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- PERSONAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT WORKSHEET
-
- This can be useful with a wide variety of clients, from personal injury to
- family law to small businesspeople seeking loans.
- While there is a sort of standard format, there is some lattitude. I've
- arranged the categories in a way that seems neat and attractive, as well as
- logical. The schedules of particular property, debt, etc., follow and post
- their sums to the main categories.
- 1-2-3's @TODAY command automatically enters the preparation date from the
- system clock.
- So that data entry will be easier, the operator is reminded (the notice
- should be removed, of course, before printing) to press the <F5> {goto} and
- <F3> {display menu of range names} keys. Each of the entry categories has been
- named in an obvious way; when the range names appear, the operator can highlight
- the one desired with the cursor and jump there. This is particularly useful
- because client personal financial data doesn't generally come in a systematic
- form that matches this (or any other), but in bits and pieces. So a macro that
- used /Range Input to control entry would usually be very frustrating.
- All totals are formulas, of course, so nothing should ever be entered there.
- Additionally, no numerical data should be entered into Assets and Liabilities
- until the schedules have been filled out since many of the categories are "posted"
- to Assets or Liabilities from the detailed schedules.
- Some clients may have considerably more assets, liabilities, or both than
- are shown here; characteristically, the saved skeleton or template worksheets
- should be minimum in size. To lengthen the report, place the cell pointer on
- (say) A71 to add more stocks and bonds. /Worksheet Insert Row inserts them
- between the two dashed lines that are included as the top and bottom of the
- summation range columns (which should always be done for this reason). Note
- that rows will be added all the way across. Some care has been taken in the
- layout here so that layout disturbance will be minimized by such additions.
- Where there are two columns (assets, liabilities) they both must contain the
- same number of rows between header and total line. It looks best if the
- bottom-most cells in a column are the blank ones.
- Printing: Unless this is a response to a spouse's interrogatories in a divorce
- case, the Personal Financial Statement may be one of the most important documents
- you prepare for client. Care to make it look attractive can help client's
- prospects for getting a loan, for satisfying Chapter 11 creditors, etc. It is
- better, when table appearance is paramount, to "print to file," and intake the
- result into your word-processor for more careful formatting that 1-2-3 can do.
- This is especially true if you have a laser printer, which although Lotus has
- recently supplied a driver for it, is difficult and clumsy to control through
- Lotus's print commands. Pagination is particularly difficult because 1-2-3
- often believes that 66-line pages have 65 lines.