★ APPLICATIONS ★ BUREAUTIQUE ★ Expendiport ★ |
| Expendiport (The Amstrad User) | Applications Bureautique |
When has all the money gone? Simon Anthony reviews Expendiport - a cheque management/expenditure system I don't know whether it was a back-handed compliment to be given a copy of Expendiport to look at with the comments "it appears to be foolproof - see what you think" or if it was a reflection of my constant indebtedness to my Bank Manager. Whatever the reason, I was happy to look at a piece of software which provided a simple application at a good price, and one which could serve a useful purpose in keeping tabs on my financial transactions. I am also always happy to look at any software which is locally produced, in other words Australian. Expendiport was written by Alan Collins who hails from Victoria and over 500 hours of development and testing has apparently been carried out before the release of the final product. The function of Expendiport is to keep a log of all the cheques you write (to a maximum of 300 each year) and to allow you to produce various listings based upon the categories you have allocated to each payment. In addition, it allows comparison between months or years or will list summaries or detailed lists of where the money has gone. It was originally developed for a 6128, and will also run on a 464 with a disc drive, but with the latter some functions take a little longer to perform. Menu Driven The program itself resides on one disc and you are recommended to keep a blank formatted disc free for your data files and category list (more about those later). Run "Disc" will load the program and green screen owners have the opportunity to set more legible "colours". Colour screen owners get the choice between leaving the standard 'yellow on blue' by picking green screen or 'black on white' by picking colour screen. The main menu presents 9 options:
When running the program for the first time, in other words you do not yet have any data files created or category files set up, you clearly cannot load any categories from a data disc. If you try, the program just switches back to the main menu. So if you are starting from scratch you can go straight into the file creation option without loading categories. It is wise at this stage to decide, if you can, the names or descriptions you want to apply to each of the 20 different categories, or as many as you require up to 20. You only have to do it once as the category file is saved each time with the data file to preserve continuity, and if you don't like them later on you can change them. The information required starts with the day, month, year (yes, it does check for 31 days in June), and you only have to enter the year on the first record - the program defaults for each record after the first. Then follows the Payee (the person you wrote the cheque to), the amount of the cheque and the cheque number (optional). The program 'remembers'the number and will display the next cheque number automatically on the next record when you get to it. The next field to enter is the category. If you are starting from scratch (as I was), pressing 'C' will allow you to allocate the description to the category code you are entering. All the categories are displayed on the right hand side of the screen for reference purposes. You will find that you can soon throw away your original jottings on paper. The final field is for remarks (keep these short as they take up disc space) and can be used as 'markers'or 'flags'for identifying certain records when it comes to printing the report. When you have entered all the records from your cheque book and returned to the main menu you have no choice other than to save the file. The program won't allow you to do anything else before this is done (unless you arc really silly). Short Cuts I've already mentioned that the cheque number increments by one on each record, so you just have to hit return. The month, day and year also defaults to the previous entry, especially useful if you have written a lot of cheques on the same day. Another neat trick is that after the third record you can shorten the Payee input name from, say, 'Sydney Saxophone Society' to 'Sydney/' or even 'Sy/'. The program will match the abbreviation with a previous entry and use that one. This cuts down typing input time and spelling inaccuracies which may tend to distort later reports. Loading and Amending When loading a file, it is only necessary to enter the year of the relevant file. That having been done, finding a record to be amended is achieved by searching for a record number (each record is allocated a unique number at creation time), a Payee or category. Now you know why it is better to ensure that you have identical Payee names - if you scarch for RMIT you won't get R.M.I.T records! Once the record has been located, using P or N will let you flick back or forward through the file. When using the Payee search, you have the opportunity to change the Payee name against all like records. I couldn't work out why I would need this facility until I discovered that I had incorrectly spelled the Doctor's name and needed to go through the file and amend four records with his wrong name on. Deleting and Inserting Removing a record is not so easy (purposefully so) and can only be done by using the record number. Inserting a record may be an obvious enough facility, especially when you may have missed a cheque, but it also serves a very useful purpose if you want to keep a log of direct debits or standing orders, ie. those payments which have been made directly from your bank account and no cheque has been written, for example, the mortgage. Any entry through this method is checked to make sure you have not already inserted it. You can also use this method to log all your bank charges. Saving As the system keeps a record of the year in which you are working, it always knows the name of the file to which it will save your data. As a safety feature, the system always requires you to save the file after any changes have been made. Reports After all that hard work of entering your cheques and putting them into pigeon holes (categories) for a few months you will be itching to see how you have spent your money. The Reports module will reveal all. It's a separate module on the Expendiport disc and provides three kinds of reports. The most important is no doubt the Expenditure Report. On loading, a list of parameters for the report is displayed - Month (1-12), Year (19??), Payee, Category No. and Remarks. Make your choice and you will then be asked if you require a complete list or just a summary. Select summary and you will be asked if you want it listed by month or category. In the case of monthly reports you also get the opportunity to compare your expenditure with another year, useful for seeing if you are spending more or less (in my case, normally the former). Expendiport has tackled the problems of calendar and financial year-ends well. The system stores data files by calendar year (eg. Jan '88 to Dec '88) but has the capability to access and produce reports for financial years (eg. Jul '87 to Jun '88). This is achieved by opening two year files and extracting the relevant first and last six months. Entering 'F' as a Year parameter puts the system into the 'Financial Year' mode. A report by Payee gives you the expenditure by name, this is great for budgetting. A report by 'Remarks'is also a good idea. Take your mind back to the file creation stage where the last field entered is Remarks. If you had decided to lump all car expenses under category "CAR" but wanted a breakdown between petrol and other costs, you could put 'PETR' as remarks in each petrol transaction and 'MAINT' for any others. Thus, when running a Remarks report you can isolate any record with TETR' or 'MAINT' in the remarks field. Beware though, the latter would also pick up any records with HOUSE MAINTENANCE in that field. The other choices to list from the Report main menu are Categories and an alphabetical list of Payees. They are obvious enough and don't require any explanation. Summary I did try quite hard to 'break' the system, and apai} from resetting the machine, it is very difficult to lose the data being worked upon. In that respect it passes the fool-proof test. Unless you are determined to mess things up, the whole package is carefully constructed to remain intact even at the hands of an accident-prone beginner. It can be classed as user-friendly and this in turn means it is easy to use and well presented. There is nothing flashy about it - there doesn't have to be. Expendiport is the result of a lot of work to present a functional and useful piece of software in an easy format. It will certainly become part of my library of software. Expendiport is available on disc only through The Amstrad User for $3935 post free.
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