Play with it. Nothing you do with Mr. Bill with erase your files or format your disks or cause your machine to go up in smoke. Experiment with it, use it and if you like it, send for the manual. NOTE: When you set up your subtotal categories, you will be asked for your billing code name. Use your initials or 'MYBILLS' or 'RATES' or whatever you like. When you set up your table of billing codes and rates you will again be asked for your billing code name. Us the SAME NAME, 'RATES' 'MYBILLS' 'DMA' whatever, but the same name as you used when you set up your subtotals. When you enter your addresses, you will be asked for your billing code name. USE THE SAME NAME. Mr. Bill will tack an extension onto the end of this name for different files: .CDE for billing codes, .ADD for address files, .KEY for billing name key files, etc. So, please, first set up your subtotals, second, setup your billing codes and third set up your addresses and use the same file name when you start each of these modules. ABOUT COLOR I gave a bit of thought to the question of color. Most users have monochrome screens, though in a couple of years this will change. Most of the color users are satisfied with white letters on a dark blue screen. I could write a color installation program then put code into each module to read the set up file and set the chosen color. BUT, this would add another program, another disk file, more user confusion and more code. I have, however, made it possible for you to change the colors 26 which Mr. Bill uses. The default colors are white letters (the foreground color) on a blue background. These colors can be changed by placing the numbers of alternate colors in the DISKDRVE file. Let me explain: Turbo Basic gives each color a number according to the list below: 0=Black; 1=Blue; 2=Green; 3=Cyan; 4=Red; 5=Magenta 6=Brown; 7=White; 8=Gray; 9=Light Blue; 10=Light Green 11=Light Cyan; 12=Light Red; 13=Light Magenta 14=Yellow 15=Bright White; Thus, Bright white letters on a blue background (the default) would be 15 (bright white), 1 (blue); Blue letters on a white background would be 1 (blue) 15 (bright white); Red letters on a green background would be 4 (red), 2 (green). You can add two lines of color numbers to your diskdrve file to tell Mr. Bill that you want it to use the specified colors instead of white letters on a blue background. For example, if you wanted White letters on a Black background, your DISKDRVE file would look like this: C [DATA DRIVE NAME, DRIVE C] 15 [THE NUMBER FOR THE COLOR WHITE] 0 [THE NUMBER FOR THE COLOR BLACK] Don't type in the information in the brackets. That is just to explain the data to you. Here is how you could create a diskdrve version to put white letters on a black background: C:\BILL>COPY CON: DISKDRVE [RETURN] C [RETURN] 15 [RETURN] 0 [RETURN] ^Z [CONTROL Z THEN RETURN] 1 file(s) copied C:\BILL>TYPE DISKDRVE [RETURN] C 15 0 C:\BILL> Again, don't type in the words in the brackets. They are just to explain things to you. That is, you don't type the word "return"; you press the return key. The control Z means that you hold down the control key and press a Z at the same time. 27 If you are happy with white on blue, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING AT ALL TO DISKDRVE. JUST LEAVE IT ALONE AND YOU WILL GET WHITE ON BLUE. END OF SHAREWARE MANUAL FULL MANUAL UPON REGISTRATION OF PROGRAM The above Table of Contents gives you an outline of what is in the full MR. BILL manual. Users who register with me will get a disk containing the full manual plus notification of updates and some help if you call with a question. To register, send me your name and address and $40. If you use MR. BILL, I ask you to send me the $40 as part recompense for the many hundreds of hours I have invested in the program. Commercial users are strongly urged to pay the $40 if they use the program. If you haven't registered the program, don't call with questions. I return all calls collect to registered users. If you like MR. BILL, you should consider trying CK tm, a program I wrote to keep track of all the income and expenses in my law practice including monthly and year to date reports for my CPA. CK is also available from the people who sent you MR BILL. Take care, David M. Alexander David M. Alexander 2600 El Camino Real #506 Palo Alto, CA 94306 415-857-9233 28