Shareware Universe - The Gold Collection

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Page Cheque Book ──────────────── Section Contents Page ─────── ──────────────────────── ──── 1 Introduction 2 1.1 Overview 2 1.2 Manual Format 2 1.3 Keyboard Entry 2 1.4 Ctrl-Alt-Del 3 1.5 Terminology 3 1.6 Program Copying 3 2 First Steps 4 2.1 Installation - Single Floppy Disk 4 2.2 Installation - Twin Floppy Disks 4 2.3 Installation - Hard Disk 4 2.4 New System 5 2.5 Analysis Codes 5 2.6 Recurring Orders 5 2.7 Brought Forward Balance 6 3 Posting 7 4 Reconciliation and Amendment 7 5 Reporting 8 5.1 Reports 8 5.2 Look Forward 9 5.3 Analysis 9 6 File Maintenance 9 6.1 Managing File Sizes 9 6.2 Backup 10 6.3 Disk Files 11 6.4 Fix Damaged Data Files 11 Appendices A Keyboard Entry 12 B Dates 13 C The Screen Blanker 13 D Multiple Accounts 13 Page Cheque Book Page 1 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Page Cheque Book - Requirements System: Minimum: IBM PC or compatible computer, one floppy disk drive, MS DOS 3.2 or later, 640K Ram, Monochrome or color monitor. Optional: Hard disk drive, printer. Your config.sys file should have a line that reads FILES = 25. Refer to your DOS manual for instructions on how to include it. Author: Gary Finlay. Copyright: Gary Finlay. Thank you for choosing Page Cheque Book. I sincerely hope it provides you with many years of worthwhile service. If you have any suggestions on how to improve it or if you find any 'undocumented features' I would be grateful if you could let me know. The program has been very extensively tested and as far as can be practically determined is free from error. However it remains possible that conditions exist which could generate an invalid result. It is the responsibility of each user to ascertain the validity of any output from the program. The author cannot be held responsible for any decisions made from incorrect output. The author retains the right to amend the specification of this program without notice. The program and documentation are the copyright of Gary Finlay. Developed by Published by ------------ ------------ Gary Finlay, Shareware Publishing, 36, Tamarisk Lawn, 3a, Queen Street, Kilnamanagh, Seaton, Tallaght, Devon EX12 2NY, Dublin 24, England. Ireland. Page Cheque Book Page 2 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1. Introduction ──────────── 1.1 Overview ──────── Page Cheque Book allows you to manage your financial transactions with ease and accuracy. Track your bank, credit card, building society and savings accounts online. Page Cheque Book will.... - Remember all of your regular payments and receipts. - Remind you when recurring entries are due to be posted. - Accept your adhoc payments and receipts. - Reconcile your statements simply and quickly. - Analyse your account in detail. - Save you time and might save you bank charges. You can tell Page Cheque Book about any 'standing orders' you have. An order is any regular payment or receipt, e.g. your subscription to PC Shareware Magazine, the monthly mortgage or your salary cheque. Once told, Page Cheque Book never forgets to remind you to 'post' the order on the correct date. If you attempt to 'post' it too early, you will be alerted to that fact. You can tell Page Cheque Book about your adhoc payments and receipts, e.g. cheques written, bank charges, interest charged and received. When a statement is received you can 'reconcile' Page Cheque Book's transactions against it. 1.2 Manual Format ───────────── This manual takes you through the initial step of entering your Analysis Codes, entering your opening balance and finally on how to apply the program. 1.3 Keyboard Entry ────────────── When you see [ENTER] this means simply press the key on the keyboard marked 'enter'. Similarly [ESC] [INS] [DEL] [F1] [F5] [F10] and [CTRL-ENTER] etc. Before any irreversible action is taken by the program you will always be asked to confirm your intention allowing you to gracefully backout from the situation. [ESC] may be pressed at any time to backup one step in the program which will eventually bring you back to the main menu. Page Cheque Book Page 3 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 1.4 Ctrl-Alt-Del ──────────── Every care has been taken to flush data files to disk after being written to. Testing has included resetting the computer while taking a report and switching off with all files open without any ill effects. However you should NEVER exit the program by pressing [Ctrl-Alt-Del] or switching off. This could leave your data files in a potentially corrupted state requiring you to restore your backup copy and repeat any work performed in the meantime. See 'Backup' in section 6.2. The only correct way to end a session with PCB is to choose 'Quit' from the main menu. 1.5 Terminology ─────────── PCB The Page Cheque Book program. Posting Any transaction, e.g. cheque or lodgement. Transaction Same as posting. Standing Order Any regular payment or receipt. Recurring Entry Same as standing order. Reconciliation The process of matching a posting against the statement. Unreconcile The opposite to reconcile. B/F Brought forward. 1.6 Program Copying ─────────────── Please feel free to copy the evaluation version of PCB and share it with friends. If you do distribute it, please make sure to include all the files. Make sure to distribute the password file PCB.PSW set to 'LETMEIN'. PCB will not run unless it finds PCB.PSW in the current directory. Page Cheque Book Page 4 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 2. First Steps ─────────── 2.1 Installation - Single Floppy Disk ───────────────────────────────── If you are using PCB on a floppy based system you should format a floppy disk and label it PCB - Working Disk. You now need to make a copy of disk you received PCB on. Place your DOS disk into your drive and type the following... DISKCOPY A: A: [ENTER] When DOS prompts you to insert the source disk you should insert the disk you received PCB on. When you are prompted to insert the target disk you should insert the newly formatted and labelled disk. To run the program on a single disk machine, put the working disk in drive A: and type PCB [ENTER] 2.2 Installation - Twin Floppy Disks ──────────────────────────────── Insert the PCB disk in drive A: and a formatted disk labelled PCB - PROGRAM DISK in drive B:. From the A> prompt type COPY PCB.EXE B: [ENTER] Insert a second formatted disk labelled PCB - DATA DISK in drive B: From the A> prompt type the following three commands... COPY PCB.PSW B: [ENTER] COPY PCB.HLP B: [ENTER] COPY MANUAL.PCB B: [ENTER] To run the program on a twin floppy disk machine, place the program disk in drive B:, the data disk in drive A: and from the A> prompt type B:PCB [ENTER] 2.3 Installation - Hard disk ──────────────────────── Make a subdirectory to hold the PCB files by typing the following at the DOS prompt... MD\PCB [ENTER] Page Cheque Book Page 5 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Next change to the directory you just created by typing... CD\PCB [ENTER] Now copy the files from floppy to the hard disk by typing... COPY A:*.* [ENTER] To start PCB type PCB [ENTER] from within the PCB directory. 2.4 New System ────────── When you run PCB for the first time it will create all the necessary data files. You will be required to enter today's date and the system password. When you receive PCB the password is set to 'LETMEIN'. A message to this effect will be displayed on the password screen. You should change the password from the 'Utilities' option on the main menu to prevent this message appearing. Three attempts are allowed to get the password right after which you will be returned to DOS. 2.5 Analysis Codes ────────────── Select 'Analysis Codes' from the main menu. Analysis Codes are a way of grouping your transactions together. They consist of a maximum of four characters as the code and a maximum of 25 characters as a description or payee. Select codes that are easy to remember, e.g. PE - Petrol, FEE - Bank Fees, INT - Interest, VISA - Visa Account etc. Initially there will be no codes in the file and after choosing 'Analysis Codes' you will be in the data entry form. Type any code and description that you intend using. After you enter one code you will be returned to the 'Analysis Codes' table. To add further codes press [INS]. You may not think of all the codes initially. This doesn't matter as you can add new codes on the fly as you enter transactions. 2.6 Recurring Entries ───────────────── Select 'Recurring Entries' from the main menu. Initially there will be no entries in the file so you will be immediately put into the data entry form to enter the first one. Page Cheque Book Page 6 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The Recurring Entries file is a separate file to the transaction file. When you enter data here you are NOT updating the transaction file. You are merely recording the information necessary to post these orders into the transaction file at a later date. The program automatically checks this file each time it is started. If any orders are due to be posted a message will appear on the main menu screen informing you of this. If you attempt to post a standing order before it's due date you will be informed that it's not due to be posted yet. This is based on the date shown at the top right of every screen, which is the date you supplied on the password screen when the program was started. You may continue however, by pressing [CTRL-ENTER]. 2.7 Brought Forward Balance (Opening Balance) ───────────────────────────────────────── Decide on when you want to start entering transactions from and search out your statements and cheque stubs. No matter when you start from you should always start at the top of a statement. The first transaction to enter is your opening balance. To do this follow these steps... A. If the B/F (brought forward) balance is a CR. choose 'Credits' from the main menu and enter it. If it is a DR. choose 'Debits'. For the Analysis Code choose OB (Opening Balance) which you should have set up in advance. After entering this, the UNreconciled and balance figures will show the amount. B. Choose 'Reconciliation' from the main menu. Press F10 to reconcile the opening balance. You will then be returned to the main menu because there are no more UNreconciled transactions. C. You will notice that the balances are now correct. B/F is the correct amount, UNreconciled is zero and your balance is the same as the B/F. Choose the appropriate option from the main menu to enter the first transaction on the statement. D. Enter all of the transactions from the statement. You may need the cheque stubs to remind you of the payees. You will notice the UNreconciled and balance figures changing as you proceed. After all the transactions have been entered, and provided you entered all the amounts correctly, the balance on the screen will equal the final balance on your statement. If they don't agree, you typed an amount wrong. Look over them and change any that are not correct. Notice also that the B/F amount plus the UNreconciled amount equals the balance. While entering transactions don't forget that the gray + key will increment the date by one day and the gray - key will decrement by one day. These keys will also increment and decrement the cheque number field. Page Cheque Book Page 7 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── E. Before going on to the next statement, reconcile this one. F. Continue entering transactions from other statements or from your cheque and lodgement books. Reconcile each statement as you finish entering the transactions on it. This makes it easier to find any errors in amounts that might creep in. 3. Posting ─────── Standing Orders can only be posted by choosing 'Recurring Entries' from the main menu. Adhoc payments and receipts can be posted from the 'Cheques', 'Lodgements', 'Credits' and 'Debits' options. If posting a cheque, enter the cheque number and press [ENTER]. Enter the date of the posting, e.g. the date you wrote the cheque. Enter an analysis code. If you leave this field blank a menu of available codes will pop up and you can choose from that. You cannot pass this field without assigning a code to the transaction. You can add new codes at this point by pressing [INS]. If you filled in a description for the chosen analysis code it will appear in the 'details' field of the transaction. Finally enter the amount of the posting. You cannot post a transaction without an amount. When you press [ENTER] after entering the amount, the transaction is immediately saved and balances are updated. Repeat until all postings are made. Pressing [ESC] at any time will move you back one step along the path you have come. As stated above, each transaction must have an amount. However cancelled cheques are of course for zero amounts. If the word 'CANCELLED' in upper case letters is entered as the details, you will not be required to enter an amount and the transaction will be immediately saved. Balances in this instance are not affected. 4. Reconciliation and Amendment ──────────────────────────── When a statement is received from the bank you should scan it for unexpected items, e.g. bank charges or interest. Post these items as per section 3. Now select 'Reconciliation' from the main menu. Only UNreconciled transactions will be listed here. Transactions will be listed in date order. Page Cheque Book Page 8 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── First check that the B/F balance shown at the bottom left of the screen matches that shown at the top of the statement. If it differs, then the previous statement was not reconciled correctly. You can move between transactions with the cursor keys. You can reconcile transactions in any order you please. Press [F10] to reconcile the highlighted transaction. When a transaction is reconciled it is removed from the table, it's reconciled flag is changed to 'Yes' and the B/F and UNreconciled balances are updated by the amount of the transaction. Tick each reconciled transaction on your statement. If you mistakenly reconcile a transaction you can UNreconcile it from the utilities menu. If an item has been posted incorrectly it may be amended by choosing the correct posting option from the main menu. Highlight the transaction and press [ENTER] to change it. When the statement has been completely reconciled the B/F balance at the bottom left of the screen should match the final balance shown on the statement. You will also see, in the UNreconciled balance, the total value of outstanding cheques and receipts which were not received by the bank at the time of the statement. The performance of the reconciliation routine can be improved by moving reconciled transactions to the archive file. 5. Reporting ───────── 5.1 Reports ─────── Reports can be taken from the transaction, analysis codes, recurring entries and archive files. The reports can be sent to the screen, printer or a disk file. If you choose to send a report to a disk file, the filename will be allocated by the program. These will range from REPORT.001 to REPORT.999. These reports can be viewed by choosing the 'View Report Files' option from the reports menu. When taking a report from the transaction or archive file and sending it to disk you can specify that the report should be in 'Comma Separated Values'. This is a special file format which is supported by many different programs as a means of transferring data between them. E.G. spreadsheets. If you choose to send the report to the printer but the printer is not attached or is not 'online' the program will inform you of the fact and you will have the opportunity to rectify the situation. If you don't do so the program will abort the process and will exit back to the menu. The only control codes sent to the printer by PCB are form feeds. If you have your printer set to condensed mode that is the way the report will appear. No reports are greater than 80 characters wide. Page Cheque Book Page 9 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── When taking a report from the transaction or archive file you will be presented with a screen where you can choose the transactions to be included in the report. E.g. all transactions posted between 1/7/91 and 31/7/91, AND between 10.00 and 50.00 AND reconciled. Or any other combination you might want. If you leave all the selections blank you are in effect asking to include every transaction in the report. 5.2 Look Forward ──────────── This report will allow you to look forward to any specified date in the future and provide a bank balance forecast by adjusting the current balance by any recurring entry which will become due. Note this does not actually post these entries and no files will be changed as a result of looking forward. If you have a 'Recurring Entry' with six monthly postings remaining and you look forward twelve months, the report will only include six occurrences of that entry. 5.3 Analysis ──────── Two analysis reports are available. Period Analysis and Annual Analysis. The period analysis will give you a breakdown of all transactions in the transaction file (NOT the archive file) for the chosen period. The annual analysis on the other hand will give you a month by month breakdown for the chosen year. Both reports appear on the screen and can be sent to the printer after they have completed by pressing [CTRL-ENTER]. 6. File Maintenance ──────────────── 6.1 Managing File Sizes ─────────────────── Over a period of time the transaction file will become quite large. When this happens you can move reconciled transactions to the archive file. Choose 'Archive' from the main menu and 'Move Transactions to Archive' from the archive menu. Enter the date range of transactions you want to move and then confirm to the program to continue. The program will only move reconciled transactions. If there are any UNreconciled transactions within the date range they will NOT be moved. Page Cheque Book Page 10 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── If you feel that your archive file is becoming too large you can delete transactions from it. Once again you supply a date range. Please note that analysis reports can only be taken from the transaction file. Before moving to archive make sure to take all the required analysis reports. You should also take a report to the printer of any transactions you intend deleting from the archive file. I personally have four years transactions in PCB. Two in the transaction file and two in the archive file. You can always check how many records are in the various data files from the utilities menu. 6.2 Backup ────── Your data files will contain valuable data which would take a long time to reconstitute by hand. It is important that you 'backup' these files to floppy disk at regular intervals. PCB's data files all start with the four characters 'PCB_'. There is no built in backup facility in PCB. However if you issue the following DOS command from the DOS prompt and from within the sub directory that holds the PCB files, all the data files will be backed up.... For hard disk users... BACKUP C:PCB_*.* A: For floppy disk users it's probably handiest to issue the following command and treat the copied disk as your backup. DISKCOPY A: A: Substitute drive names where appropriate. Page Cheque Book Page 11 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── 6.3 Disk Files ────────── PCB.EXE The PCB program. PCB.HLP The PCB help file. PCB.PSW The PCB password file. MANUAL.PCB The on disk PCB manual. The following files are created the first time you start PCB. PCB_TRAN.DAT Transaction data file. PCB_TRAN.K01 Transaction key (index) file. PCB_TRAN.K02 Transaction key (index) file. PCB_ARCH.DAT Archive data file. PCB_ARCH.K01 Archive key (index) file. PCB_ANLS.DAT Analysis codes data file. PCB_ANLS.K01 Analysis key (index) file. PCB_BAL.DAT Balance data file. PCB_BAL.K01 Balance key (index) file. PCB_ORD.DAT Recurring entries data file. PCB_ORD.K01 Recurring entries key (index) file. 6.4 Fix Damaged Data Files ────────────────────── Each data file has an associated key or index file. The transaction file has two key files all the rest have just one. The purpose of the key file (.K01 and .K02) is to instruct the PCB program on how to access the information in the data file (.DAT). It is possible that a key file may become damaged due to bad disks, power failures etc. This will be evidenced by error messages from PCB, or the data not being in strict date or alphabetical order. PCB will automatically rebuild key files if they are found to be missing. You too can rebuild the key files for all data files by choosing that option from the 'Utilities' menu. This may be done at any time and as often as you wish. Once you choose to reindex, it is done immediately and a brief message is shown on the screen as each key file is rebuilt. Page Cheque Book Page 12 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Appendix A - Keyboard Entry ─────────────────────────── All keyboard entry within PCB is of a standard format. If a field only requires a numeric answer it will not allow you to type letters. When it only requires upper case letters it will automatically convert lower case to upper case as you type. Some fields MUST be filled in. If you attempt to leave the cheque number or transaction date fields blank for example, the program will beep and that field will blink indicating that you cannot go any further without typing valid data into that field. The following two lists show some special keys for the data tables and entry forms respectively. Table Keystrokes ──────────────────────────────────────────────── F1 - Help Esc - Return to the Main Menu Up arrow - Move highlighted bar up one line Down arrow - Move highlighted bar down one line Ins - Add a new transaction Del - Delete the highlighted transaction Enter - Change the highlighted transaction PgDn - Move down twelve transactions PgUp - Move up twelve transactions Home - Move to top of screen End - Move to bottom of screen Ctrl PgUp - Move to the first transaction Ctrl PgDn - Move to the last transaction Entry Form Keystrokes ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── F1 - Help Gray + - Increments date by 1 day or cheque no. by 1 Gray - - Decrements date by 1 day or cheque no. by 1 Esc - When in the first field, move back to table When in other fields, move up one field Ctrl Esc - Abandon form, lose data and return to table Up arrow - Move up one field Down arrow - Move down one field Left arrow - Move left one character Right arrow - Move right one character Ins - Toggle between insert and overwrite mode Del - Delete character at cursor position Back space - Delete character to left of cursor Enter - Complete entry and move to next field Home - Move to first character in field End - Move to last character in field Ctrl Home - Erase entire field Ctrl End - Erase to end of field Page Cheque Book Page 13 ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Appendix B - Dates ────────────────── All dates are of a standard format, dd/mm/yy. You should enter dates as six numbers. To enter the 1/05/91 you should type 010591. Note you are not required to type the /. Appendix C - The Screen Blanker ─────────────────────────────── Page Cheque Book has a built in screen blanker. This means that after a period of keyboard inactivity the screen will go blank. Any key will restore the screen and that key press will not be passed to the program for processing. In other words the key pressed is used solely for unblanking the screen. You can vary the amount of time before an inactive display is turned off. The default value is 10 which represents ten minutes. PCB (default 10 minutes) The timeout value can be disabled by entering a value of zero. For example... PCB V=0 would disable the video timeout feature. The timeout value can be set to something other than 10 minutes as in this example... PCB V=30 which assigns a 30 minute timeout value. If you are using your own screen blanker you should run Cheque Mate with the V=0 switch. Appendix D - Multiple Accounts ────────────────────────────── Page Cheque Book will only handle one account. It is possible however to have more than one directory with it's own set of data files. For example you want to use PCB to handle your current account, your savings account and your credit card account. You can achieve this by creating three different directories such as CURRENT, SAVINGS and VISA. Put PCB.PSW (the password file) and PCB.HLP (the help file) into each of the directories. Put PCB.EXE (the executable program) into any directory that is on your path. This means that PCB.EXE will be accessible from anywhere on your disk. To access your current account data files you should first change into that directory by typing CD\CURRENT and press [ENTER] and then type PCB and press [ENTER]. Alternatively you can keep PCB.EXE in each directory. This however will use up disk space. For more information on the use of PATH see your DOS user manual.