*********************** The Bean Counter ********************* Version 1.1 (C) 1993 Sanjiv Bawa bawa@eecs.nwu.edu GX GX GX GX GX Version ONLY. This is a NEW VERSION of THE BEAN COUNTER. Finally !! Here is a post of The Bean Counter - a money manager program. This is version 1.1. If you want to track where your money is going this is what you want to use. Following is a description of the features of this program (posted earlier). After that, are instructions to help you to install and use this program. The last part of this post the the UUENCODED program. Do NOT use SHIP or ASC to decode. Use UUDECODE. Have fun ! Noncommercial distribution allowed, provided that this copyright message is preserved, and any modified versions are clearly marked as such. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. **************************************** VERSION 1.1 SPECIFIC COMMENTS 1. Fixed a bug that caused the program to crash when expense types were being changed. 2. Instead of - signs showing a credit in the statements a + sign is used. This is more intuitive. A C or CR is normally used but a C is not as visible in the smallest font mode as a +. 3. Separated TRANSACTIONS into INCOME and EXPENSES. There are now separate INCOME TYPES which can be created and modified using the MODIFY EXPENSE TYPES and MODIFY INCOME TYPES in the main menu. The program will now create new two new files in your BEAN directory when you first run it. They are TYPES and INTYPES and hold information about the EXPENSE and INCOME TYPES. The filename of the version is BEAN11.LIB The file formats are the same as version 1.0 *************************************** VERSION 1.0 release documentation (unmodified) After looking through ftp sites everywhere for a program that helps manage ones money (an "Expense Manager" I believe is what they are called) I decided to write a program to help me keep track of my expenses. It turned out to be quite a reasonably polished program so, happily, I am going to release it to the rest of the world - if, of course, anybody wants it ..... WHO WOULD FIND IT USEFUL ? If you are a normal person who does not have a gazillion bucks, you will find the program quite useful in keeping track of all your money. Version 1.0 of this program does slightly more than a normal personal organizer. 2.0 will probably do way more (provided there is any kind of interest in the program). FEATURES: This program is capable of handling multiple accounts (limited only by memory). They can be of two types, Credit and Checking. The Credit account type is designed for transactions done with credit cards. The Checking account type, on the other hand, can be used for checking, savings and cash accounts. You can open and close accounts at will. The program allows you to enter simple transactions (Say, you spent money on clothes, or deposited a paycheck). It also allows you to transfer money between accounts (Say you got a cash advance from your VISA and deposited it in your checking account). Each transaction has a date, Expense type (explained later), Amount and Remarks attached to it. The program allows you to create several different EXPENSE TYPES, so you can easily categorize your expenses, to figure out exactly where your money is going. The program also allows you to archive old transactions, so that thousands of old transactions do not slow down the program. The number of transactions that you keep is configurable (can be different for each account). It creates mini statements that you can look at any time. You can view 7 transactions at a time (limited by size of screen), complete with current balances. **************************************** Here is a copy of "The Bean Counter". It is a library that has been encoded using UUENCODE. Use uudecode, NOT ship to get the library file from this file. Remember, this is a binary file if you are going to do transfers from Unix boxes to PC's. This is a GX version. It will NOT work on an SX. It will NOT crash your SX, however, since it has been written in usr RPL INSTALLATION Decode the file using uudecode. Then using any communications program supporting Kermit send the file to your HP 48GX. A file called BEAN will be created. Recall it by pressing the correct menu key. Enter the Port number (0 or 1 or 2) and press STO. You can delete the file called BEAN to save memory. Create a directory where you want all the files this program creates to be stored. Then turn off your calculator and turn it back on. This attaches the library. After turning it on, go to the directory that you created and enter 1760 ATTACH. Now, go the library menu (green arrow 2). You should see BEAN on the menu. Press the menu button marked BEAN and you will the menu for the program. It only has SETUP and BEAN. SETUP If you are running the program for the first time SETUP and BEAN do the same thing. If you have old files SETUP will delete them. To run the program you must have at least ONE account and the program really will not let you do anything unless you create one. Choose CREATE from the first menu that you see, which will be ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT. Then, before you edit anything, read the following, especially the paragraph subtitled "CREATING AN ACCOUNT". (The form is a little tricky because the #^&%&!#@ at HP simply ignored every piece of mail that I sent them, so I could not get a hold of the full format of the INFORM command) HOW TO USE THIS PROGRAM This program uses the menu systems that are new to the GX. It makes the program a lot easier to use. The main menu (you will not see it when you run the program for the very first time) has the following entries, TRANSACTION, TRANSFER, ACCOUNTS, EXPENSE TYPES, ARCHIVE, STATEMENT, QUIT. The paragraphs below will explain each option. BASIC PREMISE OF ACCOUNTING When money changes hands, a TRANSACTION happens. This transaction always happens between two ACCOUNTS. One account received money the other loses it. Generally, you only keep track of accounts that you own. So, when you spend money, say by using your VISA to buy a pizza you only care about what happens to your VISA account. In this case, the balance goes up and you suddenly owe VISA more money. ORGANIZING THIS PROGRAM Assuming you want to keep track of all your expenses etc., you want to create several accounts. Most people will get away by just creating accounts in the program named after their bank accounts and credit cards and one or two CASH accounts. Every time you spend money, use a credit card, cash a check, or get money from an ATM etc. you should record it (assuming you want to keep track of things). You can do this by using the TRANSACTION and TRANSFER options. Read on to find out how .... ____________________________________________ ACCOUNTS (Create, Modify, Close and Reopen) Creating an account is the FIRST thing you have to do. It is just a little bit tricky, but if you read the instructions, you should have no problems. When you choose the Create Accounts, or Modify Accounts option, you will see a screen with 7 items. NAME, TYPE, DATE, BALANCE, ARCH ON, KEEP MTHS, OPEN. There is a default for all except NAME. You have to enter a NAME. NAME is the name of the account. Example VISA, AMEX, BANKONE, CASH etc. TYPE: There are two types of accounts, credit and checking. Basically, when you look at your statement for the account and see a balance; if you owe that balance it is a credit account (such is the case for credit cards), and if you have that balance is a checking type account (which is the case for checking, savings and CASH accounts). To select a checking type account enter "-" (the default) or enter "+" for a credit type account. DATE is the first date that you are going to ever going to enter a transaction for. It does not have to be the date you opened the account, just the very first day, that you want to record in your GX. See BALANCE BALANCE is the starting balance on the DATE that you just entered (see above). The final balance will be computed using this starting BALANCE and the transactions that you enter. ARCH ON: When you run ARCHIVE it will attempt to archive transactions so that the very first transaction left in the account is the day *after* ARCH ON. Obviously, if your bank always sends to statements at the end of the month you should enter 31. If, say, statements are from the 16th of the previous month to the 15th of this month, enter 15. This helps keeping things in sync, so you do not have haphazard beginning dates when you ARCHIVE transactions. KEEP MTHS is the numbers of months that it will keep online when you do an ARCHIVE. The higher this number, the slower things will get, since you will have too many transactions in the list. Too small a number will mean that you do not have enough transactions online. OPEN? is if this account is open for business. If you creating it, it probably is. No transactions are allowed on closed accounts. CLOSE closes an open account. NOTHING is deleted REOPEN reopens a closed account _______________________________________ TRANSACTION Self explanatory. Every time you spend money, receive a paycheck etc., you should select this option. See TRANSFER. Remember to use NEGATIVE numbers for any money that you receive. This may be confusing at first, but if you think about it, it makes sense. If a positive number is money outflow, a negative number would be inflow. Thus, your paycheck would, for example, be recorded as -800. Future versions, will fix this. _______________________________________ TRANSFER Do not use the TRANSACTION option if you transfer money between accounts. Say if you get a cash advance from you VISA and deposit it in your checking account, except for bank fees, you have not spent any money. _______________________________________ EXPENSE TYPES To categorize your transactions you can create, modify or delete EXPENSE TYPES. There are a few created for you already. You can make more. Try not to delete any. I have not really put in the code to delete a type, so it just creates a space in the menu..... ________________________________________ ARCHIVE Puts old transactions in an archive. The archive filename is the account filename + .CL. The starting balance is adjusted properly. Note, that in this version, nothing can be done with this archive file. ________________________________________ STATEMENT Creates a statement, with balance for you to see. It starts off the very bottom, i.e. the very last transaction to happen in displayed at the very bottom. Use the up arrow and down arrow to go up and down. Any other key get you out. Yes, it is slow, but Version 2.0 will have this part written in sys RPL so it will be faster. ________________________________________ **Special Instructions** This is not a 100% perfect program. It is on the slowish side with obvious defects in the ACCOUNT create/modify part. You can get it to crash by doing things that should not be done, i.e creating two accounts with the same name, creating an account with the name ACCTS etc. There will be many more checks etc. in the next version, and it will be faster with more functionality. If you have any comments on the program, its functionality or its documentation, please let me know at bawa@eecs.nwu.edu. Please put "The Bean Counter" in the subject line. Thank you for your support.