Bank Manager V1.3.2 The trouble with bank statements is they only tell you what you have spent after you have spent it. Bank Manager is an easy to use program which generates a bank statement before you`ve spent the money. It is ideal for people who pay most of their bills with standing orders and direct debits. Now you can: (1) Work out your finances months in advance. (2) Check your bank statements as soon as they arrive. (3) Avoid going into the red because of forgotten about bills. IN BRIEF Input all your Standing Orders, Direct Debits, Regular bills and Regular income. Select Generate and every item due in the next four weeks from the date you enter will be transferred to your balance file. You can do this as many times as you like. Then you will be able to see your finances months in advance. As time progresses you can input deposits and withdrawals, try things out to see how it affects your balance, if it's wrong change or delete it. GETTING STARTED Double click on the program icon. You will be asked to input a date and shown the date from the system clock with the cursor on the first digit. This date will be used as the default date, just press return for this date to be used, or you may change all or just part of it. Use the left and right cursor keys to move the cursor. The cursor skips over the separators itself. Dates must be in the format dd.mm.yy. Any invalid dates will not be accepted. Entering dates through-out the program works in this way except if you enter Q or q you will quit what you are doing. If you are using a new data disk, four accounts will be created for you called A,B,C,D. Point and click on one of these with the Left Mouse Button to open it. Once the Account is open, you may change the name. Type in the name of your account (up to 30 characters). When entering details you will not be able to type in more letters than can be accommodated by the file. If you open an account with no transactions on it you will be asked for a date and an opening balance which will be shown as: dd.mm.yy CF 0 CARRIED FORWARD nnnnnn.nn You can change the date and the amount later if you wish. When you`ve got this far you`ll be shown your balance file, with the date and the amount you have just entered as the lowest balance. Everytime you make a change to the balance file, the lowest balance from the default date to the end of the file will be shown. If you have generated a balance file months into the future this saves you scrolling through. THE MENUS ACCOUNTS Change Name: Changes account name. (Up to 30 characters). Change Codes: If you have just opened an account for the first time, the default codes will have been loaded, Eg. CHQ-Cheque. You may change any of these to suit your own requirements. Each one is highlighted in turn, enter a code, whether the code is for debits, credits or either and a description, or press return to skip to the next one. If you enter Either, when you`re updating your balance you will get an extra prompt asking you if the item is a debit or a credit. EST-Estimate is in addition to the codes you enter. Change Groups: Define or change groups. Works the same as codes except there are 12. The companion program REPORT MANAGER analyses transactions by group. Password: Let`s you Set-up/Change/Delete a password. Enter up to 4 letters or numbers. About: Shows copyright notice and version number. Close: Closes the account you are working on. Quit: Closes the account and quits the program. REG TRANSACTIONS Show: Lists regular transactions. Print: Prints out regular transactions. BALANCE Show: Shows current page of balance file. Search: Searches through the balance file for a series of characters appearing under the detail heading. Enter the search word and then the start date you want to search from or just press enter to use the date of the first entry. If there is more than 1 screenful press "C" to continue or "A" to abandon. At the end of the search press "Q" to quit or "A" to go again or "P" to print out what you have just done. You can`t change a transaction by getting it on screen this way. Generate: Generates balance file based on the regular transactions file for the next four weeks from the date you enter. Regular transactions that are not permanent will have the remaining (REM'G) number, reduced by 1, if it reaches zero it will be deleted from the file. Next any with the code EST are shown and you can change the amount if you wish. Then all the due dates are re-calculated. Finally you are shown your balance file. NOTE 1: Any new items (marked N) that become due, will replace any other item with the same details. NOTE 2: It is possible for this routine to produce an invalid date i.e.: A monthly item starting on the 31.01.95 gets re-calculated to 31.02.95. If this happens the date will be changed to the first of the following month when it is transferred to the balance file. NOTE 3: The first time you select generate the date shown will be the default date. Afterwards the date shown will be 4 weeks later than the last one. Print: Prints out balance file. Get the first transaction you want printing on screen, point and click LMB. Get the last transaction you want to print on screen, point and click again. Go to top: Lists first 20 transactions. Go to end: Lists last 20 transactions. List: Input a date for the listing to start from. Marker: Prints a star mark next to any details you click on, useful to find certain items. Is used as a start of month marker in REPORT MANAGER. USER OPTIONS Quick entry limit: Sets the limit that Quick Entry works at. (Initially set to three) so if you enter up to three letters Quick Entry operates if you enter 4 or more it doesn't. Quick entry search: Sets the number of transactions that Quick entry searches through to find a match. Initially set to 100 the more you make it the longer it takes. Range 1 - 999. Set date on startup: Enables date entry on startup. Should be on if you don't have a battery backed clock otherwise off. THE BALANCE SCREEN At the bottom of the balance screen you will see a box, this is where the input prompts will appear when you need to enter something from the keyboard. Next to this there are 4 buttons. 1) This is the DELETE button. It is blank until you select an entry. High-light the entry by clicking on it, then click on this button or press "d". a requester appears allowing you to change your mind if you wish. 2) Next CHANGE. It is blank until you select an entry. High-light the entry by clicking on it, then click on this button or press "c". then follow the prompts or enter "Q" at the date entry if you want to cancel the change. 3) Next is the SCROLL button. This may be blank or have 1 arrow or 2 arrows depending on where you are in your file. If you can't scroll in a particular direction the arrow will not appear. Click on the arrows to move through your file. You may also use the cursor keys, The speed of scrolling this way is dependant on the key repeat speed set in prefs. 4) UPDATE Click on this or press "u" to add an entry to the balance file. UPDATING YOUR BALANCE First enter the date or Q or q to Quit, all transactions are date sorted (see note below). Use the Left or Right cursor keys to scroll through your transaction types and press enter to select the one you want. Do exactly the same for the groups. Next enter the details up to 16 characters, for often used details you can use the Quick Entry feature. Then enter the amount up to 999999.99. You are then asked to confirm the entry, just press return for Yes or "." then return for no, in which case you will go back to the date entry. DON'T WORRY if you make a mistake you can change everything. NOTE: Avoid entering anything that is earlier than the carried forward entry. THE REGULAR TRANSACTIONS SCREEN Select Show from the REG TRANSACTIONS menu. You will get a listing of all your regular transactions, with buttons that work just as in the balance screen UPDATING REGULAR TRANSACTIONS First of all enter the next date that the item is due. Next FREQUENCY, they can be 4Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly or Yearly. Enter the number of transactions next, or just press return for permanent. Anything without a fixed duration will be shown as 999 and stay in the file until you either delete it or it is automatically replaced by a new regular transaction with the same details. Next TYPE, use Left/Right cursor keys then Return. GROUP, same as TYPE. DETAILS up to 16 characters. AMOUNT up to 999999.99. If you have worked your balance out into the future and you get a new regular transaction, just enter it and it will insert itself into the balance file. DELETING A REGULAR TRANSACTION Point and click on entry, click on DELETE or press "d". CHANGING A REGULAR TRANSACTION If you get a change in a regular transaction high-light it and then click on the CHANGE button. Enter the date that the change starts from and the new details. The balance file will be automatically updated to reflect the changes you have just made. GENERAL NOTES: (1) Standing Orders and Direct Debits sometimes have a first payment different from the rest. To cope with this follow the example below. 01.01.95 Month 1 DD 1 ELECTRICITY 46.75 01.02.95 Month 11 DD 1 ELECTRICITY 45.00 (2) You can generate a balance file as far in advance as you want. How accurate it is depends on such things as, do you get paid the same amount everytime and bills being close to estimates. (3) I have only included the generic printer driver. The printouts require 12 cpi. The program sends out control codes to set the printer to this. If you are running from floppy, you must install the correct driver and have the printer accept control codes, or make sure PREFS is set to 12 cpi or set your printer to 12 cpi. (4) Any weekly transactions will have to have 4 entries in the regular transactions file, make sure they have different details i.e.: week1, week2 etc. (5) You can press any key then return to terminate an entry. If you have a numeric keypad,"." then return is as easy as any. (6) There is deliberately no delete account. If you want to delete one, you will find a drawer with the name of your account. Get into this and delete all the files inside, then run the program and change the account name if necessary. (7) When registering please tell me the version you have and what you would like to see in future versions. (8) If you would like to run Bank Manager from hard disk proceed as follows Make a drawer on your hard disk where you want the program to be, rename it BankManager, open it and drag the BankManager program icon into it. Then drag or copy the Extend library and the Hisoftbasic library into your libs drawer. If you want the data on hard disk as well, make another drawer inside the BankManager drawer called accounts. I will write a proper installation routine when I get time. You can't have 4 accounts on hard disk and another 4 on floppy, The program looks on the hard disk first, if it finds them, it doesn't look further If you have your accounts on floppy make sure your startup-sequence creates some disk-buffers. (9) Due to 999 representing permanent regular transactions it is not possible to have fixed duration regular transactions with a duration greater than 998. IDEAS FOR VERSION 2 (1) A reconcile routine. (2) Auto backup of data disk. (3) Copying details of account to a new disk. (4) Reg Transactions skip bank holidays and weekends. (5) Calculate bank charges and interest. (6) Estimate regular transactions can have manual or auto adjust. (7) Use ram disk. (8) Click and drag balance entries. (9) Create and open multiple accounts as needed. CREDITS Program and manual Copyright 1992-1995 G Proctor. 101 West View, Haslingden, Rossendale, Lancashire, England. BB4 5DB Extend Library Copyright HiSoft and SunSmile software View Bryan Ford Programmed in Hi-Soft Basic THIS PROGRAM IS SHAREWARE. IF YOU ARE NOT A REGISTERED USER PLEASE SEND EITHER £5 STERLING TO THE ABOVE ADDRESS. YOU WILL GET: THE LATEST VERSION PLUS THE COMPANION PROGRAM REPORT MANAGER WHICH ANALYSES YOUR ACCOUNT DATA. ALSO HELP AND PASSWORD DECODING (IF YOU FORGET IT) PLEASE ENCLOSE S.A.E. OR SEND £10 POUNDS STERLING AND GET AS ABOVE PLUS FREE UPDATES FOR LIFE AS LONG AS YOU SUPPLY A DISK AND AN S.A.E.