The World of Computer Software/World_Of_Computer_Software-02-386-Vol-2of3.iso/m/mym9.txt

Text File | 1993-01-31 | 48KB | 1,141 lines

 .What's New in MYM9;

General Improvements

Easier than Ever
We spent a lot of time this year watching novice users through
one-way mirrors, and learned from their "mistakes" (mainly, we
learned our mistakes).  As a result, we found ways to make MYM
even easier and more intuitive.

But in making the program easier to learn, we didn't want to make
it harder to use. So we also put the program through a design
review at the hands of experienced MYM users and took many of
their suggestions. Finally, we listened to comments from our
wonderful beta testers and made further refinements.

You'll notice many of these changes as you use Version 9. Others
are subtle. The result: Where Managing Your Money has always been
the most powerful money management program available, we think
it's now one of the easiest to use, too.


Mouse Support
At last!

To be honest, I've been slow to grow a third arm.  But I have to
admit it: I was wrong, you were right.  Even for those with just
two hands, MYM-Mouse is pretty slick.

If you have no mouse, don't worry: MYM works fine without one.

If you do have a mouse, you'll find it works about as you'd
expect in MYM. Click on a menu selection with the left mouse
button to select it. Double click on certain items to act upon
them. Press the right mouse button whenever you want to ESCape.
Double-click the left button on a transaction to see its detail
and click the right button to ESCape back out.


Better Choice Fields
Have you noticed the way our Choice Fields open any time you land
on them, often blocking other text on the screen?  Not any more.
As you'll see, we now leave the choice lists closed until you
open them. There are four easy ways to open the lists.  Take your
pick:

z Press the Spacebar.

z Begin typing. If you type the first unique character(s) of a
  valid choice, we'll fill it in and advance you to the next
  field without even opening the list. If it's not a valid
  choice, we'll open the list and place you inside, just as if
  you'd pressed the Spacebar.

z Click your mouse on the inverse triangle t.

z Double click your mouse on the choice field.

Once a list is open, scroll to your choice and press Enter or Tab
(or click your mouse on it) to select it and move on. You can
scroll through a choice list with the cursor keys (or by clicking
your mouse on the arrowheads to the right of the list).  Or you
can press the first letter of the choice you want.

In other words, just about any intuitive method works fine.  Try
them all!


More Visible Cursor
Especially for those of you with monochrome notebooks, and the
like, where it's not always easy to see "where you are" on a
screen, you'll find that the cursor is almost always blinking -
"Hey!  I'm over here!"  Not on the Menu Bar, but almost
everywhere else.


Better Reports and Printing
In addition to the new reports and the greatly improved Report
Generator explained later under MONEY, we've spruced up many of
our existing reports.

z    When you print a report that requires compressed print,
  we'll normally choose it for you.

z    Printer Setup now supports more printer models, listed under
  Type.

z    Select Printer Setup on the FILE menu and tell us whether
  your "printer supports graphics characters." If so (and almost
  every printer does these days, so it can't hurt to try it), MYM
  will take advantage of this capability and format your reports
  more attractively. If it doesn't work, press F1 for Help under
  Printer Setup.


New Colors
If you have a color VGA monitor, this is one of the first things
you'll notice. If you don't like the combinations we've provided,
select Program Setup from the FILE menu, then Screen Colors, to
select another combination. Or press F6 from there to customize
them.


Progress Thermometers
In many places where we're doing something that can take time,
such as printing a complex report, we place a "progress
thermometer" in the middle of the screen so you have a sense of
where you stand.


Expanded Program Setup
We've made Program Setup more logical and given Printer Setup,
Communications Setup and Forms Setup their own separate listings
on the FILE menu.

Communications Setup puts all modem-related settings in one place
and adds settings for MYM9's new communications features,
described on page 16.

Forms Setup is for check- and invoice-printing (which you can
also customize from the Print Checks and Receivables screens).

While you're on the FILE menu, notice that we now provide a way
to Rename Data Sets. And take a look at some of the new choices
under Optional Features.


New FILE Options
If you get sick of our new opening-screen quotes, select File
options (under Optional Features on the FILE menu) and tell us to
quit displaying them.  (But even after you've seen some more than
once, you probably haven't seen them all, because we display them
randomly.)

If you use more than one Data Set, you can tell us under File
options to display the Data Set name on the welcome screen. Then,
if you see it's the wrong set, just press ESCape to exit and
restart MYM with the set you want (type mym dataset <Enter> from
DOS, where "dataset" is the name of your Data Set).

File options also lets you:

z Change your name on the opening screen.

z Turn on New User assistance. This feature prompts you at the
  bottom of the screen on how to use certain features. For
  example, when you Tab into a Choice Field it suggests you press
  the Spacebar to open the list.

z Turn off the Assistance Backing Up screen that appears when you
  exit MYM.  Many of you use other backup methods.


Importing and Exporting
MYM can now export to tax preparation programs that support the
Tax Exchange Format (TXF), such as Andrew Tobias' TaxCut and
TurboTax.

MYM can import from Quicken and other programs that support the
QIF file format. The QIF import requires a separate utility
program, the Managing Your Money Import Capability (MYMIC)
Version 3, which will be available shortly after the release of
MYM9. You'll find an order form for a free copy in the materials
accompanying this newsletter. (There is a $5 shipping charge.)

MYMIC can also import electronic payments from PRODIGY's BillPay
USA, and on-line securities trades from FOX (Fidelity On-line
Xpress) and PRODIGY's PCFN (Personal Computer Financial Network)
discount brokerage service.


Close Out Past Year
Some of you get sweaty palms when the new year rolls around and
you're faced with the Close Out Past Year (COPY) option. There's
no need for this, especially in Version 9. COPY is easier than
ever.


Improved Memory Use
MYM now supports XMS and EMS 4.0 memory. If you have either type,
we'll use it automatically. If you have both, we'll use XMS
first. We'll use as much as we need unless you limit our use when
running MYM in an environment such as Windows. Providing XMS or
EMS memory can significantly improve MYM's speed, especially as
you accumulate a lot of data.  We also support up to 512K of EMS
3.2. For more information, see "Appendix 8: Memory and Speed," in
the User's Guide.


DESK

Time Summary
Several nice improvements here:

z    The best news is that you can now add (F5), edit (F2) and
  delete (F3) Appointments, Phone Calls, Reminders or To-Do items
  right from the Time Summary screen. No need to summon those
  separate screens first.  For those of us who use the Time
  Summary to run our lives, this is a tremendous convenience.

z    You can now Find (called "Speed Scroll" in V8) dates and
  descriptions in the Time Summary and the related sections
  (Appointments, Phone Calls, Reminders and To-Do lists).

z    F8 on the Time Summary now deactivates, rather than deletes,
  one-time Reminders. This lets you keep a historical record of
  Reminders, just as you can with Phone Calls, Appointments and
  To-Do items.  (To delete a Reminder, use F3.)

z    Throughout these sections, we use an asterisk (*) to
  indicate items that contain detail. When you print a report
  that contains detail, we print the detail in compressed type to
  make the reports more attractive.

z    When you pop up the Appointments, Phone Calls, Reminders and
  To-Do lists, we place the cursor on the current date or the
  next date on the list.

z    If, like me, you've told us not to automatically export
  Birthdays and Anniversaries when you leave the Card File (to
  save time), you'll have the option to press F7 on the Time
  Summary screen and import them. (See Card File options, under
  Optional Features on the FILE menu.) If you've told us to
  export them from the Card File automatically, you won't see F7.


To-Do List
On the To-Do list you can now mark projects to print by date
range, Who, Rank and Completed status.


Card File
A few nice tweaks:

z    Cards no longer need a First Name. This is helpful for
  entering business names.

z    It's easier to view/edit Special Codes. Just press F8
  repeatedly.  We cycle you through the lower-case codes,  upper-
  case codes and then back out again.  It's not documented on the
  Special Codes screen, but it works great. Try it! (It works the
  same way elsewhere in MYM: whichever key takes you into Special
  Codes will also take you through and out.  That way, you can
  keep your eye on the screen instead of having to hunt for F-
  keys.)

z    Automatic Birthday and Anniversary exporting is now optional
  (see Card File options, under Optional Features on the FILE
  menu). If you turn it off, you won't be delayed leaving the
  Card File.  Instead, use F7 on the Time Summary to import the
  dates from time to time. (If you have automatic exporting
  turned on, we export any time you change a name, home address
  or phone number, birth date or anniversary date. This can take
  a while if you have 1,000 cards, as I do.)

z    When we export Birthdays and Anniversaries to the Time
  Summary, we include the address and phone number so you can
  mail a proper card. We now include the spouse's name, too, on
  anniversaries.

z    When you press F6 from a card, Auto-Dial will automatically
  find the first phone number if home number is blank.


MYM-Write
We've made the process of selecting a file more logical. Nothing
major, it's just easier to use.  (And if you have a mouse, just
point at the file and double-click to load it.)

We've eliminated our ballyhooed "word processor emulation."  If
you've been emulating another word processor, the conversion to
MYM9 will respect that and retain these custom keystrokes. And
you can still customize MYM-Write's commands, as before - which
is handy for a little fine-tuning.  But we no longer explicitly
offer to emulate any specific word processors, because, in truth,
we really didn't mimic them very well, and the time it would have
taken to update and improve this for MYM9 was, we felt, better
spent elsewhere.


MONEY

MONEY Menu
We've rearranged the MONEY menu a bit.

Since the Check Register is MONEY's home base, we've placed it
first. From there you can perform all common MONEY tasks-add
transactions (F5, or Alt-S, Alt-R and Alt-T), reconcile an
account (Alt-E), print checks (Alt-P), bring up the Alert List
(Alt-A) or Quick List (Alt-Q), delete (F3) or edit (F2) a
transaction or just its budget allocations (Alt-F9), print the
Check Register (F4), or see all transactions involving one of the
payees (Ctrl-V).

Money Accounts is next, followed by Spend, Receive and Transfer
Money. These are frequently used screens.

A new MONEY menu option, Financial Reports, leads to the Report
Generator and four major financial reports: Budget & Actual and
Net Worth reports, which you can also print from their respective
sections of the program, and two new reports, Profit & Loss and
Cash Flow.

As before, Payables and Receivables appear on the menu only if
you turn on these features under Money options (Optional Features
on the FILE menu).


Ctrl-V
Last issue we mentioned Ctrl-V, one of MYM's most useful, and
least known, features. Highlight a budget category and press
Ctrl-V; we'll display all the transactions allocated to that
category. Press Ctrl-V on a transaction (whether on the Check
Register or the Quick List, Reconcile or wherever), and we'll
display all transactions involving that Payee. Or press Ctrl-V on
a Money Account, and we'll display all its transactions.

 Ctrl-V is even better in MYM9. Press Ctrl-V on the Budget
Categories screen, with either TOTAL INCOME or TOTAL EXPENSES
highlighted, and we'll give you a list of all your UNallocated
receive or spend transactions. This is a quick and handy way to
check for transactions you may have forgotten to allocate.

And we now total our Ctrl-V list and tell you how many
transactions it includes.

We also let you choose a standard or customized report format, if
you choose to print the contents of the data Ctrl-V turns up.
(And if you change the format and save it,  we remember for the
next time.)

New, also: If Close Out Past Year is a choice on your FILE menu,
you'll find that Ctrl-V includes an F8 option to limit the list
to only this year's or last year's transactions, or to include
both years.



Check Register
We've spruced it up and made it more flexible.

You can now enter transactions from previous years or change the
year of a transaction.

And if you have a mouse - WOW! Double click on the title of one
of the columns, such as Payee/Payor or In/(Out); we sort by that
column. Double click on the right column; that's the same as
pressing F7 to show the running balance, Budget Category
allocations or (new in V9) other Money Account allocations. (We
now retain the F7 setting until you change it.)

Money Accounts
We now permit longer Money Account names-up to 20 characters.
You'll no longer need cryptic abbreviations like "FrstFdrlBkCh."

The Add and View/Edit Money Account screens are less cluttered
because we've hidden the "nonessential" information - press F6 to
see it, and/or any time you need to change an account's "Last
Check Number." (You'll probably at least want to look over the F6
options.) The one new wrinkle, Link to Portfolio Account, is
explained on page 13: "Link to MONEY".

A new Summary report lists key Money Account information in
columns. The format is easier to read and takes much less paper.

We've polished Check Register reports.


Spend and Receive Money
The Spend Money screen looks more like a check. It even shows the
amount in English. (Totally useless, but I love it.)

Since real checks don't have Category and By (payment method)
fields, we've moved them to the area below the check.

That means you need to Tab through the Address and Memo fields to
reach Category. That's not as bad as it may sound: if you don't
type anything in Address, we don't force you through all three
address lines. But if you want to Tab directly from Amount to
Category, as in Version 8-go to Money options (under Optional
Features on the FILE menu) and tell us to "Use Advanced
Navigation on the Spend/Receive Money screen."

With Advanced Navigation, you'll go straight from amount to
Category and By ... and then, if you keep Tabbing, we'll take you
back up to the Address and Memo fields.

Speaking of small navigational changes: When you use F9 to
allocate a transaction to Budget Categories, we now return you to
the check when you press the Action Key to save your allocations.
Press the Action Key again to save the transaction.

Another small change: there are now three ways to see your
"category list" for the purposes of allocating.  As before,
there's that simple little one-line scroll list right on the
screen with the check. Just type the first letter or two of the
category you want to allocate to, and up it comes.  That's method
#1 and the simplest. Method #2, as you know, is to press F9 to
see the full list on a screen to itself, and to "split" your
allocation over as many categories as you want.

What's new is that, to make this less intimidating to new users,
we've - optionally - inserted an intermediate step.  To see it,
go to the FILE's Optional Features and, in Money Options, set
"Show Detailed Budget Category List" to NO.  (If  I were you, I'd
leave it set to YES, because you're not a novice user. But it
doesn't make a lot of difference.) Now go back to Spend Money and
enter a transaction. As you'll see, when you press F9 you don't
immediately get the full screen for multiple allocations, as you
used to. You have to press F9 again to get that. Instead, you get
a little pop-up that may make it easier for the novice to find
the budget category he wants to allocate to - so long as he wants
to allocate the full amount to one category. If he wants to
allocate more or less than the full amount, or split his
allocation, he just presses F9 a second time, to get the full-
blown allocation screen.


Allocate to Other Money Accounts
When you write a $100 check to the supermarket and take $20 in
cash, you can now easily enter it in MYM, even if you track cash
as a separate Money Account. Just allocate $80 to Groceries and
$20 to your Cash account.

We can now handle complicated paychecks gracefully. If you have
your employer deposit part of your check into a savings or 401K
account, you can now record it in a single MYM transaction.


Payee Search
Good news! If Payee Search finds the wrong transaction, you can
now press F6 repeatedly until it finds the right one. Say you
type "Sa" and press F6, hoping to find "Safe Sidewalk Fund."
Instead "Safeway" pops up. Just press F6 again, and again if
necessary. If what you're looking for is in the current account
(and in the current Data Set), we'll find it.


Transfer Money
Transfer Money now looks more like the Spend and Receive Money
screens. That means there's a place to type a Memo during the
transfer. To change the accounts to and from which you're
transferring, press F8 and F9 or use the up and down arrows (or
click on them) or type the first letter of the account you want -
almost anything works.

You still can't allocate a transfer to an Expense or an Income
category when you first enter the transfer, because we still
believe that when you transfer money from your left pocket to
your right pocket, you haven't spent anything.

But - by popular demand - you can now allocate transfers after
you've entered them. Just view/edit on the Check Register and
press F9.


Print Checks
The Print Checks screen is more intuitive and flexible. You can
now mark the checks you want to print. We try to do that for you,
by marking all the unprinted checks you've entered with check
numbers higher than those in your last printing.  But if we've
guessed wrong, just make changes manually (the space bar will
unmark a mark), or press F7 for "auto-mark" and "erase all
marks."

Note that, for those few of you who purposely blank out the check
numbers of checks you nonetheless want to print, we have an
option that allows you to instruct us to mark UNnumbered checks
as well as numbered ones.  Pretty esoteric, but we aim to please.
From Print Checks, press F9, F7 to see this option.


CheckFree

The main CheckFree improvement for V9 is that we now keep a
record of all the information you send CheckFree-things like
merchant or account changes, and stop payments. After you
transmit them, we add an entry to your CF E-mail List showing
what you've sent.

Also, when you exit MYM, we warn you if there's something to
send. If you turned off this warning because it took too long for
us to check, you might want to turn it back on (under Money
Options, under Optional Features on the FILE menu). We now check
a little more quickly.


Reconcile Account
We've redesigned Reconcile to make it easier and more flexible.

You now enter the bank statement balance first, in a separate
window. This is also where you specify interest income, finance
charges and service charges, and their Budget Categories. You can
also enter a miscellaneous charge (e.g., a check-printing
charge). Then, when you press the Action Key, we take you to the
screen where you can check off transactions that have cleared the
bank.

As you mark cleared transactions, we keep track of how many
you've marked at the bottom of the screen. We also calculate how
far you're out of balance. We've added the ability to sort the
list by marked and unmarked transactions, to help you find
transactions you've missed. When you're in balance, we applaud
(well, we beep) and offer our congratulations.

When you're through marking transactions, press the Action Key.

z If you're in balance, we'll place a check mark in the Check
  Register next to the transactions you've marked. You're done!

z If you're out of balance, we'll tell you how far you're off and
  give you two options:

  z  Press ESCape to go back and find the problem.

  z  Press the Action Key to have us create a transaction in
     whatever amount makes the account balance. This is useful if
     you're off just a little and don't want to hunt down that
     last few cents. Or even if you're off a lot and just want to
     force the account to reconcile.


Alert List
If you don't use MYM the day an Alert transaction is scheduled,
we retain the original date when you eventually do run MYM and
execute the day's Alerts. We don't replace your original date
with the current date, as MYM8 does. Many of you asked for this.

Transfers created on the Alert List are now linked, the same as
transfers created from Transfer Money or the Quick List. If you
later change or delete the transaction in one account, we reflect
the change on the transaction in the other account.

Because Alert Transfers are now linked, we only have to show the
payment side of transfers on the Alert List screen. This should
reduce confusion.


Financial Reports
Good news here.

We've added a new MONEY menu option, Financial Reports, from
which you can really go to town. You'll find these options:

Budget & Actual
Report Generator
Profit & Loss
Net Worth
Cash Flow

Two of the five - Budget & Actual and Net Worth - are here just
for the convenience of having everything in one place.  You can
access them just as well from the Budget and Net Worth screens,
respectively.

Two others - Profit & Loss and Cash Flow - are brand new.

And one - the Report Generator - isn't new, exactly ... but it
makes its Version 8 predecessor positively cower, like Nicolai
Ceausescu in the face of a free Rumania. (So to speak.)

Budget & Actual offers our seven budget reports. But now you can
tell us whether or not to include unallocated transactions;
whether or not to include empty categories ("Zero Amounts?"); and
whether or not to print categories and subcategories (discussed
below in the section on Budget Categories), or only categories
("Subcategory Detail?"). These choices are also available on the
Profit & Loss and Cash Flow reports.

And we've made a couple of other improvements here.  First, we've
added a "report title" line to the screen where you choose the
report you want. It's handy not only because it lets you see -
and change - the title we plan to print at the top of your
report, but also because it helps you remember what each of our
seven basic Budget & Actual reports is.  (We've renamed a couple
of them.)

More important, we've added a new time period choice for the
Budget  vs Actual report: Full Year. This is a very useful
report, which gives you the budget for the whole year, your
actuals so far, and the difference in amount and percent. It
tells you how much you have left to spend in each category if
you're still  trying to stick to your budget despite past-months'
indiscretions. To reach this report from the Menu Bar, type Alt-
M, I, B, B again (with your cursor on the top choice field), and
then (with your cursor on the bottom choice field) FU.

Hey: and don't be shy about pressing F1 for a little HELP here in
understanding your choices and what the different reports do.

The Profit & Loss Report is a professional-looking income
statement. It's similar to budget reports, but shows only actual
income and expenses, not budgets. You can control which
categories to include. By default we exclude those you've said to
exclude from profit and loss, but you can include them anyway if
you choose; just mark them. (To specify whether a category is
included in "P&L," highlight the category on the Budget
Categories screen and press F2.)

P&L reports can cover any period within a budget year; just
specify the date range at the top of the screen. Or press F8 for
our great new Rapid-Dates feature and tell us to include the
"last 16 weeks" or the second quarter. Try it! Rapid-Dates is
also available for Cash Flow reports and in the Report Generator.

The Cash Flow Report allows you to analyze changes in your cash
position. Please press F1 to read HELP for the Cash Flow Report,
if you select it, because it's not immediately obvious or
intuitive, and you're likely to think we're dotty (or buggy) if
you don't read the explanation. Actually, we're neither dotty or
buggy; we just turned design of this particular report over to a
CPA. Hence: dense. It is powerful and sophisticated - but mainly
for CPAs.

The new Report Generator, by contrast, is thoroughly intuitive
(we beat the CPA off with a stick), and a tremendous improvement.
To print one of our new standard reports - which may be the only
reports you ever need - just specify the date range you want to
include, highlight the report and press F4. (And don't miss F8,
Rapid-Dates!)

If you want to narrow down the transactions other than by date,
press F7 before printing and tell us how to "filter" your data.
By date, check number or amount range? By text in the Payee or
Memo field? Only certain accounts or categories? Or... see for
yourself.  The filters are very powerful.

You can modify the format of any report, too-add or remove
columns, change the order, add subtotals, change column titles,
include page breaks or have it print on one long "page" (useful
for printing to the screen or disk), include Addresses and Memos,
and more. Memos print in the right-most column of a report, on
the same line (or on as many lines as necessary). Addresses print
below the Payee/Payor name.

Press F9 on the Select Format screen to tell us which columns to
include in the report, and in which order. (If you have a mouse,
just click in the Order column on the Select/Order Fields screen
and we'll number them for you.)

You can tell us which columns to subtotal. You can even have us
print only totals, leaving out the transactions.

You can switch back and forth between the Filters and Format
screens (F7 and F6). Once you've specified filters and the
format, press F4 to print the report. Or save it for future use
(if you modify one of our reports we'll have you save it under a
new name). You can print a report to the screen first, see how it
looks and then print it to paper without having to wait for us to
extract again.

z    Note that when you save a report format, we also save its
  filters! So you might take one of our standard formats and,
  even if you don't change it any other way, choose "Save As..."
  to give it a name like, "Bob's Budget Report."  We'll remember
  just which accounts and budget categories you like to include -
  and everything else.

z    Note that the formats MYM9 comes with are called "report
  templates" and have asterisks to their left.  You can't delete
  them.  They're our basic molds.  But you can modify them all
  you like, and then save those report formats under a different
  name.  Summon them minutes or months from now, change them, and
  save those changes - or choose "Save As..." to save them under
  yet a another new name, so you have both versions available.

The bottom line: MYM's reports are now second to none.  Enjoy the
power - and thanks for your patience.


Budget Categories

Budget Subcategories are the biggest news here.

When you set up a Budget Category with a colon in the
middle-Auto:Ford, say-we see Auto as the category and Ford as the
subcategory. Add Auto:Jeep and you now have two subcategories,
Ford and Jeep, under the main category Auto. It's easy!

Subcategories let you break down a forest into individual trees,
yet still see the forest. You can get an uncluttered budget
report that shows just the main categories (Utilities $100) or
one with all the subcategories, too (Utilities:Heat $50,
Utilities:Power $30 and Utilities:Water $20). When you print a
financial report, just tell us whether to include "Subcategory
Detail."

You can do even more (much more!) with subcategories in the
Report Generator. Try some of the standard allocation reports
we've provided or create your own. You can print reports with or
without subcategory detail. You can subtotal by subcategories
within categories. Or print only subcategory allocations.

You can even reverse things, subtotaling by categories within
subcategories. (Say you have Ford:Gas, Ford:Maintenance, Jeep:Gas
and Jeep:Maintenance, you can list all your Maintenance expenses
broken down by Ford and Jeep.)

Of course, you don't have to get this sophisticated to make good
use of subcategories. We just wanted to show you some of the
possibilities.

For more on this, see page 83 of your User's Guide, but in any
event note five basic things:

z    This neat subcategory stuff works in reports.  In our
  regular displays, nothing new happens; it's in the reports that
  you can get fancy.  Of course, you can print those reports to
  the screen, disk or paper.

z    We struggled to come up with better terminology than
  category:subcategory, because actually, in the Report Generator
  (but not other reports), the two have equal weight.  As
  suggested in the example above, you can consider Ford and Jeep
  and Honda your main categories, when you want to see a report
  by automobile.  But you can consider Gas and Repairs and
  Insurance your main categories when you want an automotive
  report not by Vehicle but by Kind of Expense.  So don't feel
  any need, when working with the Report Generator, to give
  categories preference over subcategories.  They sound more
  important, but may not be.

Global Operations is a new choice (F8) on the Budget Categories
screen.  It offers three choices:

z Quick Budgeting will automatically fill in next year's budget
  numbers based on this year's budgets or actuals. Or, if you
  have two years open (you're in the second year and haven't yet
  gone through COPY), we'll fill in the current year's budgets
  based on last year's budgets or actuals.

z Reallocate a Category finds every transaction belonging to the
  category you were highlighting when you pressed F8, and re-
  totals them. This can be useful if you manually changed the
  actuals for a category and later decide you shouldn't have. F8
  here will simply tot up the actuals all over again.

z Erase All Amounts lets you start over. It wipes out all your
  budgets and actuals for every category.  (Careful!)

z You'll see two more choices, Use This Year's Numbers and Use
  Last Year's Numbers, if you have two years open.  These let you
  select which year's budget numbers to use on the Budget
  Categories screen. The year you're using appears at the top of
  the screen.


Loan Records
We've made it a little easier to modify loan payments. Highlight
a loan on the Loan Records screen (on the MONEY menu) and press
F2, F6. The screen is better organized and more consistent with
the rest of MYM (press F9 to specify budget allocations, for
example).

More importantly, if you have a variable-rate loan, you no longer
have to play with the interest rate to get our payment amount to
match the bank's. Just enter the payment instead and press F6.
We'll calculate the new interest rate and adjust your budget
allocations; you don't need to delete the linked Quick or Alert
List payment first. As before, our rate may differ slightly from
the bank's if they use a different calculation, but the important
thing is that the payment is right. Now
that's easy.


Forecasting
You can now print the report (F4). If you have five-year
budgeting turned on (Money options, under Optional Features on
the FILE menu), you can also print a five-year forecast
(F6, F4).


Money Options
MYM prides itself on its ability to accommodate individual needs
and preferences. To be sure you're not missing some of our
flexibility, you may want to take a look through the choices
available on the FILE menu, under the headings Program Setup and
Optional Features.

In particular, we've added several new Money options (Alt-F, F, M
from the Menu Bar). You now have so many MONEY options that they
take two screens.

z You can now tell us to beep after you record a transaction. At
  the same time we flash the word "recorded" across the top of
  the screen. This can be helpful to new users. We doubt you'll
  use it.

z Likewise, new users, unfamiliar with category names, may be
  overwhelmed by all the choices on the F9 screen. If you turn
  off the new Show Detailed Budget Category List? option, F9
  gives you a simple list of categories with no amount column.


z We described the Advanced Navigation option under Spend and
  Receive Money, above.

z You can tell us to automatically delete Addresses and/or Memos
  from transactions after reconciling. Version 8 offered this
  option each time you reconciled, on the final screen. Placing
  it under Optional Features in V9 helps simplify the reconciling
  process. We recommend you answer NO to both questions, but
  particularly the Memo.

z You can now use leading zeros on invoice numbers. Just turn on
  this option, which is visible only if you've activated
  Receivables under Money options.


TAX

Updated Tax Laws
As always, we've reflected any IRS tax changes that were
available in time. Congress was still wrangling about this year's
tax proposals when we finished MYM9, so other changes may occur
later. We'll do our best to keep PLUS PLAN Members apprised of
any changes they need to make under Tax Tables, on the TAX menu.


Tax Connection
MYM now exports to all tax preparation programs that support the
Tax Exchange Format (TXF), such as Andrew Tobias' TaxCut and
TurboTax. Just select Tax Connection from the TAX menu and read
through About Tax Connection for instructions.


W-4 Calculator
You can now modify the tables to reflect changes in next year's
Form W-4.


INSURE

We've made only minor changes, including a new report under
Insurance Organizer and a longer field for driver's license
numbers in Vital Records.


ANALYZE

We've fine-tuned some calculations and spruced up some of the
screens. Home Affordability will now accept a 0% down payment.
You can now enter the actual year under Investment Analysis.
Things like that.


PORTFOLIO

PORTFOLIO Menu
We've reorganized the PORTFOLIO menu along the lines of the new
MONEY menu. Display Assets (PORTFOLIO's counterpart to the Check
Register) is first, followed by Portfolio Accounts (analogous to
Money Accounts). Next come the transaction-oriented selections.
Beneath the line are the price, income and analysis areas.

QuoteLink is new. It allows you to update asset prices by modem.
It replaces Managing The Market, an optional program in previous
versions. More on that in a moment.


Portfolio Accounts
Commission Analysis now allows you to specify a date range to
analyze (F6). You can compare this year's commissions to last
year's, or tell your broker more accurately, "Hey: I paid you
guys $2,832 in commissions last year, and what did it get me?  I
want a discount!" Your broker's computer screen offers this
information - why shouldn't yours?

Transfer between accounts (F6 on the Portfolio Accounts screen)
now lets you transfer income as well as assets. You're less
likely to need this, because in the real world, you might really
transfer 100 shares of stock from one portfolio to another,
whereas a dividend that you received in one portfolio was always
received in that portfolio, if you see what I mean. But someone
is going to think of a reason to use it, and we aim to please.



Link to MONEY
The biggest change to Portfolio Accounts is the ability to link
any Portfolio Account to a Money Account.

In previous versions, the only way to do this was to set up a CMA
(Cash-Management Account), and you could have only nine. Now you
can have as many as you want and they can be of any type. That
means you can now set up an IRA/Keogh/401K or even a Hypothetical
account that's linked to Non-cash account in MONEY.

It all happens automatically, if you've given your PORTFOLIO
account a linked MONEY account, so we strongly recommend you let
us do it.

In fact, think of a Portfolio Account and its linked Money
Account as a single account. Its PORTFOLIO side is where you
manage investments and the MONEY side is where you track the
cash.

Linking is easy.  The basic rule is: just be certain the account
names are identical in PORTFOLIO and MONEY.  You do not link your
Paine Webber brokerage account with your NationsBank checking
account - you link it with a MONEY account called Paine Webber.
It's the same account! Just two different sides. (The names and
account numbers must be identical.)  Note: Hypothetical
portfolios should be linked to non-cash money accounts.



Buy Assets
To make it easier for novices to fill in just the required fields
on the Buy Assets screen, we've separated them from the optional
ones.

We've also added a new asset type, Limited Partnership.

Asset Search (F6) now accepts partial asset symbols. Type "IB"
and press F6, and we'll fill in the whole thing, "IBM." Well,
maybe a longer symbol would have been a better example. It is
useful for hard-to-remember symbols. And if the first one we find
for you isn't the one you want, press F6 again and we'll bring up
the next candidate that matches what you've typed.

Buy Assets is now smart enough to fill in some of the optional
fields for you. For example, it knows a stock's Liquidity is
usually "Full," a preferred stock's Risk is usually "Low," an
option is speculative but fully liquid, real estate is semi-
liquid, tax shelters and limited partnerships have virtually no
liquidity (sorry), "metals/collectibles" are semi-liquid but
high-risk, and savings bonds are low-risk and semi-liquid.

If we've guessed wrong on something (or you're sure we'd agree
with your assessment of that limited partnership if only we'd
heard the sales pitch you heard), just change it.


Split Stocks
The screen now has a date field, which allows us to apply the
split only to those tax lots purchased before the date of the
split.


Update Prices
There are two big pieces of news here - Historical Price Tracking
and QuoteLink - covered in the next two sections. But here are a
couple of little things to note:

To change an asset symbol, you still go to the Update Prices
screen, as in V8.  But now you have to press F2 before pressing
F7 - we've had to move this function one level deeper.

The mouse is handy.  Highlight a price and double click on one of
the Alt-Q through Alt-P choices in the center of the screen to
increase or decrease it. Or double click on a symbol to view all
its lots.


Historical Price Tracking
We've added a YES/NO column on the right edge of the Update
Prices screen: Update History. Mark Yes next to the assets for
which you want to keep a price history (and next to the Dow
Jones/Index field, near the bottom-right of the screen, if you
want us to keep track of that). Then, each time you update an
asset's price, we'll add the price to its historical record.
Now ... to see one of your histories - or manually enter
additional price points - just highlight a symbol and press F7
(first making sure F7 says "View" instead of "Purge").

Our graphs (F9) offer some amazing options. You can compare one
asset to another, or to an industry group. Or compare two
industry groups or two Special Codes. Specify the date range, the
kind of graph you want, and so forth. (Of course, we only offer
"comparative" options once you have two or more separate price
histories, it being hard to compare just one thing, or for one
hand to clap; and these graphs will only really begin to get
interesting after you've accumulated a bunch of data. But never
fear: you will.)

Eventually, if you've been updating prices every day, you may
want to Purge (thin out) some of your entries, because our graphs
only handle a maximum of 52 price points.  To have us include
just one entry a week, say, or one a month, deleting all the
others for a particular asset,  press F6 on the View/Edit Price
History screen.  To do the same thing globally, for all your
price histories, press F7 back on the Update Prices screen
(having first set it to "Purge" instead of "View").


Update Prices by Modem
For years we've sold registered MYM-ers a separate add-on called
Managing The Market. It would call Dow Jones News/Retrieval, look
up your prices, and then feed the information into MYM's Update
Prices screen.

Now, a similar capability is built right into MYM. We call it
QuoteLink, and - apart from being free - it has some nice
advantages over Managing the Market - see details on page 16, and
see the box below if, like me, you already have MTM.


Getting Set Up with QuoteLink:

The first thing you'll need (besides a modem, of course) is an
active account with either Dow Jones or CompuServe (or both).

Once you're set up, just press F6 from Update Prices, or select
QuoteLink from the PORTFOLIO menu. Mark the portfolios you want
to update, select the service you want to call (Dow Jones or
CompuServe) and press the Action Key. (If you want to watch the
call in progress, select Show QuoteLink Full-Screen Display in
Portfolio options, under Optional Features on the FILE menu.)
When we hang up, we'll display the new prices. Press F9 to sort
them by percentage gain, to spot the day's big winners and
losers, and F4 if you want to print a report. Press the Action
Key to update your portfolios.


MYM Monitor
Too much attention to the stock market is counter-productive. But
if you want to keep a particularly sharp eye on a volatile stock,
QuoteLink's MYM Monitor can conceivably help. We've included it
more as a taste of the future, for those who enjoy neat gizmos,
than as something practical we expect you to use. For most
people, "limit orders" placed with their broker are less trouble,
more effective, and free. Still, you might want to take a look
just for fun.

Press F6 from the QuoteLink screen, and F6 again to mark the
asset symbols you want to monitor. Then press the Action Key.

Back on the MYM Monitor screen, turn on MYM Market Watch and,
optionally, MYM Price Alarm. Tell us when and how often to update
prices, and how to let you know when there's something to report.
Now press the Action Key to activate MYM Monitor.

MYM Monitor can communicate with you by printing a message on the
screen or on your printer; by beeping; or by sending a message to
your SkyTel pager.




Record Income

As before, you select an asset and press the Action Key and fill
in the blanks. If you're unsure on any field, by all means press
F1 for help.

When you press the Action Key again, you'll see a screen we've
reorganized quite a bit. The main thing to note is that, after
you fill in the amount of income you received (putting in its
proper "type," if we've guessed wrong), you should press F9 to
set up Budget Category allocations. From then on, we'll remember
them. (When you press F9, first find the appropriate Budget
Category for each type of income you want to allocate; then Tab
into the Allocation column. Press the Spacebar to open the choice
list and select the type of income. Repeat the process for other
income types if you wish. Then save your allocations with the
Action Key. Then press the Action Key again.)

As you'll see, before finishing up, we display the transaction
that we're about to record in MONEY. We need to record a
transaction there so we can allocate to the Budget Category
you've specified. If the transaction has an Amount of $0.00,
don't worry!  That just means you reinvested the cash or had your
broker hold it for you, so the amount of actual cash you're
receiving is zero, even though the amount allocated for tax
purposes is not.

When you're satisfied all's well, press the Action Key again to
record the transaction.


Bullishness Index
Listen: this is a great thing. All it does is take some tried and
true stock market rules of thumb and try to give you a little
perspective; but don't totally write that off. For all the
disclaimers I'm first to apply, I do think it has value. You can
say, hey, things are different this time - the old rules of thumb
no longer apply. And that may be true. But another rule of thumb
is: there's no phrase you should be more wary of when it comes to
the stock market than, "things are different this time."

Anyhow, to try to make the Bullishness Index a little easier to
use, we've added a Quick Entry screen.

Especially at first, it's best not to use it - to go through the
long way, and read our little essay (parts of which will change
every few days). But once you're familiar with it, you may
occasionally want to use our new Quick Entry screen and skip to
the bottom line.


Portfolio Reports
In addition to the reports available from many sections in
PORTFOLIO, we also offer a place to design your own and to print
a Schedule D to attach to your tax return. We've redesigned this
feature this year along the lines of the new MONEY Report
Generator.

Select Portfolio Reports, then Report Generator, from the
PORTFOLIO menu. You'll see some standard reports that should meet
most people's needs. You can narrow down or expand the date
range, or use Rapid-Dates (F8).

To further narrow down the items included in a report, highlight
the report and press F7, Select Filters. Here you'll find
powerful search capabilities, including the ability to find text
in assets' comment fields. Don't miss F7, F8 and F9 for selecting
Portfolios, Asset Symbols and Asset Types. Then press F4 to print
or the Action Key to save the filters in a new report. Or...

Press F6, Select Format, to change the report's design. There you
can select the fields you want and their order (F9), specify
which fields will be totaled and much more.

It's a powerful feature.


Special Codes
PORTFOLIO Special Codes are now a little more convenient.
Pressing F9 repeatedly cycles you all the way through, so you
never have to take your eye off the screen.  Try it!


NET WORTH

We've refined the screens a little and improved Net Worth
reports.

Net Worth History
Historical graphs can now handle up to 52 data points - more than
four years of monthly entries.

Asset Allocation
We've tweaked the calculations per our guru Mark Kritzman's
latest refinements, updated our data to the end of 1991, and
improved speed in a couple of places.