Club Amiga de Montreal - CAM/CAM_CD_1.iso/files/141.lha/YourMoney_v.04/YourMoney.doc

Text File | 1986-11-21 | 14KB | 303 lines

                              YourMoney
                             Version 0.04

  A personal finance program designed to track your money flow and keep month
to month budgets and records. Reports are available on a month by month or year
to date basis. Reports can be generated based on any search criteria or can be
a complete record of all transactions.

  The program design is to divide your money into folders, accounts and
transactions. A folder could be all your finances, an account is the same
as a single bank account or credit card. For file handling a folder is a
subdirectory, an account is a file and a transaction is a record in a file.
The best way to learn to use it is to follow thru the menus.

                              Accounts

 In light of the current creative banking with credit cards that are really
plastic checking accounts (debit cards) and checking accounts that are really
paper credit cards (overdraft checking) it is difficult to define an account
type.  To overcome this problem, all accounts are the same in this system. A
positive balance is money you own, a negative balance is money you owe someone
else. If your Visa card has a balance of $2000.00 you are really that much in
debt so we will show it as it is, - $2000.00.
 The same logic holds true for transactions in an account. Money goes in or
money goes out. The transactions have numerious names but in reality only 2
things can happen. Making a payment to a Visa account and making a deposit to
your savings account may not feel the same but in reality both are increasing
your net worth.
 You may find times as you set up your accounts and enter your transactions
that the available transaction types don't fit correctly but if you keep the
preceeding in mind it will all work out.

                             Limitations

  The current program design requires a stack of 10000. If you start the
program from the Icon included the stack will be set for you. If you use
the CLI interface then check your stack size first or input
'stack 10000' before starting. You are limited to 100 accounts and 500
transactions in each account. The 100 is by design, the 500 limit will be
removed soon.

                              The menus

The Project Menu


 About
  My hello to the user.

 Sleep
  Closes the program down to a minimum configuration. This mode frees about
  30K of ram and decreases the window size to allow full access to the
  workbench.

 Quit
  Just what it says.

The Folders Menu
    Folders are subdirectories that contain your accounts. You won't need more
    than 1 active folder but will need one or more to keep BACKUPS. Every
    attempt has been made to keep your data straight, even the sacrifice of
    some speed but still BACKUP YOUR DATA.
      Each folder will contain several fixed files. The first and most
    important is named 'lastvisit'. This file contains a summary of
    information about all the accounts in the folder. The account linkages are
    kept here to allow automatic crediting across accounts. 24 monthly files
    are here to keep each months actual and budget figures. File 'categorydata'
    keeps the category definations. Finally, each account is split into 2 file,
    .acct and .cdat for the actual transaction info and any split category
    data.
      Changing these files yourself can cause problems. Use the menu items for
    any changes you feel necessary.

  Archive
    Makes a backup copy of a Folder. Specify a full path name or the folder
    will be relative to the active folder. It's also good to copy your folder
    into ram: when searching the transactions. You can save a lot of wear and
    tear on you disk drive, especially if you are entering a number of
    transactions going from one account to another by putting the folder in
    ram: and archiving it back to disk when you are done but if you forget to
    move it back all your work will be lost.
      If you are going to move your files into ram: or vd0: to update them
    and then move them back when done use the 'Update' selection. If you
    want a full copy for archival purposes use 'Full'. These differ in that
    'Update' will set the ARCHIVE bit so when you 'Update' back to the
    original disk file only the modified files will be moved.

  Delete
    Completely, totally and forever deletes a folder and all the accounts
    and transactions the selected folder contains.

  Open
    Create a new folder or change active folders.

  Password
    Set or change the password on a folder. You will not be able to gain
    access to a folder if you forget the password.

  New Year
    This selection will rename your current active account folder and then
    start a new folder with the old name. All accounts will be moved into the
    new folder along with all uncleared transactions. Your current budget
    amounts and category definations will also be carried forward. The year for
    both the folder and accounts will be increased by 1. The old account folder
    should be saved in a permanent archive for future reference. It is best to
    keep the old folder on a seperate disk for both data security and disk
    space limits.

  ReThink
    Checks an account folder for reasonableness. Each account in the folder is
    checked for start and end balances, number of transactions and file length.
    This data is then compared to the folder master file. Any errors will be
    noted and you are given the option to correct them.
     When changing from v0.01 files to v0.04 files it will be necessary to run
    ReThink first thing to update everything.

The Accounts Menu

  Balance
      Reconciles your bank statement against the account. Select the
    transactions to clear with the mouse or numeric shortcuts. When DONE
    is selected the file will be updated and a balance sheet shown, it can
    be printed by selecting the YES gadget or entering 'y'.
      You must clear your transactions here before they appear in the budget
    reports.

  Create
    Builds a new account file.

  Delete
    Deletes an account file. Very permanent.

  Edit
    Change anything about an account.

  View
    View an account.

The Transactions Menu

  Auto
    Build any of ten fixed transactions to be used repeatitivly. Can be used
    by entering a0, a1 etc. as the transaction type during transaction entry.

  Edit Category
    Edit the text for any Category. Categories are allowed from 0 thru 599
    each having a 10 character discription. Categories numbered 0 to 99 are
    your accounts. These numbers are automatically assigned when you create an
    account but you can edit the text to something more meaningful to you.
    Numbers 100 to 299 are expenses. This includes such things as gas for your
    car and groceries. 300 to 399 are income categories, your salary and
    interest on your saving account are examples. 400 thru 599 are still not
    hard defined, don't use them yet. There is a special category, 999, which
    is used to transfer funds from one account to another.

  Enter
    Enter new transactions. You will be presented a entry window. The first
    entry will be transaction type. This will be either a 1 or 2 characters.
    Withdrawl types can be 'C' for a check, 'W' for a withdrawl, 'S' for a
    service charge and 'IC' for interest charged.
    Deposit types are 'D' for a deposit and 'IE' for interest earned.
    Automatic types are 'A#' where # is 0 - 9 for using your predefined
    automatic types.
     The next fields are for marking this transaction as a tax record or
    a tax deductable record, your choices are Y or N.
     Next is the date, it will default to the current date or last date input.
     This is followed by the source or payee field depending on the type of
    entry.
     Next is the amount, and then a memo field for any notes you might want.
     The last field is the category. It can be a number or a 'S' or 'T'. A
    number will represent any single category if it's above 99 or the transfer
    of funds from one account to another if it's below 100. A 'S' will open a
    split transaction window and you can divide your transaction between 10
    categories. A 'T' is meant for the transfer from one account to another.
     An example of using 'T' would be if you moved money from your savings to
    your checking. You would start by entering transactions into the savings
    and as the category you would select the checking account number. Now a new
    transaction will appear, the deposit into the checking. You would then
    enter a 'T' as the checking category.
     If you hit the RETURN key when a category is requested a scrolling window
    will appear with all active accounts and categories and you can make the
    selection with the mouse. Another RETURN will close the window if you don't
    wish to use the mouse to select.


  Print
    Sets a flag that will print each new transaction as entered. You are given
    the option to print each transaction or 'print' to a file.

  View
    View, edit or void an existing transaction. The search gadgets allow the
    selection of search and sort criteria. The '*' and '?' characters can be
    used as wild cards for the text field searches. The category field is
    considered as a numeric field. The alpha fields will fold upper and
    lower case letters together so 'A' is equal to 'a'.

The Budget Menu

  Set Budget
    This allows you to set the amount of money budgeted for each category for
    each month. You must define the category before you can set a budget for
    it. By selecting the 'month' gadgets you can set several months to the same
    amount or you can set the entire year at one time.

  View Month
    See how close you've stuck to your budget for any given month or group of
    months. You can select to have the report displayed in a scrolling window
    on the screen or send it to a file or the printer. Remember that you must
    clear (from the balance selection) any transactions before they appear in
   the budget reports.

  View YTD
    Presents you with a report covering everything thru the end of the current
    month.

                    Some general editing comments.

  The right and left arrow keys move 1 character left or right.
  The up and down arrow keys move from field to field.
  The shifted arrows move to the start or end of line.
  ESC or CTRL/X erases the line completely.
  DEL and back space work normally.

  If a return is entered when a category is requested a scrolling requester
  with all the defined categories will open. The category can be selected with
  the mouse or a second return will close the requester and return you to the
  category field.

                    Requesters and Gadgets.

  Most requesters can be answered with either a mouse selection or by
  entering the first character of the requester Text. A return is accepted as a
  'yes' or 'OK' answer.

  Folder names are entered as text into a plain string requester. Everything
  is relative to the current directory (active folder).

  The account requester allows selection of an account by either selecting
  the account with the mouse or entering the small number to the right. The
  account will appear in the bottom.

  The transaction requester will select a transaction with either a mouse
  select or the right hand number. The balance req. will highlite the
  selected trans., the other tran reqs will expand the one liner into the
  complete transaction.


                    A Simple Set-Up

  Let's take short walk thru setting up the program and entering some accounts
  and transactions. Wasn't that easy?

                    Some idle, random comments.

  I've tested this version enough to know I don't see the bugs but
  they are most certainly there. I'm sure that some fix broke something
  that I tested earlier. I hope you will tell me where so I can
  correct them. Bug reports, comments and suggestions are most welcome.

  I plan on keeping the file structure basically the same, or at least
  including a utility with any upgrade to allow you to keep any records
  you may enter intact.

  Time has come to put together a more comprehensive document, hopefully
  in the next month or so I'll have something.

  If you like this program please send a $20.00 donation. If you want to
  automatically receive the next upgrade send $4.00 additional and either
  way send your comments.


  Donald L. Wahl
  2710 Apple Way
  Dunkirk MD.
          20754

  CIS  76515,1510
  BIX  dwahl
  PLINK ops492


              BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS  BUGS
                             and other problems


     File handling needs work, so does file error handling. To this point I've
tried to keep all files as current as possible but that has a serious drawback
or two. Split transactions with the account folder on a (why so noisy ?) floppy
drive is a slow, noisy process. This is if it is transfering from one
account to another.
 Handling a 'full disk' error is ignored, don't know what would happen. I
started trading code size for error handling, I want to stay small enough to
run on a 512K system and still have all program modules loaded at once to avoid
disk swapping and still allow enough free ram for some multitasking.

     A more complete report generator and flexible printing are the next
additions. I think the reports will allow searching multiple accounts and
generate printed reports with the results. The printing needs a way for the
user to define the type of check form they have to allow check printing.
     A graph package would be nice. Maybe a way to graph the top 10 or 20
expenses.
     A reminder service so you don't forget monthly bills.