C/C++ Users Group Library 1996 July/C-C++ Users Group Library July 1996.iso/vol_400/423_01/accpost/post.doc

Text File | 1990-08-31 | 30.6 KB | 746 lines

                  Plain Vanilla Posting Program II
         Copyright (C) 1990, 1987 Plain Vanilla Corporation
                        All Rights Reserved

1. What the Posting Program Is

The Plain Vanilla Posting Program is a simple program that takes
over three of the most boring accounting tasks--posting from the
general journal to the general ledger, drawing a trial balance, and
putting account balances into a report.  It does job this much
faster and more accurately than you can, and it won't let you post
an unbalanced entry.  Your books will always be in balance.

The posting program features open design.  The input to the posting
program and the output from the posting program are plain text files
in familiar formats.  The journals look like journals, the ledgers
look like ledgers.  You can use a word processor or text editor to
create, modify, examine and print these files and move data from one
file to another.

With version II, source code is supplied with the posting program.
If you have Turbo C 2.0, the Turbo Assembler and Linker, you can
recompile and relink the posting program.  You might want to do this
if you have received the program from a questionable source and you
suspect that unauthorized changes have been made to the object code.
You might also want to make some changes to suit your own
application, but you're on your own there.  We can't assure you that
your changes will work.

If you outgrow the posting program and want to use a more
comprehensive accounting package, you can take advantage of this
open design to move your records, if the other accounting package is
similarly accommodating.

2. What the Posting Program Is Not

The posting program has no security features.  There are no
passwords, for example.  So lock up your diskettes if security may
be a problem.  Also, you should probably print out your files and
manually sign and date the printed copies for authentication.

The posting program is NOT copy protected.  It is copyrighted, so
you may not legally sell it, but you can give it away.  In fact, we
encourage you to distribute it as widely as possible.  However, if
you make changes, we ask you to pass on only the original,
unmodified code.

The posting program is not for large businesses or organizations.
It absolutely will not handle sums larger than $21,474,836.47, even
in trial balances and other intermediate calculations.  For most
small businesses and organizations, that's not much of a limitation,
unless you're keeping your books in some foreign currency that's
practically worthless.

Finally, there is no tutorial with the posting program.  It is
presumed that you are familiar with manual accounting procedures,
with the MS-DOS or PC-DOS operating system, with a suitable word
processor or text editor, and with the necessity of keeping backup
copies of everything.

3. What You Need to Use the Posting Program

To use the posting program, you need an IBM PC/XT/AT or compatible
with PC-DOS or MS-DOS 2.00 or a later version of MS-DOS.  You don't
need a graphics adapter or any special hardware.  You will need at
least a simple printer if you want printed copy of your work.  At
least 256K of memory is recommended, but you might be able to get by
with less.  You may need more memory if you have a lot of accounts
or transactions.  Get more--it's cheap.  But don't go overboard--the
posting program won't use more than 640K.

You also need a word processor, or at least a text editor, that
produces ASCII files.  There are many of them.  PC-WRITE, which is a
"shareware" program, will do nicely.  It is available on a trial
basis at nominal charge from most IBM PC users groups, but you must
register it if you decide to use it.  You can use WordStar (in the
nondocument mode).  You can even use EDLIN, the rickety old line
editor that comes with MS-DOS or PC-DOS, but we certainly don't
recommend that.

To get full use of the posting program, you'll need a word processor
that allows you to move text from one file to another.  You'll want
to do that quite often.

4. Getting Started

The first thing to do is to make a backup copy of the distribution
diskette and put it in a safe place.  That's always recommended.
Then copy the file POST.EXE from the distribution diskette to your
own diskette or hard disk.  If you want to follow the examples given
below, you should also copy the files ACCOUNTS, JOURNAL, BS.FRM and
IS.FRM.  You might also want to copy the file README, which contains
the text of this manual.  If your word processor allows you to edit
two or more documents at the same time (and the best ones do), and
you need to refer to this manual while you're editing your journal
file, you can call up the file README (under whatever name you have
chosen to give it), use the text search feature of your word
processor to find the part you need to refer to, read it right off
the screen.  Your word processor can probably turn the pages much
faster than you can.

5. Creating a Chart of Accounts

The first thing you need, with either the posting program or a
manual accounting system, is a chart of accounts.  With the posting
program this is simply a list containing the company name and the
account names, one per line.  Use your word processor to create one.
Here is an example from the file ACCOUNTS on the distribution
diskette:

         John Doe Enterprises

         Cash
         Accounts Receivable
         Inventory
         Accounts Payable
         John Doe Capital
         Sales
         Returns and Allowances
         Purchases
         Purchase Discounts
         Inventory Change
         Interest Income
         Advertising
         Rent
         Utilities

You can use almost any company and account names you want, but there
are a few restrictions.  A company or account name consists of one
or more words.  Each word must begin with a letter.  Subsequent
characters in the word may be either letters or digits.  Words are
separated by spaces or tabs.  Hence "Equipment1991" is an acceptable
account name, but "Equipment 1991" is not.  The reason for this rule
is that the number "1991" might be mistaken for an account balance
in some contexts.

Punctuation marks, such a commas, may not be used in company or
account names.  However, the virgule (/) is very common in
abbreviated account names (such as A/P), so it is permitted.

The posting program does not distinguish between capital and small
letters, so "CASH" and "Cash" are the same.  The spacing between
words is also unimportant, so "accounts payable" is the same as
"accounts     payable", but "accountspayable" is different, and so
is "payable accounts".

The maximum length of a company or account name, including single
spaces between words, is 40 characters.

The company name must come first.  The account names may follow in
any order, but it is helpful to arrange them in the order in which
they will appear on the financial reports.

6. Creating a Journal File

Now you need some transactions to post.  Use your word processor
again to create a text file that looks like a general journal, with
a number of special instructions to the posting program.  There are
two such files--JOURNAL and GENERAL on the distribution diskette.
You can use them as models for your own journals. Each one contains
numerous comments that you will probably want to remove.

The first three items in a journal file are normally of the
following kind:

     Journal: OPEN/CLOSE
     Company: John Doe Enterprises
     Read Ledger: ACCOUNTS

The first entry gives the name of the journal.  It will be put into
every line posted to the general ledger from this journal file.  The
entry is optional; if you omit it, the journal name will be omitted
from the general ledger.

The second entry gives the company name.  It must match the name
given in the chart of accounts.  The posting program will warn you
if the company name is omitted or does not match.

The third entry creates a general ledger with no postings in it.
You may also read a ledger previously created by the posting program
if you want to post more transactions to it.

7. Standard Journal Entries

The standard journal entries are easy to recognize.  If the account
name is indented--even a single space--the amount is a credit
amount.  Otherwise, the amount is a debit amount.  You might want to
align the debit and credit amounts vertically as they would appear
in a ruled journal book.  A good text editor will help you do that.
It is not required by the posting program, but it makes the journal
a lot easier to read.

Dollar amounts are written without dollar signs.  Commas are
optional; but it you use them, you must put them in the standard
positions.  If a dollar amount is a whole dollar amount, you may
omit the characters ".00" at the end.

Blank lines (or lines containing only comments) should be used to
separate journal entries, but must not be embedded within journal
entries.  The posting program uses blank lines to tell where journal
entries begin and end so it can determine whether each one is
balanced.  If the posting program encounters an unbalanced entry, it
will tell you so.

Each account name must match one in the chart of accounts or ledger.
If not, the posting program will warn you.  Errors of this kind
often result from simple typing errors.  The posting program is very
strict about spelling.  It has no way of knowing that "Accounts
Payable" is the same as "Acounts Payable".

8. Posting Commands

In addition to the comments and standard journal entries, the
journal files contain numerous posting commands.  These are
identified by the colon (:) after the name of the command.

A complete list of posting commands appears below in Section 16.

9. Non-Ledger Amounts

Financial reports contain balances in ledger accounts, of course,
but they also contain many other dollar amounts that do not appear
in any ledger account.  In our example, there are accounts called
"Purchases" and "Purchase Discounts".  The total net balance in
these two accounts (remembering that they normally contain debit and
credit balances, respectively) is called "Net Purchases" on the
income statement, but it is not a ledger account.

It is convenient to automate the computation of such non-ledger
amounts by asking the posting program to do the arithmetic.  This is
done with what might be called a pseudo-entry:


          Add: Purchases
          Add: Purchase Discounts
          Total: Net Purchases

The posting program adds the balances in the two ledger accounts
(netting debit and credit amounts as required) and puts the result
into the non-ledger amount called "Net Purchases".  The name of such
a non-ledger amount must obey the same rules as a ledger account
name, but it must be different from any ledger account name so it
will not be confused with a ledger account in other contexts.  The
balances in the two ledger accounts are not changed.

When three or more account balances are to be added, and the
accounts are listed together in the chart of accounts, you can use a
kind of shorthand.  For example, the non-ledger amount called "Total
Expenses" is calculated as follows:

     Add: Advertising
     Add: Rent
     Add: Utilities
     Total: Total Expenses

If the accounts "Advertising", "Rent" and "Utilities" appear in the
chart of accounts in that order, this can be abbreviated

     Add: Advertising .. Utilities
     Total: Total Expenses

This is why it is so desirable to have accounts listed in the chart
of accounts in the order they will appear on the financial
statements.  It facilitates this kind of shorthand.

It is also possible to add previously computed non-ledger amounts.
The total must be a non-ledger amount.  The addends may be either
ledger accounts or non-ledger amounts.

The shorthand form may not be used with non-ledger addends because
they have no definite order.

10. Closing Entries

There are also special posting commands for closing accounts, with
optional shorthand when the accounts to be closed are consecutive in
the chart of accounts.  The entry

          Close: Sales .. Utilities
          Into: John Doe Capital

is equivalent to

          Close: Sales
          Close: Returns and Allowances
          Close: Purchases
          Close: Purchase Discounts
          Close: Inventory Change
          Close: Interest Income
          Close: Advertising
          Close: Rent
          Close: Utilities
          Into: John Doe Capital

and its meaning is obvious.

The "Into" command may also be used to supply a balancing amount in
a non-closing entry.  For example, if several payments are made by
check, you might want to use an entry of the form:

          Advertising    123.67
          Rent           400.00
          Utilities       67.92
          Into: Cash

Of course, the posting program will be unable to detect any
imbalance, but in this case the checkbook reconciliation will serve
this purpose.


11. Trial Balances

To draw a trial balance, use one of the two posting commands:

          Trial Balance: <trial balance file>

          Condensed Trial Balance: <trial balance file>

In the second form, accounts with zero balances will be omitted from
the trial balance.  The result will be written to the specified
file.  You can use any file specifications that DOS will accept,
with a drive specification and directory path if needed.  The
previous contents of this file, if any, will be lost.

A trial balance contains the company name, the date, the account
names and balances and the debit and credit totals.  The names of
accounts with credit balances are indented, so the trial balance can
be used as a journal entry, perhaps to open the books for the next
period.

12. Creating Reports

The most significant output of any accounting system is the
financial reports, usually an income statement and a balance sheet.

The Plain Vanilla Posting Program II has a simple report writer of
a fill-in-the-blanks type.  Just include a posting command of the
form:

          Report: <form file>, <report file>

The posting program will read the form file, use current ledger
account balances and non-ledger amounts to fill in the form blanks
(which are explained below), and write the resulting report to the
report file.  You can use any file specifications that DOS will
accept, with a drive specification and directory path if needed.
The previous contents of the report file, if any, will be lost.  If
this is undesirable, the alternative form

          Report: <form file>, +<report file>

with a plus sign immediately in front of the report file
specifications, will tell the posting program append the report to
whatever is already in the file.

Everything in the form file, except the form blanks, will be written
to the report file without change.  The files IS.FRM and BS.FRM on
the distribution diskette are form files for an income statement and
balance sheet, respectively.  A form blank begins with a left brace
({), so the form file must not contain any other left braces.

To put a ledger account balance, or a non-ledger amount, into the
report, just include a form blank of the form

          {<account or amount name>,Dr}

if the amount is expected to be a debit balance, or

          {<account or amount name>,Cr}

if the amount is expected to be a credit balance.  If the amount was
what it was expected to be, it will be edited into a standard form,
with commas, and inserted into the report in place of the form
blank.  The amount will be padded with spaces at the left, if
necessary.  Hence if a column of form blanks is aligned, the
resulting amounts will also be aligned.  If the amount was not what
it was expected to be (a credit in the first case or a debit in the
second case), the amount will be enclosed in parentheses.  This may
or may not be an error, depending on the application.  If
parentheses are not needed, blanks are placed before and after the
amount.  This guarantees vertical alignment of amounts with and
without parentheses.

In most financial reports printed on typewriters or standard PC
printers, rows of minus signs or equal signs are used to underscore
partial and total sums.  The special form blank forms {-}, {=} and
{} are converted into sequences of minus signs, equal signs or
blanks, respectively, just long enough to underscore an amount.
Blanks are inserted to guarantee alignment with amounts enclosed in
parentheses.

The posting program always leaves room enough for the largest
possible amount (21,474,836.47), with parentheses, so it may yield
something like the following:

                  100.00
          (        10.00)
           -------------
                   90.00
           =============

This wastes a great deal of space when all numbers are much smaller
than the largest amount, as they often are in small companies or
organizations.  To prevent this, you can tell the posting program to
trim a specified number of spaces from the left end of every dollar
amount, as follows

          Report: <form file>, <report file>, 5

This tells the posting program to trim five spaces.  The above then
becomes:

             100.00
          (   10.00)
           --------
              90.00
           ========

If you inadvertently trim away some non-blanks in this manner, the
posting program will tell you so.

Finally, the two special form blanks {Company:} and {Date:} will
insert the company name or current date into the report.  The
current date, for this purpose, is the date in the most recent Date
command (see below).

If you design a report to follow the proper format, and it has no
parenthesized amounts, it can be used as a journal file.

13. Messages

A journal for the Plain Vanilla Posting Program II is something like
a program in itself, expecially if it contains a lot of special
posting commands.  You probably won't get it right the first time,
and you'll have to do a little debugging.  The special posting
command

     Message: <message string>

will display the specified message on the console when the posting
program executes it.  If the message contains form blanks of the
type described in the previous section, the posting program will
replace it with the company name, date or amount.

For example, the command

     Message: Cash balance on {Date:} = {Cash,Dr}

will tell you what the cash balance was on a specific date, both
according to previous postings and Date commands.

14. Running the Posting Program

Now you're ready to run the posting program.  Just make sure your
chart of accounts and journal files and the file POST.EXE are all
accessible, and type something like this

     POST  JOURNAL

The word POST calls up the program POST.EXE, which must be in the
current directory or in a directory reachable through the DOS PATH
directive, if any.

The only command-line arguments are the file specifications for the
journal files.  You may include as many journals as you can fit on
the command line.  They will be posted in the order listed.  As an
alternative, the "Include" posting command can be used in one
journal to force posting from others, as it is in our example.  You
can also write out the ledger and then read it in again to post more
transactions to it.

You may also force the posting program to execute a single posting
command at a time by typing the posting command in square brackets
on the command line.  For example, the following command line forces
the posting program to read an old ledger, post from a journal, and
write the new ledger.

     POST [company: XYZ Corp] [read ledger: ledger.old] journal
          [write ledger: ledger.new]

For security and audit purposes, you should probably print out
copies of the journals and ledger and then sign, date, and file the
copies.  You might also want to make electronic backup copies as you
do with other important data.

If you keep a written journal and then use a word processor to
create an electronic image of it for the posting program, be sure to
keep the original written record if it is required by tax,
regulatory or auditing authorities.

15. Adding and Deleting Accounts

If your posting always starts from a chart of accounts, adding or
removing an account is very easy.  If you post from a ledger file
with previous postings in it, the process is not much more
difficult.  The ledger file is a plain text file.  If you want to
add another account, just use your word processor to add it.  As
long as you follow the simple format used for ledgers by the posting
program, everything will go fine.  But don't put any entries in it.
That would throw your books out of balance.

If you want to remove an account, just use your word processor to
remove the account and all postings in it.  However, you'd better
make sure the account balance is zero when you do this, or your
books will be thrown out of balance.  The best way to do this is to
read the ledger and display the account balance:

     POST [Company: XYZ Corp] [Read Ledger: LEDGER]
          [Message: {account name,DR}]

One word of warning: If you add a new account or delete an old one
in a series of accounts in an Add or Close posting command, make
sure the first and last accounts in the Add or Close command are
still the first and last in the series.  It's easy to miss one.

This easy access to ledger files means that you have to be careful
about security.  Anyone with access to a word processor could make
unauthorized changes in a ledger file, or any other file, and you
might not be able to detect them.  So lock up your diskettes when
you're not working on them.

If you're using a hard disk that you can't remove, you might
consider using a separate encryption program to encrypt the files,
or you might copy the files to one or more floppy diskettes, lock up
the floppy diskettes when you're not using them, and copy the files
back to your hard disk when you need them.  That will keep the files
free of unauthorized changes.

If you also want to keep the information confidential, you'll really
have to encrypt them or keep them off your hard disk.  Just deleting
them from your hard disk is not sufficient, because there are file
recovery programs that can bring the information back very quickly.
There are programs that will wipe out files so they can't be
recovered, but you have to apply them to all files containing
confidential information, even deleted ones.

16. List of Posting Commands

Add: <ledger account name>

Add the balance in the specified ledger account to the running
total, netting debit and credit quantities as required.  The balance
in the ledger account is unchanged.

Add: <first ledger account name> .. <last ledger account name>

Add the balances in the first ledger account, the last ledger
account, and every ledger account between them, as listed in the
chart of accounts, to the running total, netting debit and credit
quantities as required.  The balances in the ledger accounts are
unchanged.

Add: <non-ledger amount name>

Add the non-ledger amount to the running total, netting debit and
credit quantities as required.  The non-ledger amount is unchanged.

Close: <ledger account name>

Close the specified ledger account, i.e., post the quantity needed
to bring its balance to zero.

Close: <first ledger account name> .. <first ledger account name>

Close the first ledger account, the last ledger account, and every
ledger account between them, as listed in the chart of accounts.

Company: <company name>

If the company name is already recorded, check to see that it
matches the name specified in this command.  Otherwise, record the
company name for later checking.

Condensed Trial Balance: <trial balance file>

Write out a trial balance, omitting ledger accounts with zero
balances.  Since the company name is included, this command will
produce an error message if it is executed before the company name
is recorded.  The trial balance file is in journal format, but it
has no journal name.

Condensed Trial Balance: <trial balance file>, <journal name>

Write out a trial balance, omitting ledger accounts with zero
balances.  Since the company name is included, this command will
produce an error message if it is executed before the company name
is recorded.  The trial balance file is in journal format, and it
has the specified journal name.

Credit: <amount>

Add the specified credit amount to the running total, netting debit
and credit amounts as required.

Date: <date>

Set the date to the specified date.  The date is used in all
postings, trial balances and reports until changed by a subsequent
date command.  If there is no date command, the current date, as
supplied by DOS when the posting program is loaded, is used.  The
date must be between January 1, 1980 and December 31, 2049,
inclusive.  The permitted formats are illustrated as follows:

     March 1, 1990  3-1-90    3/1/1990
     Mar 1, 1990    3/1/90    3.1.1990
     March 1, 90    3.1.90    03/01/90 (used in ledger file)
     Mar 1, 90      3-1-1990

A two-digit year in the range 00-49 represents a year in the range
2000-2049.

Debit: <amount>

Add the specified debit amount to the running total, netting debit
and credit amounts as required.

Include: <journal file>

Read the specified journal file and execute the commands and
postings in it just as though they had appeared in place of this
command, with one exception: the journal file may have a different
journal name.  A trial balance file is in journal format and may be
included as a journal by this command.

Into: <ledger account name>

When this command is the last in a journal entry, it generates the
dollar amount necessary to balance the entry and posts it to the
specified ledger account.  It is usually used for closing entries.

Journal: <journal name>

This command specifies the name of the journal in which it appears.
It is included in the ledger for all subsequent postings from the
journal.  Unless POST.EXE has been modified as described below, a
journal file can have only one name.

Message: <message>

Send the specified message to the operator (via the standard
output).  The message may contain form blanks to be filled exactly
as though a report were being created, except that leading blanks
are trimmed from dollar amounts.

Read Ledger: <ledger file>

Read the specified ledger file or chart of accounts.  (A chart of
accounts has exactly the same format as a ledger with no postings.)
The company name must have been recorded previously so it can be
checked against the company name in the ledger file.  A ledger may
be read piecemeal, but this is not the recommended practice.

Report: <form file>, <report file>

Create a report from the specified form file, filling in the
form blanks with the current ledger account entries and non-ledger
amounts, and write the results to the specified report file.  The
previous contents of the report file, if any, are lost.

Report: <form file>, <report file>, <number of spaces to trim>

Create a report from the specified form file, filling in the
form blanks with the current ledger account entries and non-ledger
amounts, trimming the specified number of spaces from the left end
of each amount, and write the results to the specified report file.
The previous contents of the report file, if any, are lost.

Report: <form file>, +<report file>

Create a report from the specified form file, filling in the
form blanks with the current ledger account entries and non-ledger
amounts, and append the results to the specified report file.

Report: <form file>, +<report file>, <number of spaces to trim>

Create a report from the specified form file, filling in the
form blanks with the current ledger account entries and non-ledger
amounts, trimming the specified number of spaces from the left end
of each amount, and append the results to the specified report file.

Subtract: <ledger account name>

Subtract the balance in the specified ledger account from the
running total, netting debit and credit quantities as required.  The
balance in the ledger account is unchanged.

Subtract: <non-ledger amount name>

Subtract the non-ledger amount from the running total, netting debit
and credit quantities as required.  The non-ledger amount is
unchanged.

Total: <non-ledger amount name>

Assign the running total, as computed from prior Add, Subtract,
Credit and Debit commands, to the specified non-ledger amount, and
clear the running total to zero.

Trial Balance: <trial balance file>

Write out a trial balance, including ledger accounts with zero
balances.  Since the company name is included, this command will
produce an error message if it is executed before the company name
is recorded.  The trial balance file is in journal format, but it
has no journal name.

Trial Balance: <trial balance file>, <journal name>

Write out a trial balance, including ledger accounts with zero
balances.  Since the company name is included, this command will
produce an error message if it is executed before the company name
is recorded.  The trial balance file is in journal format, and it
has the specified journal name.

Write Ledger: <ledger file>

Write the current ledger contents to the specified file, including
all postings.  Since the company name is included, this command will
produce an error message if it is executed before the company name
is recorded.

17. Modifying POST.EXE

Since source code for POST.EXE is provided, you can modify it to
suit yourself, if you have the skill and tools to do so.

However, you can use the CUSTOM.COM program to make one simple
modification to POST.EXE without programming.  As written, the
posting program does not allow a journal file to have more than one
name.  In most cases this is desirable.  If not, just type

     CUSTOM  POST.EXE

in response to the DOS prompt.  You will be prompted as follows:

     Changeable journal name (0=no, 1=yes) [0]:

To make it possible to change the journal name within a file, type 1
and strike the Enter key.

If you later change your mind, you can use the CUSTOM.COM program to
change the parameter back to zero.

Plain Vanilla Corporation                        September 1, 1990
P.O. Box 4493, San Diego CA 92164