PAY ADVICE ANALYSER II DEMO  Original idea...  Robert Hart  Design & programming... Richard Smedley  Consultant... Andy Eskelson  (C) Richard Smedley 1993 All Rights Reserved Introduction Just over year ago, a friend of mine told me about how he was fed up with keeping all his "Pay Advice" slips piled up in a number of cardboard boxes, which were cluttering up his wardrobe. He was wondering if I knew of any way to transfer all his wage slips onto his trusty Amiga, hence letting him keep a permanent record of his earnings whilst freeing up valuable space in his wardrobe. Much to his disappointment, I explained to him that, unless he wanted to try fiddling around with a spreadsheet, then there wasn't really any easy way around his problem. Sadly this idea just didn't work out. My friend was thinking more along the lines of some kind of easy-to-use database on which he could simply enter his pay slips without any fiddling about or setting up. After several sleepless nights, I triumphantly produced a solution... The "Pay Advice Analyser" - A simple, easy to use database designed specifically for the pay slip type application. Why bother? There are a number of reasons for keeping a computerised record of all your wage details. For a start, it means that you can finally throw out your dusty collection of pay slips and yet retain a permanent record of how much you've earned, what tax you've paid, and so on. Also, it is worthwhile keeping a regular check on how much tax you are paying, just to make sure that the tax man or, worse still, your employer, isn't diddling you. You could of course do this on paper, but it is far easier, quicker and more convenient to simply look at a column of numbers on your computer screen. And there is the added advantage that all your wage details are securely locked away where prying eyes and inquisitive fingers can't get at them. Loading the program To load the program simply double-click on the "PayAdviceII" icon. If you prefer using CLI, CD to the required device/directory and then type "PayAdviceII" at the prompt. Note, though, that this program isn't self detatching. Either way, after a short pause, the PayAdvice screen will appear. Creating a new file Once the program has loaded you'll see a requester in the centre of the screen, asking whether you want to create a new file or load a previous one. As with all requesters in the program, you can make your choice by using the mouse pointer to press the appropriate on-screen button. If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can choose by pressing the first letter of the required option (in this case "C" to select "Create" or "L" for "Load"). Since we're going to create a new file, you'll be needing to select "Create"... A window will now appear, containing three empty boxes labelled: Your name Department Your employers name & address Move the mouse pointer over the first box and press the left mouse button, you'll see the cursor appear inside the box. Type in your full name and press the Return key. Now do this for the other two boxes. Don't worry if you make any mistakes or want to change something that you've entered. Providing the cursor isn't in one of the boxes (press Return a couple of times to get rid of it if it is) you can re-click in any of the boxes to clear its contents and enter something different. When everything is correct, press the "Accept" button in the bottom-right corner of the window. The window will now vanish and a requester will appear asking whether or not you use a clocking-on system. If you do select "Yes" and type your clock number into the box, otherwise choose "No". You'll now see another requester asking if you would like to modify the file structure... Obviously, all wage packets are made up from various additions and deductions to your earnings, such as basic pay, overtime, tax and union membership fees. But, due to the unique nature of wages, it is unlikely that any two people will have wage packets made up from exactly the same combination of additions and deductions. If you select "No" on the requester, the program will give you an "average" wage structure, made up from the following: ADDITIONS Basic pay Extra pay DEDUCTIONS PAYE NICS (In) NICS (Out) Other deductions If, by some chance, this matches your particular requirements, then you can press "No" and start entering some pay slips. It is more likely, though, that you'll be pressing "Yes"... As you can see from the additions and deductions listed above, there are a total of six catagories available, two of which are used as additions and the other four as deductions. The first thing that you will be asked is how many of these six available catagories you would like to use for additions to your wages. Simply enter a number between one and five, and whatever is left will be allocated as deductions. You'll now see ten boxes appear. Each of these boxes represents the name of a particular element of your wages. As you can see, four of the boxes have already got names: Period ending Total gross Total deductions Net pay These are all essential parts of any wage packet and, as such, cannot be altered. The other six boxes, which are empty, are for you to enter the new titles of each catagory. To enter a new name, all you have to do is move the mouse pointer over the required box and press the left mouse button, as before. When the cursor appears simply type in a new title, remembering to press the Return key after each of the two lines. You can change the name of each title as many times as you want until you are completely happy with everything, and then press the "Accept" button at the bottom of the window. The main screen After a short pause you'll see the main screen appear. If you look at the top of the screen you'll notice the name of each catagory of your wages. In a window at the bottom of the screen you'll see a row of five buttons. The middle button (labelled "Edit") is used for entering and editing pay slips, more information about this later. The buttons on either side, which contain arrows, are used to move back-and-forth through your Pay Advice file: The single arrow buttons move up/down one line at a time, and the double arrow ones move a screen at a time. Finally, in the middle of the screen, you'll notice a long grey box, which will be empty. This box represents the current pay slip, on which all editing functions and such will be performed. Entering a pay slip With the grey box on a blank line (which it will be if you are following this as a tutorial), press the "Edit" button at the bottom of the screen. A large calendar will appear, with the words "Period ending" in the top-left corner. Press the appropriate buttons to select the date of the new pay slip, and then press the "Accept" button. The edit window will now appear on screen, with the words "Details for period ending (date)" at the top, with the word "Additions" just beneath it. Below this you will see the name of your first addition. Towards the right of the screen, you'll notice a simplified calculator. This calculator is used for entering any numbers into the program, so, in this case, it wants you to enter the value of the first addition. You can use the calculator with the mouse, by pressing the on-screen buttons, or if you prefer, you can use the number keys on the keyboard. After you've entered the number, press "Enter" or Return. One by one, the name of every addition and deduction to your wages will appear, each accompanied by the calculator. Simply continue entering each number until everything has been entered, when your Net Pay for that period will be displayed. After a short pause you will be returned to the main screen, where you will see that a summary of that pay slip has appeared in the grey box. Incidentally, if you accidentally find yourself entering a new pay slip when you didn't want to, you can get out by pressing the "C" key on the calculator (or C or X on the keyboard) twice. Editing a pay slip Sooner or later, whether it is because you've made a mistake or not, you will need to edit the entry for one of your pay slips. To do this, you can either use the arrow buttons to move the required pay slip into the grey box and press the Edit button, or, if you can see the required pay slip on screen, you can move the mouse pointer over it and press the left mouse button. Regardless of which way you select the pay slip, you'll see the edit window appear again. This time, there are two buttons in the corners of the window, marked "OK" and "Cancel". To change the entry for a particular value on the payslip, simply move the mouse pointer over the appropriate number and press the left mouse button. The number will disappear inside the window, and you'll see the calculator appear. This time, the calculator display will contain the current value for that catagory. To clear the value press "C", and then enter a new number. Press "Enter" or Return to accept it. You can change everything as many times as you want, and when you've finished press "OK" to keep the changes, or "Cancel" to leave everything as it was. Saving your pay slip file If you hold down thr right mouse button, you'll see the names of some pull-down menu's appear on the title bar at the top of the screen. Move the mouse pointer up to the "Files" menu and select "Save", or, if you prefer, use the keyboard short-cut of pressing Right Amiga-S. A file requester will appear for you to choose the name and directory for your Pay Advice file. Select everything as normal and press "Save". A window will now appear asking you to enter a password. Because all pay slip files are highly confidential, they are saved to disk in an encrypted form which can only be reloaded by correctly entering the same password. Everytime you save a file you will be asked for a password, this is so that you can either enter the same one every time or, if you prefer, change the password each time you save your file. Be warned, though, if you forget your password you can never reload your pay slip file. Anyway, simply enter a password (up to ten characters long) and press the Return key. Please note that, because this is the demo version of PayAdviceII, the program will go through the motions of saving your file, but it won't actually record anything on disk (a requester will tell you that this is the case if you try to save anything). The full program, which includes an enabled "Save" function, is available upon payment of a shareware fee. More details about this later. Printing your pay slip files If you haven't already done so, move to the "Other" pull-down menu and select "Edit printer prefs". A window will appear containing three options: Number of lines per page Form feed after each page Redirect printer output to a file All of these options must be set correctly in addition to your Workbench Preferences settings. In its printer output, this program automatically formats the text to add titles, page numbers and so on. If you don't want the page numbers appearing right at the very bottom edge of every page, then you should set the lines per page a couple of lines shorter than what your printer wants and switch the form feeds on. There are three buttons at the bottom of the window: "Use", "Save" and "Cancel". Pressing "Use" will temporarily keep the new settings, "Save" will record them to disk with the filename "SYS:s/PayAdvice.Prefs" and "Cancel" will leave the settings as they were. If you use "Save" to record the details permanently on disk, they will be automatically loaded each time you load the PayAdvice program, saving you from having to re-set them manually. Having set the printer preferences up, you can now select "Printout" from the "Files" menu, or press the keyboard short-cut Right Amiga-P. A calendar will appear asking you to select the start and ending dates for the printout, and then your file will be sent to the printer. Other functions If you look through the pull-down menu's, you'll realise that this program has many more functions than those described above. Most of them have self-explanatory names, but I shall briefly cover them here: Program menu About  Displays a short message about this program. Quit  Exit the program. Files menu Load  Load a Pay Advice file from disk. Use the file requester to choose the file and directory, and when asked for it enter the loading password. Save  Save a file to disk, as already detailed. Save as ASCII  There are two sub-menu's: With grid  Without grid  This lets you save a file in standard ASCII text format, so if you wanted you could load it into a word processor and re-arrange the layout before printing it. The with/without grid options turn a grid on/off - Try it and you'll see what I mean. Remember that ASCII files are not password protected, and that they cannot be reloaded into this program. Printout  Print the current file, as already detailed. Info  Displays information about the current file. Move menu Top of file  Move up to the first line of the file. Bottom of file  Move down to the last line of the file. Goto %  Move to a percentage of the way from the top of the file.  Lines menu Insert  Insert a blank line at the current position, moving that line and everything below it downwards by one line. Delete  Delete the current line, moving everything below it up by one line to fill the gap. Other menu Search file  Choose a catagory and value to search for from the current line downwards. The first entry found will become the current line. Display totals  Use the calendar to select the start and ending dates, and the totals between those dates will be displayed. Put into date order  Re-arranges the entire file into date order. If you're working with a large file then please be patient - this could take a while. Edit printer prefs  Edit the programs printer preferences, as already detailed. Other notes The calendar assumes that time started on 1st January 1950, and runs out on 31st December 2049. Although the calculator will let you use numbers up to nine characters long, the physical width of the screen means that each column can only hold a maximum of seven characters. So, any numbers longer than this will be displayed/printed as a "<" greater-than sign with the last five characters (eg. "123456.78" will become "<456.78"). The numbers are still held correctly in memory and will show up properly on edit screens. If you want to, this program can be installed on a hard drive. Simply open the required drawer and drag the PayAdviceII icon across. No other files are required. This program has room for files up to five hundred pay slips in length. This might not sound much, but if you get paid weekly then it would take ten years to fill it! It is recommended, though, that you start a new file at the beginning of each financial year and give your files name such as "FredBloggs1988" for your 1988 file while you were working for Fred Bloggs. Memory requirements: This program should work on all Amiga's with at least 512K memory, and will definitely work on 1 meg & above machines. If you have problems then try running the program straight after booting your computer without loading anything else in between. This should cure most things. Paying the shareware fee This demonstration version of PayAdviceII is released as shareware. If you like and/or use it, then please send FIVE POUNDS STERLING to: Richard Smedley, 257 Stoneyford Road, Sutton-In-Ashfield, Notts. NG17 3GJ England Everybody who registers will receive a free copy of the complete program. Disclaimer This software is supplied "As is" without any warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the results and performance of this software is assumed by you, the user. Should the software prove defective, you (and not the author or anybody associated therewith) assume the entire cost of all necessary servicing, repair or correction. Further, the author does not warrant, guarantee or make any representations regarding the use of, or the results of the use of, this software in terms of correctness, accuracy, reliability, currentness, or otherwise; and you rely on this software and the results entirely at your own risk. In no event will the author be liable for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect in this software even if advised of the possibility of such damages. The author reserves the right to make changes to this software at any time, without obligation to notify any person or entity of such revisions or changes. This, the demonstration version of this program, and all associated software, files, programs and text, remains the exclusive copyright of Richard Smedley 1992, 1993, All Rights Reserved. This demonstration program may be freely distributed by any means, providing all associated files remain intact and unmodified, and with the restriction that the four files listed here are included in ALL distributions: "PayAdviceIIDemo" "PayAdviceIIDemo.info" "PayAdviceIIDemo.Doc" "PayAdviceIIDemo.Doc.info" Any commercial use is prohibited without prior written permission. This disclaimer shall supersede any verbal or written statement to the contrary. Your use of this software indicates your acceptance of this disclaimer.