Personal Accounts Version 2.0 (C)opyright 1993 Gareth Evans Personal Accounts 9th June 1993 Personal Accounts is written for the Psion Series 3 computer. I developed it for my personal use and have now adapted the program to make it more practical for public use. It provides an easy to use facility to manage finances in various bank accounts. You can credit and debit your accounts, transfer money to other accounts, set up standing orders, print accounts and edit or amend the various accounts at a later date, all with auto date and balance sort. You may have an unlimited number of accounts within the Psion's capacity, but due to the limited screen size the maximum transaction that can be carried out is œ9,999.99. Anyone with more money than this in their accounts please forward a significant portion of it to me and I will give the problem my fullest attention! Installation Simply copy the program ACCOUNTS.opa to your APP directory. If you do not already have this directory, you can either make it by pressing Psion+ whilst on the system screen with the Time application highlighted or you must include it in the path when you are in the Copy file pop-up menu. i.e. \app\ACCOUNTS ,see the Psion manual for more details. Once you have copied the file into the directory, again with the Psion on the system screen press PSION I. When the install application dialog pops up, select ACCOUNTS and press return. Personal accounts should now be installed and can be run in the usual manner. The first time you run the program it creates the following directories :- ACC - This directory holds the records of the individual accounts. ACC\ACCOUNTS - This sub-directory holds the general housekeeping files. Using the program for the first time The first choice you will be given is to select if you would like to use a password or not. If you choose to select a password, from then on you will be prompted for the password before the program will run. Next you have to name the first of your accounts, this can either be a "Current account", a "High interest account" or have no extension i.e. Visa. You will then be presented with a screen with the words :- DATE DETAILS AMOUNT BALANCE and no records. If you press the menu button you will then get a menu showing all the functions available to you and the "current" account name. As you become more familiar with the program you will find that you can use the "short-cut" keys i.e. PSION C instead of going to the menu and selecting Credit account. The help button will show which account you are in, as well as the menu screen. This is not shown all the time to maximise the amount of available screen. After you have placed some transactions in your account you will notice the cursor on the far left of the screen, this shows the current transaction. Before you use some of the functions you need to place the cursor alongside the selected transaction using the up and down cursor keys. If for instance you want to change the amount of one of the transactions you simply move the cursor alongside it and press PSION E or E (for Edit) and you will get a dialog pop up allowing you to change any of the details. If you want to move a screen at a time then you press the PSION key and the up or down keysor the left and right keys for the beginning and end of the file respectively. If you select the delete Record (R) function you are given the option of just deleting the "current" transaction or to delete all of the records up to a given date, if you choose the latter your final balance will not be affected because the new first record will now read BALANCE and show a credit or debit that relates to the balance at the time of the last erased record. This enables you to quickly reduce the length of the account records, because after you have a few months' worth of transactions you will notice that the auto-date sort and balance sort starts to slow down. There is a date sort option under the Special menu, this is to resort the account fully if any problems occur with the autosort, it should normally not be needed, however under exceptional circumstances the file could become unsorted. If you wish to enter a transaction but do not want it to show up on the balance you can now "HIDE" it, this is shown onscreen by inverting the pixels that display the amount. This amount will now not be taken account of, when calculating the balance, until "SHOW" is selected. All of the usual Psion conventions should apply when using the program i.e. PSION X or X to exit. In order to protect against prying eyes the program will automatically turn itself off after System power ON, the only exception to this is if you are in a dialog pop-up menu when you turn off the Psion, or if you are a registered user. This is because the system interrupts are not available when you are in a menu. The compress function is to reduce the size of a file that has had a lot of amendments done to it. This is necessary because the Psion does not release all of the ram after it has erased a record, but as the file is effectively compressed each time you change accounts you should only need to do this if you have just a single account installed. Pressing 1 from within the program will now take you straight to the system screen. Hopefully all other functions are self-explanatory and you will have no other problems. However as is the way of such things, there is almost certainly still a few bugs lurking around in the depths of the program, so if you discover any or can think of any improvements ( sensible suggestions only please. ) please drop me a line and I will try to help. Disclaimer Personal accounts is Copyright (C) Gareth Evans, 1993. Permission is given to freely distribute this software and documentation as long as the following restrictions are observed: - The software and documentation should not be modified without permission from the author. - No fee may be charged for distribution of this software apart from a small handling charge. - The following three files must be passed on together. accounts.opa - The program accounts.doc - This file accounts.txt - This file in plain text format The author accepts no responsibility for damage or loss due to the use of this software. Use of this software is at the users own risk. Every effort has been made to ensure that this software works correctly and can cause no damage to the system on which it is run. Registration This program is not free it is shareware. If you like it and use it regularly it would be greatly appreciated if you use the transfer function to place 10 pounds into my current account! To help you remember my address, after about 18 boot ups, you will notice a nag screen that will appear showing it in full. Registering yourself will ease both your conscience and my overdraft. I will then send you a code that will show you as a registered user, disable the nag screen and enable some extra functions. Registered users will receive new versions as they become available. If you wish to register or pass on any comments, please write to me at the following address:- GARETH EVANS WATERS' EDGE LLANIGON HEREFORD HR3 5PU Telephone :0497 821326 THE END