Personal Accounts 3 is written for the Psion Series 3a computer. I developed it for my personal use and have now
adapted the program to make it more practical for public use. It provides an easy to use facility to manage finances
in various bank accounts. You can credit and debit your accounts, transfer money to other accounts, set up standing
orders, print accounts and edit, amend and reconcile the various accounts at a later date, all with auto date and
balance sort, there is now an overall balance showing the total amount available to you. You can have an unlimited
number of accounts within the Psion's capacity, but due to the limited screen size I have made the maximum
transaction that can be carried out to be £99,999.99. Anyone with more money than this in their accounts please
forward a significant portion of it to me and I will give the problem my fullest attention!
Installation
Simply copy the programs Accounts.opa and Accts_pt2.opa to your APP directory overwriting the old accounts if you
are upgrading. If you do not already have this directory, you can either make it by pressing Psion+ whilst on the
system screen with the Time application highlighted, or you must include it in the path when you are in the Copy
file pop-up menu. i.e. \app\accounts, see the Psion manual for more details. Once you have copied the file, again
with the cursor on the system screen press PSION I.
When the install application dialog pops up, select Accounts.opa ONLY and press return.
Personal accounts should now be installed and can be run in the usual manner. If you would like to add
sound to the program just copy the accompanying wve files to your acc\accounts directory or your wve directory. If at any time you get fed up of the noises just delete the wve files from the relevant directory.
The first time you run the program it creates the following directories :-
\ACC - This directory holds the records of the individual accounts.
\ACC\ACCOUNTS - This sub-directory holds the general housekeeping files and the wve files, if you chose
to install them.
Using the program for the first time
The first choice you will be given is to select if you would like to use a password or not. If you choose to
select a password, from then on you will be prompted for the password before the program will run. Next you
have to name the first of your accounts, this can either be a "Current account", a "High interest account" or
have no extension i.e. Visa. You can now add your bank account No. and sort code details, this is just used for
information in the status window and can be left out if not required. You will then be presented with a screen
with the words :- DATE DETAILS DEBIT CREDIT BALANCE and no records. If you press the menu button
you will then get a menu showing all the functions available to you and the "current" account name. As you become
more familiar with the program you will find that you can use the "short-cut" keys i.e. PSION C or just C instead
of going to the menu and selecting Credit account. When you use some of the functions ie. Credit, you will need to
press ESC to get out of the procedure, this is to save time when putting in multiple cheques, for instance.
After you have placed some transactions in your account you will notice the cursor on the LEFT of the screen,
this shows the current transaction. Before you use some of the functions you need to place the cursor alongside
the selected transaction ,using the up and down cursor keys. If for instance you want to change the amount of one
of the transactions you simply move the cursor alongside it and press PSION E or E (for Edit) and you will get
a dialog pop up allowing you to change any of the details. If you want to move a screen at a time then you press
the PSION key and the up or down keys or just the left and right keys for start and end of the file. If you select
the delete Record (R) function you are given the option of just deleting the "current" transaction or to delete all
of the records up to a given date, if you choose the latter your final balance will not be affected because the new
first record will now read BALANCE and show a credit or debit that relates to the balance at the time of the last
erased record. This enables you to quickly reduce the length of the account records, because after you have a few
months' worth of transactions you will notice that the auto-date sort and balance sort starts to slow down. You
have now got the option to select just the reconciled records. The reconcile/hide function is activated by the
M (Mark) key, or the space bar if you want to reconcile the record quickly. The reconcile option just tags the record
as having been "checked off" your statement, it is indicated, by a hash symbol, you can then erase them selectively,
as described previously, to tidy up your list. However, the hide option, as indicated by the lock symbol, will hide
the amount from the overall balance, this is to enable you to put in cheques etc. in advance of when they will be drawn.
The date sort option under the Special menu is to resort the account fully if any problems occur with the autosort,
it should normally not be needed, however under exceptional circumstances the file could become unsorted.
All of the usual Psion conventions should apply when using the program i.e. PSION X or X to exit. In order to protect
against prying eyes the program will automatically turn itself off after System power ON, the only exception to this
is if you are registered and have selected disable auto off, when you turn off the Psion. For registered users you
have the choice whether to use this facility or not. The compress function is to reduce the size of a file that has
had a lot of amendments done to it. This is necessary because the Psion does not release all of the ram after it has
erased a record, but as the file is effectively compressed each time you change accounts you should only need to use
this if you have a single account installed.
Pressing 1 is the easiest way to jump to the system screen. Hopefully all other functions are self-explanatory and
you will have no other problems. However as is the way of such things, there is almost certainly still a few bugs
lurking around in the depths of the program, so if you discover any or can think of any improvements ( sensible
suggestions only please. ) Please drop me a line and I will try to help.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
The standing order section has been totally re-written and is now much more user friendly, however due to a different
file type, if you are upgrading from an earlier version you may find that you need to edit some of your standing orders
to ensure that they are correct.
When you select the standing orders you now get a list of all entries, and you can edit, enter and erase as with a normal
account type. The arrows by the account show the direction of money, ie. to or from the account. The type will show a W,
M, Q, Y or a number. The letter designates the frequency of the standing order and the number shows the number of times
you want it to be executed. Entering a 0 will set it to infinite.
Disclaimer
Personal accounts is Copyright (C) Gareth Evans, 1994. Permission is given to freely distribute this software and
documentation as long as the following restrictions are observed:
- The software and documentation should not be modified without permission from the author.
- No fee may be charged for distribution of this software apart from a small handling charge.
- The following four files must be passed on together.
accounts.opa The program
accts_pt2.opa part two of the program
accounts.rtf This file in RTF
accounts.txt This file
The author accepts no responsibility for damage or loss due to the us
