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######### #### #### #### #### #### #### tm #### #### ### #### #### ### #### #### ### ########### ####### #### ### #### ### #### ### #### ### CK A Program To Report On Your Income And Expenses CK Program and Manual Copyright 1985 by David M. Alexander For CP/M print by typing A>PIP LST:=CKREAD.ME [return] For MS-DOS, print by typing A>COPY CKREAD.ME LPT1: [return] HAVE ABOUT 28 PAGES CONTINUOUS PAPER IN PRINTER CK is a Trade Mark of David M. Alexander CP/M is a Trade Mark of Digital Research, Inc. MS DOS is a Trade Mark of Microsoft, Inc. This manual is copyrighted by David M. Alexander 1985 All of the programs beginning with the letters CK 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. SORT.COM is copyrighted by Cameron Campbell, 1985 CK tm owned and written by David M. Alexander 2600 El Camino Real #506 Palo Alto, CA 94306 415-857-9233 NO WARRANTY -- There is no warranty of merchantibilty, fit- ness or any other warranty with this program. By using the programs, user assumes all risks of use. In short, if your numbers come out wrong, only you and not Alexander are at risk. i TABLE OF CONTENTS --- PAGE NUMBERS SECTION I -- BASIC INFORMATION * * * * * 1 - 6 (A) Overview Of The Program; (1 - 2) (B) Hardware Requirements; (3) (C) Why I Wrote This Program; (4 - 6) SECTION II -- GETTING READY TO RUN CK * * 7 - 16 (A) General Rules; ( 7 - 10) (B) Copying The Programs Onto Your Disks; (11 - 14) (C) All About The Main Menu; (15 - 16) SECTION III -- RUNNING CK THE 1ST TIME * 17 - 28 (A) Setting Up Your Income & Expense Codes; (17 - 19) Sample Set Up Session; (20 - 24) (B) Listing Your Checking Accounts; (25) Sample Listing Session; (26 - 28) SECTION IV -- EVERYDAY USE OF CK * * * * 29 - 81 (A) Entering Your Check Stubs & Deposits; (29 - 45) Printed Audit Trail --------------- 29 Which Account To Use -------------- 29 Biggest & Smallest Check Numbers -- 30 Add Data To New Or Old Report? ---- 30 Name Of File To Hold Data --------- 30 Beginning & Ending Dates ---------- 31 Drive Where File Saved ------------ 31 Basic Entry Method ---------------- 32 Date Of The Check ----------------- 33 Payee Name ------------------------ 34 Cross Referencing Checks ---------- 34 Entering Check Amound & Code ------ 35-36 Narrative Description Of Check ---- 37 Fixing Typos In This Entry -------- 37 Fixing Typos In Another Entry ----- 37 Erasing An Entry ------------------ 38 Data Entry Summary ---------------- 38 Reconciling With Bank Statement --- 38-45 Sample Entry Session; (46 - 52) ii TABLE OF CONTENTS (B) Looking At Entries & Correcting Typos; (53) Sample Correcting Session; (54 - 58) (C) Creating Your Reports; (59 - 64) Sample Report Creation Session; (65 - 68) (D) Year To Date Report Of Income & Expenses; (69 - 71) Sample Year To Date Session; (72 - 75) (E) How To Print Your Reports; (76 - 78) (F) Adding Several Files Together; (79) Sample Adding Session; (80 - 81) SECTION V -- PROGRAM DETAILS * * * * * * 82 - 89 (A) How CK Works; (82 - 85) (B) How To Break The Program; (86 - 89) iii SECTION 1 WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT? (A) OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAM WHAT CK tm DOES Ck keeps track of all of the money that you receive and all of the money that you spend. You tell CK the money you spent or received, the category of expense, the date you spent it, who you paid it to, the check number and, if you want, a narrative description of what it was for and a cross reference group, like "tax deductable". CK will prepare a report telling you (1) how much you spent on each item in your list of expenses and how much you received in every category of income. (2) how much you paid any person during any given month or quarter or year. (3) how much you spent and received on any given date; (4) what your balance was on every day during the period; (5) how much you spent all year on everything and how much you received all year from everyone. (6) how much you spent for any group of expenses like tax deductable automobile or all tax deductable expenses. CK prepares written reports arranging your income and expenses by check number date payee name amount category of income and expense cross reference group year to date summary 1 Sec. 1 A Overview -- What CK Does stacked bar chart of income and expenses Each report can keep track of up to nine different checking accounts. Each report subtotals all the the checks and deposits in each category. If you want, you can add your monthly checks and deposits together into one big quarterly or annual file and can sort that file by payee name, expense category, amount, check number, cross reference or date, thus producing a complete, detailed breakdown of each check and each deposit for the entire year. CK labels each report entry to show which checking account, (e.g. General, Trust, Personal, etc) each check was written on. CK will prepare a "bar" chart of your income and expenses with dollars along the vertical axis and categories along the horizontal axis. These charts can be manipulated to produce an annual chart with dollars along the vertical axis and months along the horizontal axis. If you have single density 8" disk drives (241,000 bytes) you should be able to save over 5000 checks per disk. This assumes that you don't enter any special descriptions of your checks. If you enter a special description for each and every check, you should be able to store in excess of 2000 checks per disk. Each check takes up 53 bytes and each narrative descrip- tion takes up 64 bytes. 2 Sec. 1 A Overview -- What CK Does (B) HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS CP/M R Or MS-DOS Operating System and two disk drives. 56 KBYTES of RAM Memory for CP/M; 96K for MS-DOS If all of the CK programs are saved on one disk, they take up about 350,000 bytes of disk storage in CP/M format. CK can be run without all of the programs on the same disk. You can divide the CK programs between four disks if you need. CK consists of 14 separate programs plus a sort module (SORT.COM) and a file containing messages (CKMSG). These are called from the main menu, or directly from the operating system by typing the name of the program and pressing RETURN. 3 Sec. 1 B Overview -- Hardware Required (C) WHY I WROTE THIS PROGRAM I am not a programmer by profession. Necessity may not always be the mother of invention, but it certainly was in this case. At the end of every year I had to go through my books which contained column after column of penciled in numbers. These were a real pain for me to follow and understand. There were never enough columns to handle all the types of business expenses. Well, like Peter Finch in Network I just couldn't take it any more. I finally decided that something had to be done and since no one else had written the program I needed, I wrote the thing myself. You must understand that I am program user. I didn't write CK for money. I wrote it to do a job. I started by writing a simple program. It allowed for forty categories of expenses (plus miscellaneous) and asked five questions: Check number, Date, Payee Name, Check Amount & Cate- gory, and Special Description. I tested CK and it worked and I thought "I've got this made." I turned on the computer, sat my 63 year old German-born bookkeeper in front of the terminal and told her to go to it. Well, that's probably as good an example of the word "naive" as you are likely to find. Helga would start entering checks and then after a few minutes would say, "This thing doesn't work right." I would look at it and find that a date had been entered instead of a check number or a number instead of a date or . . . . you get the idea. Each of those things seemed simple enough to protect against and each one made the program a little more complex. Then everything worked fine, for a few hours. I kept changing things, making them "better". Well, things went along like this for about six months with the program being refined a bit more each time. After about nine months there wasn't much that could be done wrong and the reports looked pretty good and were very helpful when tax time came around. 4 Sec. 1 C Overview -- Why I Wrote CK About this time I helped one of my clients who had an accounting business buy her first computer. She had seen CK and ended up trying it on her new machine. She had already bought a complete accounting package which listed at $4,500 but she thought CK might be helpful. As it turns out, letting her use CK was probably my undoing as it directly resulted in me getting into the software business. Pam used CK for a bit and then said "Gee, wouldn't it be nice if the program would automatically enter the next check number in order? And, wouldn't it be nice if I could press return to enter the same date as last time?" And I said "Yes, and wouldn't it be nice if CK dealt with income as well as expenses?" All of this seemed like good ideas and pretty simple to implement so I made the changes. A few weeks later I ran into a CPA who used Pam's computer part-time and I asked her how she liked it. "The only thing I like about it," she said, "is your program." This made me feel pretty good and so I asked Pam how things were going. She told me that she barely used her $4,500 program (lots of bugs) and instead used CK for just about everything, BUT "Wouldn't it be nice if we had more expense categories? And, wouldn't it be nice if I could deal with several checking accounts at the same time? And, wouldn't it be nice if I had an almost unlimited number of checks I could put in any one file?" These suggestions seemed reasonable and one thing led to another and I ended up re-writing the whole damn thing. When I got done with all of that I bragged about CK to a friend in LA and the next thing you know he was sending me a blank disk for a copy of the program. Then my lawyer friend in Maryland wanted a copy. Then my friend in the East Bay wanted CK for her business. Next . . . . you get the idea. Of course, now I had to write a manual! The result of all of this that I am now in the software business. CK is a program by a user, for users, and meant to be simple and easy. It is not a program by a programmer meant to be economical of disk memory or to operate in one millisecond instead of eight milliseconds, nor is the program meant to be "bomb proof". I don't care much about the "inside" of the program, i.e. how it works internally. It doesn't bother me that it probably is not filled with super elegant code. I care a great deal about the "outside" of the program, that is, how easy and simple 5 Sec. 1 C Overview -- Why I Wrote CK and useful it is for the user. I figure that all business persons and secretaries and accountants care about is that it does its job with no pain or strain in the same way that I don't care how my digital watch works as long as it keeps good time. If you work at it, you probably can screw up some of your inputs. It is difficult to do anything which will do more than minor damage to a check here or there, but if you try, you will be able to "outwit" some of the features which try to keep you from fouling up. Rather than trying to protect against this, I have chosen to admit that there never was a system which someone couldn't break if they tried hard enough. Therefore, I have included in this manual a section called: "How To Screw Up The Program". I did this because I am always reading software reviews by programmers who do their damnedest to figure out some way to get the program to "crash". They then gleefully report that after thirty-seven attempts they were able to crash the program by violating every caution and warning in the manual. Well, if anyone wants to do that with CK I am going to save them the trouble and tell them exactly how to screw things up. If you haven't guessed by now, CK is a personal expression of my attitudes about programs and programming. It expresses some of my pet peeves and reflects certain things that I don't care about, I suppose, as others might. For example, I hate being forced to use numeric codes for things. If I want to enter a check dealing with telephone calls I want to call that TEL not 142. If I want a category on pet expenses, then I want to be able to figure out my own heading, whether "Bills For Fido" or "Animal Husbandry" or whatever. For this reason CK allows you to set your own three letter (or number if you insist) codes for income or expenses. It lets you choose your own category headings. Things don't have to be entered in any particular order. You can mix up income and expense items. You can change things and fix typos. Data isn't set in stone once entered and it is never permanently erased. If you press a control P when in CP/M or MS-DOS, every- thing that appears on the screen will also be printed on your printer. I suggest that you read this dialog first, then read that section, then read the dialog again. I think it will make things quite easy to understand. 6 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules SECTION 2 GETTING STARTED (A) 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 don't have to re-read them in each chapter. First: CK doesn't care if you type in UPPER CASE or lower case. Except for the "Special Description" lines, CK automati- cally translates lower case entries to upper case. Therefore, all your file names, your disk drive designations, Y's and N's for YES and NO, category codes, payee names, everything except special descriptions, are always converted to upper case. If it is easier for you to type everything in lower case, please feel free to do so. 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 printing that letter in boldface. For example, if I want you to press a "P" I will say "Press P ". 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. 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". CP/M and MS-DOS use certain conventions with control keys. The backspace on most machines is a control H. This 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 or a control H and it will move the cursor backwards and erase things 7 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules 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 either press the reset, type Control-ALT-Delete or a Control-Break on an IBM PC or you can press a control C. This is a "warm start" and it terminates the program. BUT, better practice is to press the menu entry that allows you to exit the program, usually X. 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 terminal 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. CP/M and MS-DOS have something called a "Type" command. If you say Type FILENAME, then everything in the file called FILENAME will appear on your screen. If you have also pressed a control P, it 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: Type B:FILENAME. Fourth: "In CP/M" or "In DOS": To be "in CP/M" or "in DOS" 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 your computer 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> or the like, then your operating system is ready for you to give it a program name, like CK [Return] or a Type command or whatever. If you are using CP/M, NEVER, remove your disks unless the A> or B> or C> is showing on your screen. If you do, you may damage your data. Never put a disk into the drive and close the drive door if the power is off. NEVER, put a disk into a disk drive and close the drive door and then turn on the power. NEVER, turn off the power with a disk in the disk drive and the drive door closed. For MS-DOS, don't worry about it. For CP/M computers, follow the following sequence: A) Return to CP/M by pressing a menu choice that gives you the chance to exit to CP/M. B) When you see the A> open the drive doors and remove the disks. C) Turn off the power. 8 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules 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 or three characters like your choice of category codes, then 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: CK 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 checks for the month of April 1983, then a good file name would be 4-83 or APRIL83. If these checks are only for your trust account then a good name would be TR4-83. 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 CK. You can't do this because CK automatically puts the extension .CKD after the name of every file of checks. For MS-DOS users, your file names CANNOT have slashes in them because DOS 2.0 uses slashes for PATH commands. If you include a slash in your file name under DOS 2.0, you will gen- erate an error. Seventh: CK sees all money spent, that is all checks, as positive numbers and all money received, that is all deposits, as negative numbers. If you ever see a negative number as a check amount, that means that CK is treating that entry as a deposit. 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 sort a file but can't remember your file name. You type in a garbage name in response to the file name question and CK displays your list of files. 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. 9 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules 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. 10 Sec. 2 A Getting Started -- General Rules (B) TURNING ON YOUR MACHINE AND COPYING THE CK PROGRAMS Take a blank disk from your box of disks and "initialize" it. This means you must run the "format" program which came with your machine. If you don't know how to do this, call the person who sold you your machine. Format your disk for the highest density your format program will allow. FOR MS-DOS USERS Format three disks with the command A>FORMAT B:/S[return] Now, A>COPY A:*.* B:[return] with CK disk #1 in A and a formatted blank disk in B. Repeat for disk number two. Skip the CP/M stuff below. FOR CP/M USERS If you have CP/M then, with your initialized disk in drive B run your SYSGEN program in drive A with the destination on drive B. Again, you should know how to do this. If you don't, call the people who sold you your machine and ask them. Now with your disk in drive B initialized and with sysgen completed, your screen should look like this: A> Now type PIP if you use CP/M. Now your screen should look like this: A> PIP * Now type B:=pip.com and press return. When the drive lights stop flashing, press Return again. Now, put away your system disk with format and sysgen on it and take the new disk from drive B and put it into drive A. Put the CK master disk into drive B. Press a control C. Now type PIP. Your screen should look like this: 11 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program A> pip *B:=pip.com * A> ^C A> PIP * Now type A:=B:*.*[V] [Return] Now all the programs will be copied from the B drive to the A drive. When PIP is done it will put an asterisk on the screen. Press Return and A> will appear. The disk in the A drive is your program disk. Put the CK master disk from the B drive in a safe place. If you cannot fit all the CK modules on one disk then if your drives are 180,000 to 380,000 bytes then divide them up as follows: On Disk #1 Put These: On Disk #2 Put These: CKMSG CKAMTD.COM CK.COM CKCAT.COM CKINPUT.COM CKCHRT.COM CKADD.COM CKDATE.COM CKLOOK.COM CKNAME.COM CKEXSET.COM CKNUMBR.COM CKACCTS.COM CKSORT.COM CKEXTOT.COM SORT.COM CK.COM Disk Number 1 will be used to enter check data, to look at and change your check information, to add files together, to set up you income and expense categories and your list of accounts and to prepare your year to date reports. Disk Number 2 will be used to prepare your reports sorted by amount, category, chart, date, name and number. To use disk #1, just type CK and press return. To use Disk #2, type CK or CKSORT and press return. Again, use disk #1 to input your data and disk #2 to prepare your sorted reports. If your drives are 100,000 to 180,000 bytes then you will split the programs onto four disks as follows: Disk #1 Disk #2 CKMSG CKEXSET.COM CK.COM CKACCTS.COM CKINPUT.COM CKEXTOT.COM CKADD.COM CK.COM 12 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program CKLOOK.COM Disk #3 Disk #4 CKSORT.COM CKSORT.COM SORT.COM SORT.COM CKAMTD.COM CKDATE.COM CKCAT.COM CKNAME.COM CKCHRT.COM CKNUMBR.COM Disk #1 will be used to enter check data, examine files, correct mistakes, and to add files together. Type CK and press return to get started here. Disk #2 will be used to set up your income and expense categories, set up your list of checking accounts, and do your year to date reports. Type CK and press return to get started here. Disk #3 will be used to prepare sorted reports by amount, category and to prepare a chart. Type CKSORT and press return to get started here. Disk #4, will prepare sorted reports by date, name and check number. Type CKSORT and press return to get started here. A word of warning: if you are using your disk #1 and you press S at the main CK menu, the program will look for the file CKSORT and it won't find it! That is because CKSORT is on your disk number 2. So, if you have to divide your programs onto several disks be careful to only press menu items to call up programs which are actually on the disk in use. Okay, so much for the disk(s) holding your CK 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 "CK PROGRAM DISK (#1) --DRIVE A" and in our example, the data disk as "CK 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. SO, if you have more than two drives or a hard disk you can put your programs on any drive and you can designate any drive as the drive to hold your data files. In our example, we have the program disk in A and the data disk in B. Type CK [Return]. CK will begin with the Main Menu. It will immediately 13 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program notice that it cannot find a file containing the letter of the drive which will hold your data disk. It will immediately load the program called "CKEXSET" and will ask you for the drive where you want to put your data disk. You may pick any letter from A to L. In our example, we would answer B. WARNING: Always keep a backup of your data disk. Disks do have a habit of dying. If yours gets its directory damaged it may not be salvageable. Every two or three months, it would be a good idea to copy your data disk onto your backup disk. You will now be returned to a menu which will allow you to set up your income and expense categories, which is the "E" option on the Main Menu. 14 Sec. 2 B - Getting Started -- Copying The Program (C) THE MAIN MENU EXPLAINED The Main Menu looks like this: Copyright David M. Alexander, 1984 For This Program And For ALL Programs Called From This Program **** MAIN MENU **** D To Enter DATA From Your Check Stubs, L To LOOK At A File Of Checks S To SORT Your Checks & Create Reports Y Create YEAR TO DATE Reports P How To PRINT A Listing Of Expense Categories E To Set Up Display Or Change EXPENSE Categories C To Set Up, Display Or Change List Of CHECKING Accts A To ADD Several FILES Together X To EXIT To The Operating System When you want to enter your checks and deposits into the program, you press D. CK will call up the CKINPUT module and ask for your check and income information. When you want to review the checks you have entered or correct typo's or add or delete checks, press L. CK will call up CKLOOK which will let you review any file you like. When you want to prepare reports, you will sort your checks by name or number or amount, etc. Press S. CK will call up CKSORT which will allow you to chose your report format. When you want to create a year to date report of your income and expenses, press Y. CK will display the Year To Date menu and give you the opportunity to erase the old year to date report or to create a new one or to add new files to the old year to date report. When you are unsure how to print a hardcopy of your re- ports, press P. CK will tell you how to print your reports. When you want to set up or change or look at your cate- 15 Sec. 2 C Getting Started -- The Main Menu gories of income and expenses, press E. CK will call up CKEXSET which will allow you to do these things. When you want to set up or change the list of your various checking accounts, press C. This will call up the program CKACCTS.COM. You will be able to chose up to 9 different accounts and will be able to sort each account separately. When you want to add several files together press A. CK will call up CKADD which will allow you to add several indi- vidual files into one big file, e.g. add three months of checks together to have one file for the whole quarter. When you want to return to the operating system, press X which will call up the A> and put you back into CP/M or MS-DOS. 16 Sec. 2 C Getting Started -- The Main Menu The above Table of Contents gives you an outline of what is in the full CK 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 $25. If you use CK, I ask you to send me the $25 as part recompense for the many hundreds of hours I have invested in the program. Commercial users, corporations, are required to pay the $25 if they use the program. If you haven't registered the program, don't call with questions. If you have registered and you call and I can't take your call, I will return your call collect. David M. Alexander 2600 El Camino Real #506 Palo Alto, CA 94306 415-857-9233 If you like CK, you should consider trying MR. BILL tm, a program I wrote to keep time and prepare full bills/invoices including ageing, chronological reports, management reports, variable billing rates and all the good stuff I needed for a full billing program for my law practice. MR. BILL is also available from Public Brand Software for CP/M and MS-DOS. Take care, David M. Alexander 17 Sec. 2 C Getting Started -- The Main Menu CK QUICK USE OUTLINE The short course in using CK is as follows: 1) copy the disks as outlined above; 2) put the input disk in the A drive or, if you are using a hard disk, go to your hard disk; 3) type A>CK [return] 4) You will be asked what drive you want to use as your data drive. If you are using floppies, say B . If you are using a hard disk, answer with your hard disk drive letter, usually C. 5) press S to Set up your income and expense categories. 6) when asked, respond with the name of a file to hold your income and expense categories of up to seven (NOT eight) characters --- use your initials or just call it EXP for expenses. 7) enter your income and expense codes in answer to the prompts on screen; 8) when done, return to the main menu; 9) Press C on the main menu, then when the next menu appears, press S to Set up your list of checking accounts. You can have up to 9, e.g. general account, trust account, Bank Of America account, Visa Card, American Express, S & L account, etc. 10) return to the main menu and press D to enter your Data (that's your checks and deposits) or exit and use your word processor to print out your alphabetized lists of income and expense codes; 11) If you are using floppy disks, make sure to copy the file DISKDRVE which CK has created on your input disk from your input disk to your report disk. Do this only after the first use. Don't worry about it once you have copied it. When you want to prepare your reports, put your Report disk into A drive (if it's not already on a hard disk). 12) type CK, type S on the main menu to go to the sort menu. Select the type of report you want to create and press the menu entry for that kind of report. When the report is completed, print it: 1) through your word processer from your B drive or your hard disk, OR 18 Sec. 2 C Getting Started -- The Main Menu 2) type A>type B:FILENAME.XXX ^P [return] FILENAME is the name you chose for your file and XXX is the extension for the particular report you chose to create, OR 3) type A>PIP LST:=B:FILENAME.XXX [return] for CP/M or A>COPY B:FILENAME.XXX > LPT1 [return] for DOS Go ahead, play with CK, it won't break your machine or trash your disks. You can't really hurt anything by experimenting with it. I think that you will find it very easy to use. Best, David M. Alexander 19 19