Computerworld 1996 March

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BANK INVESTOR ACCOUNTING PROGRAM FOR WINDOWS Version 2.7 by: George R. Cotten 37 Lawrence Lane Lexington, MA 02173 CompuServe ID: 71350,316 1 Bank Investor ACCOUNTING PROGRAM The program and this manual are the copyrighted property of the author. You are granted a limited license to try the program for one month, to copy it and distribute it, provided that: a) You do not charge a fee for the distribution or copying of the program unless you have the prior written consent of the author, b) It is distributed only in its original, unmodified, compiled form (except that it may be compressed using an archiving facility, as long as the program can be uncompressed only back to its original form), c) This documentation file accompanies the program itself, and is also distributed in its original, unmodified form (or compressed - see exception in item b above), and, d) It is not distributed as part of any commercial product or service without the prior written consent of the author. After trying the program, if you decide to use it, please return the license agreement/registration form, signed, along with the registration fee: (a) for Standard Edition (check writing in English only) - $24.95, or (b) for International Edition (check writing in English, or German, or French, or Spanish, or Italian) - $34.95. Registration entitles you to use the program on one computer or local area network (LAN) at a time. LAN support is NOT provided. If used on a network, it is at your own discretion. Site licenses are also available for an additional fee as explained in the license agreement/registration form. Registered users can obtain technical support and will be notified about future revisions. CAUTION! -------------------- Although the program Bank Investor may be useful for most investors, and the author did his best to minimize bugs, he cannot underwrite everyone's investment decisions or business use of this product. Before using this program you should recognize that it involves a high level of complexity which is potentially susceptible to error either in the program code itself or on your part due to incorrect usage. Thus you should understand that you use and rely upon the results of Bank Investor at your own risk. You should satisfy yourself regarding the adequacy and accuracy of Bank Investor with test examples before committing to using and relying upon the program on a regular basis. You should furthermore review all program output for reasonableness before using it to make investment decisions. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Files on the disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 CHAPTER ONE Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Program Configuration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Initial menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Program's limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 CHAPTER TWO - Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Entering a transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Unpaid bills & auto. deposits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Reconciling an account . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 10 Summary by budget groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Accounts' balances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Search module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 11 Check printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 11 CHAPTER THREE - Other features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 LICENSE AGREEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 LIMITED WARRANTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 14 3 -------------------- Files on the Disk: -------------------- There are following program files on the distribution diskette: The program is self-installing. ACCOUNTx.DAT and ACCOUNTx.LOG that contain a record of your transaction in the individual accounts UNPAIDx.DAT has the listing of all the credits/payments that you set to occur periodically in a given account x BANKS.EXE is the actual program, BANKS.CFG is the configuration file for the program MANUAL.DOC is the instruction manual ------------------- Introduction ------------------- The program Bank Investor automates the use of your checking accounts. It maintains a record of all transactions, facilitates balancing the account versus the bank's statement, permits printing of the checks on any standard form that you select (inc. the standard checks supplied by your bank). It allows to record up to 10 separate accounts. The checks can be written in English, German, French, Spanish, or Italian. Each account can be assigned individually different language. It provides the function "unpaid bills/deposits" to store yearly, monthly, or one-time-only transactions and remind about them when they become due. The programs allows setting up the budget categories for your income (up to 6) and expenses (up to 28), thus presenting an exact review of your income and expenditures over a selected time period. Budget reports show how much was spent/received in any user-defined budget area over any desired time period. The printing of customized checks is facilitated by the setup routine in which the user may define the exact position of each printed line. Thus there is no need to purchase any special forms, use ones supplied by your bank. You may try this demo for a limited time period. At the end of your trial, you are invited to register and then you will receive a personalized copy of the program, be given access to technical assistance and notified about future improvements. 4 CHAPTER ONE Installation --------------------------------------------------------------- Please read the license agreement and warranty information found at the end of this manual for more information regarding the use of the program. -------------------- General comments -------------------- As in any Windows' program, you should make your selection using mouse: locating the desired item and clicking on it with the mouse's left button. The "Supplementary screen" is a scrollable window. If the program produces a listing larger than the space available in the window, you may select the viewing area by use of the scroll bar on the right hand side, or by using the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keyboard's buttons. -------------------- Installation -------------------- To install the Bank Investor on a hard disk, start the Windows program and select the "File Manager". Using the File Manager, execute the "INSTALL.EXE" program and respond to all the queeries as they appear on the screen. This will initiate the installation process during which you will be given an opportunity to select the drive and directory where you wish to store the program. After you have installed the program in your computer, you are ready to start the program. The first time that you use the program, you will go directly to the "configuration menu" (see below). 5 ------------------------- Program configuration ------------------------- The program is started by simply by clicking on the program icon in the Windows' Program Manager screen. Alternatively, you can issue a command from the DOS command line: C: CD \WCHECKS WIN BANKS NOTE: Windows (ver. 3.1 or above) must have been installed in the computer and the PATH statement (in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file) must include the directory path where Windows program is located. Consult Windows and/or DOS manual for further information about PATH statement. At the first start-up of the program you will be asked to name your accounts and select the currency symbols, select the language for printing checks, name budget groups, and be presented with the configuration routine which includes the parameters for check printing and personal password. This routine can be reached at any other time by clicking mouse on "Program configuration" in the "Utilities" menu. The check configuration routine permits you to configure the program for up to five check forms of your choice. 6 You must respond to all the questions presented on the screen, but you may leave blank the field for the password. You can move between the fields using a mouse, or the TAB key (it is better to use the TAB key). The password option is active only in registered copies of the program. Please note that the password is case sensitive, ie. "PASSWORD" is not the same as "password", or "PassworD" ! The suggested parameters for check printing are displayed, you may change them to accommodate the particular design of your check form. The parameters required for check printing are row no. and column no. Both row and column numbers are representing the half-units, so that on the average printer - the third printing line would be described by row no. = 6, and so on. At this point, you can also define the language to be used with this form. This routine requires a precise placement of the printed text. Always start by placing your blank check in precisely the same location in the printer, eg. with the top edge just underneath the holding bar. During the initial configuration you will also be asked to name all your accounts and budget categories. The listing of accounts includes also a selection of the currency symbol and the check printing form (see above) for each individual account. Thus you have the ability to list accounts with different check forms and/or currencies. If you wish to keep the default selections, just press <ENTER>, otherwise enter the new name and press <ENTER> . The budget categories require an additional switch: if it is set to - 1 - this category will be counted towards the grand total, if it is - 0 - it will not. For instance, you might have some expenses through a credit card charge and then pay them back to the credit card company. Obviously the payments to the credit card company should not be added in calculation of the overall sum of expenses for the period. Thus the category "credit card payments" should get a switch of 0 . NOTE: If you wish to summarize expenses/income between differing accounts, these accounts must have identical budget categories (ie. identical names AND placed in the same order), it can best be accomplished by using routine "Copy" under the "Tools" menu. NOTE: Make a note of your password, since once this option has been invoked, the program cannot be started without the correct password. If you retained the original copy of the program (without the password invoked), in emergency you may recover the data by copying the former BANK.CFG file into your new directory and then starting the program anew. 7 When this procedure is completed, the initial screen will appear showing that it is unregistered shareware version. Press <ENTER> to continue the program. This screen is absent from the registered version of this program. --------------------- Initial Menu --------------------- The initial window that appears after the user passes through the "Registration screen", contains at the top a menu bar which presents the following options: 8 File Activities Listings Utilities Tools Help The inactivated menu choices will be "grayed" for easy identification. In order to start the program you MUST click the mouse on the "Portfolio", this will drop the menu: Portfolio #1 Portfolio #2 Portfolio #3 Exit this program Exit Windows You MUST click on the "Portfolio #1", to activate most of the other menu options. If you wish to terminate the program, but remain under Windows - click on the "Exit this program". The "Exit Windows" selection terminates the program and the Windows operating system and brings back the DOS command line. The option to set up the additional two individual portfolios (Portfolio #2 and Portfolio #3) is available only to the registered users only. NOTE: Portfolios #2 and 3 can use only the accounts that have already been selected for the Portfolio #1. IMPORTANT NOTE: The program uses two windows to display information. In the Main Window (background color - light blue) all selections are accomplished using a mouse to point the selections and then clicking the left mouse button to confirm it. In the Supplementary Window (background color - white) the mouse does not operate and all selections must be made by entering the appropriate number (or text) from the keyboard and pressing the <ENTER> key to complete the transmission. In certain computers the Supplementary Window, when it first appears, is inactive - ie. the cursor is not visible and the window's frame is grayed. Such windows should be first activated by clicking the mouse while it is pointed anywhere WITHIN the window area. 9 --------------------------- Program's limitations --------------------------- The program requires IBM compatible computer, type 286 or higher. The operating system should be MS-DOS version 3.1 or above, and include Windows version 3.1 or higher. The program will use a RAM drive for its work files, providing that such drive is available and has a subdirectory \TEMP, or \TMP , in accordance with specifications for Windows system. Consult DOS, or Windows, manuals for a further description of RAM drives. The data files are of "sequential" type. The data files can be accessed with any editing program, but you are advised against making any corrections, or changes, using an outside editor, since you may inadvertently destroy the usefulness of such files. 10 CHAPTER TWO TRANSACTIONS ________________________________________________________ The Bank Investor program will maintain a register of all transactions, print checks and calculate their total for each budget category. -------------------------- Entering a transaction -------------------------- To start a transaction (ie. payment or deposit), select "Transactions" from the "Activities" menu. A window will appear with three selection groups: disregard the first selection group, marked as "for automatic transactions only". The second group presents the following choice of transactions, where the column under "ACTION" presents your choice, while the other three columns give the result of that action: ACTION ACCOUNT CHECK No. BUDGET check debited increased debited withdrawal debited no change debited deposit credited no change credited unpaid bill N/A N/A N/A auto. deposit N/A N/A N/A cash purchase no change no change debited credit no change no change credited The use of "unpaid bill" and "auto. deposit" will be explained separately. The third group presents a choice of your accounts. Select one, and lastly press the "OK" button. The next window that will appear presents a check, or credit form to the left and a list of all the budget groups on the right hand side. The check form will automatically present the next check number and the current date. However you may alter either one of these fields as needed. You should also fill the name of the payee, or payer, the amount of the transaction and select the appropriate budget group. The current balance on the account is indicated immediately below the check form. You are also given the option to print this check immediately. The "split entry" option allows to combine two, or more items that are charged to different budget groups but are paid/credited in a single transaction. Select "start split entry" for the first item, and select "end split entry" for the last item of such a group. 11 ------------------------------------ Unpaid bills and auto. deposits ------------------------------------ The unpaid bills feature allows to enter a bill that needs to be paid, or a deposit that is expected to be received, at some future date either at regular intervals (monthly, yearly), or just once. You enter such bill/deposit by selecting "Transactions" from the "Activities" menu and choosing either "Unpaid bill" or "Auto. deposit" from the next display window. At this time you the frequency of that transaction must be indicated by selecting the appropriate item within the group marked "for automatic transactions only". To pay an "unpaid bill" simply follow the instructions as they will appear on the screen. Once such an item is recorded and becomes due, you will be reminded whenever the Bank Expert is started. If it is a monthly, or yearly, occurrence - the new date will be automatically updated after the payment/deposit was made. ----------------------------- Payments & deposits due ----------------------------- In order to obtain a listing of all deposits and payments due by a certain date, select "Payments & deposits due" from the "Activities" menu. After the listing is displayed, you may choose to pay/credit the individual items. -------------------------- Reconciling an account -------------------------- In order to reconcile an account, ie to compare it with the bank statement, select "Reconcile account" from the "Listings" menu. On the first display you will be asked to select the account. Once this has been completed, the outstanding items on that account will be presented. At this time you may correct any of the entries displayed and you must respond to the question whether this item was listed on the bank's statement. Once the list of outstanding items is exhausted, the program displays the current account's balance that should have been reported by the bank and asks if you "agree" with the result. If you agree, all the items that appeared on the bank statement are marked as processed and will not appear when the account is balanced next time. 12 ---------------------------- Summary by budget groups ---------------------------- A summary of all income and expenses categorized by the budget groups and limited to the selected period of time is obtained by choosing "Summary of budget groups" from the "Listings" menu. The first window that will appear asks to state the time period and select all the accounts that should be summarized together. NOTE : You can only select accounts that have identical budget groups (both: named identically AND placed in the same order). The "sum of designated credits" and "sum of designated expenses" includes only the budget groups that have been given the switch value of 1 (for explanation see the section about configuring the program). ------------------- Check printing ------------------- Checks can be printed on any bank form, however the program must be instructed the exact position and order of the individual lines, ie. date, payee, amount of payment (numerical, and text), and any comments. Note that the program will convert automatically the numerical amount of payment into the text. For consistent results, the check form must be always inserted in EXACTLY the same location in the printer. For instance, in matrix type printers you may align the top edge of the form with the holding bar. It is necessary to make a number of trial runs to determine the needed configuration for the check. The initial trials could be made with a plane sheet of paper, and the actual checks be used for only the final adjustments. Note that both row and column numbers are roughly in half units, ie for instance a third printing line would have a row no. of 6. The check configuration is reached by selecting "Utilities" and "Program configuration" next. You may print each check as it is recorded, by selecting "print check" on the check form (see above). Alternatively, select "Check printing" from the "File" menu. A list of checks will appear and you will be asked for the number of the check to be printed. 13 CHAPTER THREE OTHER FEATURES __________________________________________________________ --------------------- Change check no. --------------------- A special routine is provided to change the number of the NEXT check. To access it, select "Change check no." from the "Tools" menu and follow instructions on the screen. ---------------------- Editing of records ---------------------- The records in both the check register and the register of "unpaid" bills/deposits can be readily edited by accessing them through "Edit records" from the "Tools" menu. The program will list all the selected records and ask which one to change. Next, that record will be displayed and any of the fields on it can be altered at that time. ----------------------- Accounts' balances ----------------------- The current balances on all active accounts are obtained by selecting "Balances" from the "Listings" menu. --------- Search --------- To search for transactions with a selected Payee/Payer, choose "Search" from "Tools" menu and type in the desired search text. NOTE: you need not enter the full name, for instance you can enter "Soc" when looking for all "Social Security payments. 14 ------------ Printing ------------ In order to print any of the displays, first select "Print on" from "Printing" menu item in the "Tools" menu. The selection will stay active until cancelled and will print any listings, as they are displayed on the screen. ------------------------------- Archiving data records ------------------------------- It is advisable to archive all records on floppy disks at regular intervals. The procedure is very simple: place a floppy in drive A: or drive B: and select "Copy" from the "Tools" menu. The program will copy automatically all data records (ie with .DAT or .LOG) to the floppy. ------------------------ Exporting data files ------------------------ All data can be exported in the comma delimited format by selecting "Tools" / "Copy" / "Export" from the menu. All data will be placed in files named DATAx.TXT (where X corresponds to the account number) in the following sequence: account no., budget group, payee/payer, amount, date, check no. Such data file can then be used in many "database" programs. 15 LICENSE AGREEMENT ---------------------------------------------- The use of the Bank Investor program is granted under the following terms: 1) You may make copies of the program and documentation in their original, unmodified, form without restriction. You may make copies of the documentation either in its printed or machine readable form without restriction. If these copies are distributed to others outside of your organization, you have no obligation to control the use of those copies; however, any copies made which are distributed within your organization are restricted to the terms of this license agreement. 2) You may not modify the program or its documentation or charge a fee for copying or distributing the program or its documentation. 3) You may use the Bank Investor program on the number of computers for which you have paid the license fee. If the fee has been paid for a site license, you may use the program on as many computers as are located at that site; however, you may not use the program on any computer not located at that site without paying an additional licensing fee. 16 LIMITED WARRANTY ________________________________________ The author warrants to any licensee that acquires the program from him that: 1) All diskettes the author provides to licensee constitute an accurate duplication of the software and manual. The author will replace any diskette found to be defective within 30 days from the date of acquisition. The author withholds the right to not honor this warranty if the diskette has been subjected to physical abuse, or used in defective or incompatible equipment. 2) The Bank Investor program will perform substantially as described in the documentation accompanying the software, if used as directed in such documentation. 3) This warranty specifically limits any remedy to the replacement of the physical diskette and documentation if these were originally acquired directly from the author. It shall not cover any other damages including, but not limited to: loss of profit, commercial damage, or other special, consequential or similar claims. The Bank Investor program is sold without warranty as to its merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. 4) The author makes no warranty that its software is error free nor that its use by the licensee will be uninterrupted. 5) It is necessary to complete and return the registration card and pay the license fee to implement this warranty and to receive customer support.