The Budget Requester lets you define budget lists. To track check transaction expenses, you would assign these checks to corresponding budgets, effectively budgeting the transaction. All Check Transaction requesters have a selectable button labelled "Budget", which when selected brings up the Budget Distribution Requester. From here, you distribute the amount of the check to one or more different budgets. When a budget is highlighted, the current expense limit amount is displayed in the "Expense Limit" input field for editing, along with the expense amounts for all check transactions in the current checkbook (indicated by CHECKBOOK: $) and for those only falling within the current analysis period (indicated by PERIOD: $). ---------------------------------------------------- The following list describes the functions available in the Budget Requester. The order of these functions corresponds to the order they appear in the requester's menu bar. You can select any function using either the keyboard (shown as "Keyboard:") or mouse ("Mouse:"). Budget Menu Okay Accept the current values as the Budget List for the current checkbook. Double-clicking on a Budget List entry is equivalent to highlighting it and selecting "Okay". Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA Y Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Add Activate the budget description and expense limit input fields for you to define a new budget category. Once an expense limit has been entered, the budget will be entered into the Budget List in alphabetical order. Duplicate and blank budget descriptions are not allowed and will not be entered into the Budget List. Once a budget has been added to the list, its budget description cannot be edited. Although you can delete it, then add it again, any transaction which is distributed to this budget will be undistributed. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA A Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Delete Remove the highlighted budget from the current Budget List. A budget description must be highlighted for this function to work. If at least one transaction is distributed to this budget, the program will ask if that transaction should be undistributed from this budget before continuing with the deletion. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA D Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Cancel Terminate the current editing session of the Budget List. Changes, such as those from the Load, Save, Add, Delete, and Clear functions and from the modification of the expense limit, made to the Budget List will be preserved, unlike other Cancel functions which restore the previous values. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA N Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button List Menu Load Retrieve from disk a specified Budget List as the current budget list. A file requester will be displayed for the selection of the Budget List to retrieve. Files with an extension of ".CAb" (signifying a Checkbook Accountant budget file) will be displayed. If at least one transaction is distributed to any budget in the current Budget List, the program will ask if those transactions should be undistributed from their referenced budgets before retrieving the new Budget List. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA L Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Save Store to disk the current Budget List under the selected file name. A file requester will be displayed for the selection of a file name. If the Budget List was previously saved, its current file name will appear in the File input field of the file requester. If the Budget List file currently exists, the program will ask if the Budget List on disk should be replaced with the current Budget List version. The current Budget List will be saved with a ".CAb" extension (signifying a Checkbook Accountant budget file). An icon file will be created to accompany the budget file if the Budget List menu item under the Program Prefs Requester's Icon Creation menu is selected. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA S Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Default Save the current Budget List as the default Budget List. This is the same default Budget List which can be loaded immediately after the definition of a new checkbook. The Budget List is saved under the file name "CAdefault.CAb" in the CA: defined directory. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA F Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button Clear Remove all the entries in the current Budget List. The file name of the Budget List does not change. If at least one transaction is distributed to any budget in the current Budget List, the program will ask if those transactions should be undistributed from their referenced budgets before removing the entries in the Budget List. Keyboard: RIGHT-AMIGA E Mouse: Menu Item; Command Button ---------------------------------------------------- The following list describes the input fields which hold the budget description and budget expense limit amount. The input format of each field is also given (shown as "FORMAT:"). Budget Description (left-most input field) The label used to identify a budget category. Some examples include, "Car", "Food", or "Insurance". FORMAT: Any sequence of characters (maximum of 32). Expense Limit (right-most input field) The expense limit for the current budget category. This amount is compared with the total of all distributions to this budget within the current analysis period. Although the total distributions from all the checkbook's check transactions to any budget can be greater than the expense limit, only those distributions from the transactions falling within the current analysis period will be compared. If the total expenses within the current analysis period are greater than this expense limit, the indicator "OB" (overbudget) will be placed between the budget entry and its corresponding expense limit; nothing is shown if the total expenses are equal to or less than the defined expense limit. FORMAT: nnn,nnn.nn (commas not mandatory) an amount between 0.00 and 999,999.99 -- END OF BUDGET HELP --