Loadstar 128 23/q23.d81/t.fd 5

Text File | 2022-08-28 | 14KB | 351 lines

Entering transactions is fairly straight-forward so I'll just address a
couple of items.

Cash transactions are entered by leaving the account code field blank.  Any
other entry in this field must be a valid account code (a list of which can
be seen by pressing F3).

You should have noticed if you pressed F3 on any of the account codes, the
description next to the account code is the description you entered when
establishing the account.

We entered several transactions payable to Crown and Santonis.  If we wanted
to we could go to the Transaction Utilities menu and select Description
List.  We could add these two to the description list and not have to type
them each time they appear.  Changing entries in the help3 screen won't
affect transactions you have already entered so you're not stuck with the
same help screen forever.

Sequence numbers are automatically incremented in certain circumstances.  A
few examples of when they are and when they aren't follow:

Initial sequence number entered in Establish Accounts - 1314

You see  You enter  Incremented  Next Sequence Number Displayed
 1314     RETURN        Yes                 1315
 1315     d15           No                  1315
 1315     CLR           No                  1315
 1315     1316          Yes                 1317
 1317     1351          Yes                 1352

If you change your mind about a category you can go back to the field and
press <F3>.  This will put back the category screens allowing you to make a
change.

A final note about transactions: remember to give those new accounts
beginning balances!

Reconciling accounts is fairly easy.  There is one thing you need to be
aware of though.  FIDUCIARY transfers ALL unreconciled transactions so you
need to "clear" charge transactions too.  There's a specific reason for
this.  Many people like to keep a transaction file for each year.  If charge
transactions weren't transferred you would have to update your budget with
multiple transaction files (and the program would have to load each of those
transaction files - a 15 to 20 second wait with a drive capable of burst
loading).  This way, come January you can hold off clearing the new year's
transactions, get last year's stragglers entered into the transaction file
and then transfer the transaction file.  Even a fairly heavy user of
transactions can get away with loading a transaction file once during a
session.

In the search function, you enter a lower limit and an upper limit for any
combination of fields for which you want to search the transaction file.

To search for all transactions that are credit card transactions I would
make the following entries:

Lower limit - ACCT D1
Upper limit - ACCT V2

Or I could use the categories I established for credit card transactions.
This would be preferable if I had account codes that weren't in such nice,
alphabetical order.

I don't need entries in any other field.  FIDUCIARY will assume the highest
or lowest possible value for a blank field (depending on whether it's a
lower or an upper limit).

You can view the results of the search with Modify Transactions, Reconcile
Accounts, or Transaction Reports.

Let's search for all transactions that were related to our HOUSING category.
I would select the first HOUSING subcategory (RENT) for the lower limit
category and the last HOUSING subcategory (UNUSED) for the upper limit
category.

Lets search for all budget categories over $100.00.  I would enter 100.00 as
the lower limit category amount and that's all (the upper limit category
amount would assume 999999.00 since it's blank).

If I wanted to search for all of the credit card payments I would enter a
'p' in the lower and upper limit SEQ NO.

If I wanted all transactions at Santonis during the first two weeks of
January that were over $20.00 I would enter:

Lower limit - DATE 01/01/90
              DESCRIPTION Santonis

              AMOUNT 20.00

Upper limit - DATE 01/14/90
              DESCRIPTION Santonis

If I wanted the same search but wanted only those over $20.00 but under
$50.00 and were for Groceries I would:

Lower limit - DATE 01/01/90
              DESCRIPTION Santonis
              AMOUNT 20.00
              CATEGORY Food

Upper limit - DATE 01/14/90
              DESCRIPTION Santonis
              AMOUNT 50.00
              CATEGORY Unused (last in Groceries category)

You should note that the DESCRIPTION field does not support wild card
characters (? and *) in a traditional sense.  It uses blanks instead. For
example, let's say we've been entering the checks we use to pay our
accountant sometimes as 'acct' and sometimes as 'accountant', but we want a
list of all checks we've given to the accountant.  We would enter 'acco' in
the lower limit DESCRIPTION field and 'acct' in the upper limit DESCRIPTION
field.  The search would find all transactions that fell in the range acco*
to acct* (to use traditional search terminology).  So you can think of
spaces as wild cards.  What it's actually doing is ignoring blanks.

Another example of this would be to find all transactions that had a
description that began with the letter 'a'.  We would enter 'a' as the lower
limit DESCRIPTION and 'az' as the upper limit DESCRIPTION.

Of course we can further narrow a search by specifying the clearance status
of the transactions.

Let's use search to find all the credit card transactions again.  Enter
Credit Cards/Discover for the lower limit category and Visa - 2 for the
upper limit category.  Now select Transaction Reports.

We can get a simple listing of the transactions by selecting Transaction
List and then specify Last Search.

Or we could get a total by credit card by selecting Transactions by
Category, selecting Credit Cards from the category list, and specify last
Search.  We could have selected All Transactions, but its faster to narrow
it down with a search.  You probably can't tell with just a few
transactions, but with several hundred it would be significant.

We won't go through an entire budget set up, but you might go to the Budget
Manager and select Update Actual Amounts.  Enter 94 for the year, tell it
"N" (we don't have an additional transaction disk - in case your
transactions for a year take more than one file).  When it's finished
storing the information on disk, select Budget vs Actual and View all
categories to take a look at the Actual Amounts for the budget.  Since
you've entered all of the transactions, seeing how they relate to the budget
should give you a good idea of how the Transaction Manager interacts with
the Budget Manager.


 ERRORS AND WARNINGS
 -------------------

*Account data file not found Abort?

The file containing secondary account information such as account number,
address and phone number couldn't be found on the disk. This file isn't
needed for program operation.  You can continue with the Establish Accounts
function by pressing "N".

*Account overflow

The transaction amount you entered caused the account balance to fall
outside the range 999999.99 to -999999.99.

*Amount too large

The transaction amount must be between 0 and 99999.99.

*Another transaction file?

During the update of actual budget amounts, you may use multiple transaction
files (for instance, you may have transaction for the same calendar year in
two different transaction files).  An unlimited number of transaction disks
may be used, subject to category and total expense limits for the months and
year.  So this prompt will appear after each transaction file's information
is extracted.  Note that the transaction file in memory will be the last one
that you used to update the budget.

*Bad sequence number

You have specified an illegal sequence number.  Sequence numbers must fall
within the range 0 to 9999 or be blank.

*Bad transaction type

You have used an unrecognized transaction type.  Make sure the type is
appropriate for the account.

*Balance forward?

While modifying transactions, you altered a transaction in such a way that
the program believes account balances may now be incorrect.  Pressing "Y"
brings the affected account balance forward.  The program only checks the
accounts involved, so you should normall