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Probe House Software presents Probe House E x p e n s e M a n a g e r v 2 . 0 William Wong, Feb 1995 Probe House Software * Introduction * The Concept of PHEM * Installation * The Menu Bar * Transaction Report Generator * Account Report / Category Report Generator * Budget Report and Budget List * How to Find/Search for a particular transaction * Account List & Category List and Merge * Transaction Entry * The Report Toolbar * Calendar Window * Reindex, System Info and Configure Window * The GUI and Key shortcuts. * Creating a New Book. * Development, History, acknowledgement, address PHEM is freeware - you can freely use and distribute it. If you like it, please let me know as it is a booster for software developer. Donations and gifts are welcome. Introducting PHEM ================= The Probe House Expense Manager or PHEM is an application for the management of your daily expense. It can also be used as a limited home financial package. Some of the features are: DESKTOP * Fully supports the desktop, with 3D look and feel, * The graphical environment integrates the desktop and automates the way you work. * Multiple windows for reports and data entries. * Window icon style toolbar. * Iconification supported. * Hotkey shortcut for commnly used functions. TRANSACTIONS * Number of transactions limited only by memory available. * A maximum of 60 accounts and 60 categories giving a total of over 300 combinations. * Sort transactions by accounts, categories or date. * Calculate expense automatically in display windows. * Edit any transactions any time. * Search any transactions. GRAPHS * Pie and bar charts. * Graphs for account, categories and date groups. * Graphs are self-scaling to fit windows. REPORTS * All reports are generated by report generator. * Detailed transactions for specified date range, account type or category type. * Reports produced on-screen and can be printed or saved on disk. * Budget reports can be generated for any accounts and categories. GENERAL * On-line help with ST Guide. * Speedo GDOS support. * Can be freely distributed. * Mono and colour, ST/STe/Mega/TT and Falcon. The concept =========== Accounts are created for credit cards, petty cash and anything else that is major enough to be tracked. In general, money flows out from these so-called accounts. Next there are categories. These are used to categorise the type of expenditure. Examples are Lunch, Dinner, Petrol, Diskettes etc. In general, these are the stuff that money is used on. Actually the line between accounts and category in PHEM is blurred. There is no stopping from creating a Lunch account. However, by keeping the ccounts where money flows out from, a Budget can be kept. A transaction is when money flow out from an account for a particular category. In PHEM, the date, amount of money and an comment are attached to a transaction. The comment can be anything that descript the transaction further ( example: Petrol @ 1.10/gallon ). PHEM keeps the set of accounts, category and transaction as a book. It can then produce reports and charts of any accounts, category or transaction. This way the expense are tracked. A budget can be kept for any accounts and category. Budget are calculated in a monthly basis. The Budget Report shows how much is left in the allocation for that particular month. Installating PHEM ==================== 3 Easy Installation steps ------------------------- 1/ Just unlzh the archive into any directory. 2/ Move the PHEM.HYP hypertext help file to your hypertext directory. 3/ Double click on the PHEM icon to run it. Installing as a Application --------------------------- PHEM can be installed as an application for the .ACT files.In doing so you can run PHEM by double clicking on the .ACT file. Just make sure the default directory is the PHEM's home directory so that it can find the resource file. Installing as a desktop icon application ---------------------------------------- PHEM can be installed as a desktop icon. In doing so you can just drag a .ACT file on to it. Just make sure the default directory is the PHEM's home directory so that it can find the resource file. The Menu Bar ============ The menu bar consist of the following * PHEM for accessories and about. * File for file operations. * Report for reoprt and searching operations. * List for account, category and transactions operations. * Entry for entering transactions. * Special for other special operations. * PHEM Selecting this menu title gives access to the desk accessories and also the About dialog. * File selecting this menu title gives you access to Open Book - Read into memory an already created Book. Save Book - Save the book on to disk with the original name. Save as - Save the book on to disk, asking for a new name. File Info - Shows the name, creation and last modified date of the current file. A short description can also be entered in this dialog. Import - Any comma delimited text data file can be read in. The order of the data is critical, they are 1st: year eg 1994 2nd: month in months eg 1 ( for January ) 3rd: date 4th: the account name 5th: the category name 6th: the comment 7th: amount Example: 1994, 12, 8, Cash, Lunch, Soup, 1.65 Quit - You guessed it! Quits PHEM. * Report This dropdown menu provide access to the reporting tools. Transaction - Calls up the Transaction Report Generator. Account - Calls up the Account Report Generator. Category - Calls up the Category Report Generator. Budget - Displays the Budget Report. Find - Calls up the Find/Search Dialog. * List This dropdown menu provide access to the account manipulation tools. Account - Calls up the Account List. Category - Calls up the Category List. Budget - Displays the Budget List. Merge - Calls up the Merge Window for either account or category. * Entry This dropdown menu provide access to the transaction entry tool. Transaction - Calls up the Transaction Entry dialog. * Special System Info - Display information for the system. The memory indicates unfragmentated memory for the program to allocate. Calendar - Calls up the Calendar Window. Reindex - This sorts and reindex both the accounts and categories list to alphabetical order. Configuration - Calls up the Configure Window. Transaction Report Generator ============================ The Transaction report Generator determines the type of information and format that appears in the report. Accounts and categories selection Any accounts or categories can be selected to be included in the report. They are selected in the account and category box. - To scroll up or down the list, use the up and down arrow buttons. - To select an entry, click on it to hilite it. - To unselect a selected entry, click on it again. - To select all the entries, press on the ALL button. ( Note that ALL button will turn to a NONE button) - To unselect all, press on the NONE button. Sorting The report can be sorted by date, account or category. Chose by selecting the proper radio button. Date range The start and end of report date can be changed by clicking on the particular date. A Calendar Window will appear for the selection of the dates. Subtotal / Summary / Details This defines the type of report you want. If subtotal or summary is selected, the groupings will be according to the sorting method selected. Display button This will execute the form and the result will be displayed in the Reprt Window. Account / Category Report Generator =================================== The Account / Category report Generator will generate a subtotal report for the selected class type. Class entry selection Any accounts / categories can be selected to be included in the report. They are selected in the account and category box. - To scroll up or down the list, use the up and down arrow buttons. - To select an entry, click on it to hilite it. - To unselect a selected entry, click on it again. - To select all the entries, press on the ALL button. ( Note that ALL button will turn to a NONE button) - To unselect all, press on the NONE button. Date range The start and end of report date can be changed by clicking on the particular date. A Calendar Window will appear for the selection of the dates. Display button This will execute the form and the result will be displayed in the Reprt Window. Budget Report ============= The budget for four consequtive months are displayed in a window. The delta column shows the sum of the 4 months result. This gives a simple quarterly result of the budget. Any budget results that is negative will be printed out in red. The budget for a account or category for a particular month is calculate by subtrating from it's allocated amount, the expenses incurred on that account or category for that month. The allocated amount is entered via the Budget List tool. Changing month/year of the budget To change the month, click on the month popup button. To change the year, click on the year popup button. Filing The report can be filed to a disk by clicking on the disk icon. A fileselector will popup for the pathname. The report is saved in ASCII format. Printing The report can be printed out on to the printer by clicking on the printer icon. Find/Search ============ To find for a particular string in the comment field, use the Find dialog. The results of the find will display in a report window. Wildcards are used to match occurance of string. The * is to match a sequence of characters while the ? is to match a single character. e.g "abcdefghi" is the comment field *ghi will find the above field. ??c??f* will find the above field. *dh* will not find the above field. *def will not find the above field. Account / Category List ======================= The Account / Category window This window displays a list of all the entry in accounts or categories. Selecting an account / category entry To select a name to work on, click on the name. The entry will now be hilited. You can use one of the icon on the window toolbar on it. Selecting several entries to work on at one time is possible. Add icon (Keyboard shortcut - Insert key) Pressing this icon will insert a new entry into the list. A dialog for entering the new entry will appear. Delete icon (Keyboard shortcut - Delete key) Pressing this icon will delete the selected entries of the list. WARNING: Any transaction that reference this name will have it's name listed as "* UNKNOWN *" in the reports. Modify icon (Keyboard shortcut - Retrun key) Pressing this icon will modify the selected entries of the list. A dialog for modifying the entry will appear. Budget List =========== The budget list for four conseqcutive months are displayed in a window. Entering budget data To make an entry into the budget list for a particular account or category, double click on the line that account or category is on. A dialog will appear for entry of the 4 months. Modifying an entry To modify an entry into the budget list for a particular account or category, double click on the line that account or category is on. A dialog will appear for with data of the 4 months to be modified. Changing month/year of the budget To change the month, click on the month popup button. To change the year, click on the year popup button. A increment and decrement popup will appear. Filing The listing as displayed can be filed to a disk by clicking on the disk icon. A fileselector will popup for the pathname. The list is saved in ASCII format. Printing The list can be printed out on to the printer by clicking on the printer icon. Merging Accounts or categories ============================== This function is to facilitate the combining of different accounts together and the combining of different categories together. This may be neccesary because a name on the list may need to be deleted. Selecting the FROM entry Use the POPUP BUTTON to choose the name to combine from. Selecting the TO entry Use the POPUP BUTTON to choose the name to combine to. MERGE IT button This will move all transactions with the FROM name to the TO name. Transaction Entry ================= The transaction window allows entries of transactions into the book. The follwoing information is required: Account, Category, Date, and Amount. Entering a transaction 1/ Use the account POPUP BUTTON to select the correct account. 2/ Use the category POPUP BUTTON to select the correct category. 3/ Click on the date to select correct date via the Calendar Window. 4/ Enter the amount. 5/ Enter a comment ( this is optional ). 6/ Click the ADD button to add to the transaction list. The Modify Transaction Window is a Transaction Window without the recuring tickbox. Recuring entries For recuring entries, tick on the recuring tickbox. A recuring entry dialog will appear where the following info is required: The start date of the recurance via the Calendar Window. The end date of the recurance via the Calendar window. The frequency of the recurrance - daily, weekly or monthly. Report Window Toolbar ===================== Transactions that satisfy the criteria of Report Generator form are displayed in a Report window. The Report window contains a Toolbar. This Toolbar gives access to the Graph, Deleting, Exporting, Saving and Printing of the transactions displayed in the window. To enter a new transaction Keyboar short cut - Insert To select a transaction, just single click on it. Modifying a transaction 1/ Double click on the transaction to be modified. 2/ A modify window will appear, this window is exactly the same as a Transaction Entry window, it however does not have a recurring tickbox. 3/ Modify as required. 4/ Click on the MODIFY button to update the transaction. 5/ The Report window will be updated to reflect the changes. Deleting a transaction Keyboard shortcut - Delete 1/ Select the transacions to be deleted. 2/ Click on the DELETE icon, the window will be updated. 3/ A range of transaction can be selected and deleted in one step. WARNING: Deleting a transaction remove the transaction permanently. It cannot be recovered. Graphing the results Clicking on the Graph button will provide a graph for the transactions in the window. Both subtotal and summary results can be graphed. There is a choice between Bar Chart and a Pie Chart. Exporting the results The transactions of the Report window can be exported out in comma delimited format. The format is similar to Import format. Filing the result This files to disk the text of the window for use possibly in a word processor. Printing the result This will printout the text of the window on a printer connected to the printer port. Graphic Window ============== Well, this is the graphic window. You cannot do much about it, possibly GDOS printout capability in next release. Creating a New Book ==================== A new book can be created by starting up the program a fresh and begin entering the accounts, categories and entries. Once a book is loaded, a new book will not be able to be created. When this happens, just quit the current session and start up a new session. That was easy !! Calendar Window =============== This small window display the current month. To change the month, use the month POPUP button. To change the year, use the year POPUP button. An increment and decrement popup will appear. To set the date 1/ Select the desired date by single clicking on it. 2/ click on the button. or 1/ Double clicking on the desired date. NOTE: Only one date can be set at any one tine. Reindexing ========== This reindexes the transactions witn the accounts and categories entries. The account and category lists are also sorted by this command. System Info =========== Provides some information on the current system. The Configure Window ==================== This tool allows changing the colour and fills of the dialogs and the desktop. Changing any item will take effect immediately. If SpeedoGDOS is installed, the font and font size of the report windows can be changed. Ticking the "Print using GDOS" will output SpeedoGDOS fonts to the printer. Note that you must have previously installed a GDOS printer device driver. The GUI ======= PHEM uses an advance GUI for the ST/STE/TT and Falcon. The following tries to give an overview of the interface. Iconification All windows can be iconified in all TOS version. For those TOS which support iconification use the button for it. For other TOS, to iconify a window, click the RIGHT mouse button on the window title bar. Hot Keys Hot keys are keyboard shortcut for common functions. Menus: Hot keys are display at the end of the menu item. ^ means control eg ^S means control-S ◆ means altrenate eg ◆T means alternate-T Forms: Hot keys are highlited by colour and/or underlined. To activate press the Alternate key with the highlited character. Windows: The Account List, Category List have Hot keys (shortcuts) for the following: Insert = enter a new entry. Delete = removes the selected entries. Return = modify the selected entries. The Report Windows have the Hot keys (shortcuts) for the following: Delete = removes the selected entries. Window management Windows can be manipulated by hot keys. ESC : Maximise / restore size a window. Shift-ESC : Close a window that does not have edit fields in it. Shift-Tab : Iconify a window. Control-Tab: Cycle windows. Development, History, acknowledgement, address ============================================== This program was developed on a 4Mb Tos 2.05 Mega STE with 170Mb HDD. Currently I am using a TV, my monitor is back home. I am not shipping my monitor for this. So if the screen looks funny, please feedback to me. Software tools and package use: Program : Pure C, Pure Debugger and GUI provided by BIG 1.88. Hypertext: Pure C (editor), ST-Guide and HCP History Ver 1.0: Released to the public as freeware. Ver 2.0: Released to the public as freeware. - Budget capability. - SpeedoGDOS support. - Icons in toolbar. - Regroup menu items to be more logical. - Retouch some dialogs to improve functionality. - Configurable Look & Feel for desktop. - Fixed calendar completion dialog bug. Feedback Please send feedback of any types to: Internet : wongck@lobby.ti.com Mail : William Wong Blk 148, Potong Pasir Ave 1, #04-63, S(1335), Republic of Singapore. William Wong This address valid till 2600 Preston Road, April 1995 Apt 1009, Plano, Texas 75093 USA Acknowledgement Borland Germany for the excellent Pure C and Pure debugger. Claude Attard for the cool BIG libraries. Holger Weets for the great ST-Guide and HCP software. My students for the interpretation.