MoneyPlan Digital Instruction Manual

Transcription

1 MoneyPlan Digital Instruction Manual Version 1 - March 2012

2 Welcome to MoneyPlan Digital! Thank you for purchasing this new and unique program that has been developed to help you manage your finances by automating many of the time consuming tasks that you will have become accustomed to with any paper based system. Along with the program there is a comprehensive range of support material available for you to use, including this Instruction Manual and the website which includes a selection of comprehensive video instruction clips. For technical issues there is an online support ticketing facility available at Please note that this is for technical issues only. We are sure that you will enjoy using the program and if you come up with some suggestions for the program we would be glad to receive them at Please do take the time to read this manual and familiarise yourself with the videos clips to help you set the program up in the most useful way. To get started and open the MPD program go to Start, All Programs, MoneyPlan and click on The MoneyPlan icon. Or you can use the MoneyPlan shortcut on your Desktop. You will also see that this Instruction manual can be accessed from there. 2 MPD Instruction Manual

3 MoneyPlan Digital Instruction Manual Chapter One Set-up...2 Chapter Two Main Screen Overview...17 Chapter Three Money Tracker...19 Chapter Four Budget Setter...25 Chapter Five Expense Summary...27 Chapter Six Regular Payments...28 Chapter Seven Bank Accounts...31 Chapter Eight Loan Accounts...37 Chapter Nine Special Savings...40 Chapter Ten Reminders...43 Chapter Eleven Reports/Export...47 Chapter Twelve Options/Settings MPD Instruction Manual

4 Chapter One Set-up Before you get started with MPD, you will need to complete the set-up stage. Ensuring that the correct information is entered at each point of this stage is essential to the smooth operation of the system. The set-up process includes a series of different steps. It is best to allow yourself plenty of time for the set-up stage so that you can complete it in one session. At each step of the setup you will be shown very useful tips and hints. You should take careful note of these as you go along. Once your details are entered correctly in each step, press Next. The first step (the Introduction screen), shows a list of all the details that you will need to complete the setting-up of your MPD. The list is as follows: Bank Account: Name Mortgage/Loan: Interest Rate Bank Account: Type Mortgage/Loan: Special Details Bank Account: Balance Cash and Vouchers: Balances Bank Account: Date of Balance Cash and Vouchers: Date of Balances Mortgage/Loan: Name Expense Headings: Categories Mortgage/Loan: Balance Optional: Previous Monthly Mortgage/Loan: Date of Balance Expense Summaries Ensure that you have all these figures ready, as it will make your set-up process much smoother and quicker. Whilst you should enter these details accurately during the set-up, it is possible to edit them after set-up is completed. 4 MPD Instruction Manual

5 Step 1 is choosing your Log-in details. This is the User Name and Password which you will use to log in to MPD. Keep the name simple and the password secure. Note: Your user name and password cannot be changed once you have set it up. Once you have entered your chosen name and password, click on Next. 5 MPD Instruction Manual

6 Step 2 requires you to enter the number of Bank accounts you have at present. Further details will be entered later; all you need to enter here is the number of accounts you have of each type. You MUST enter a zero in any one of these categories in which you do not have an account. MPD requires an entry in each field so that the system registers that you have thought about what you need to enter and not just clicked on Next, leaving something incomplete. When you have entered all the data required, click Next. From this step onwards you will notice a Check Progress button on the screen. Clicking on this button will show you what steps you have completed and what ones you still have to go. 6 MPD Instruction Manual

7 Step 3 is divided up into sections, according to the total number of accounts you have entered in Step 2. For example, if you have one Current Account, two Savings Accounts and one Credit Card Account, then Step 3 will consist of four sections: 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4. In each section you will need to enter the details of each applicable Account. Firstly, enter the heading or name you wish to use for each account. Next enter the Most Recent Balance for the account. There are a couple of ways to work out this balance, depending on whether you are starting afresh or continuing on from your old system. The following paragraphs set this out in more detail; so follow the instructions for whichever option applies to you. If you are starting afresh, you can get your bank balance as at the day of set-up, via phone or internet banking, and commence with this. If you have issued any cheques which have not yet been presented, you will need to enter these into MPD once you have completed the set-up stage, but with the CURRENT (i.e. today s) date. It is very important you use the current date, as MPD does not recognise entries with a date prior to the set-up date. In addition, check all card transactions for the last seven days to ensure they have all registered in/out of your account, because there can sometimes be a delay in processing them particularly over a weekend or holiday. As with unpresented cheques, if there are any card transactions that are not yet recorded, you will also need to enter these into MPD once the set-up stage is complete. If you are continuing on from your paper MoneyPlan or another system, enter the last reconciled balance. Once you have completed the set-up stage, you will need to enter all transactions since the reconciled balance date, but with the CURRENT (i.e. today s) date. It is very important that you use the current date as MPD does not recognise entries with a date prior to the set-up date. Take care that cheques already issued, but not yet presented, 7 MPD Instruction Manual

8 do not get missed. If they were issued before you did your reconciliation do not enter them in MPD, but keep a record of them elsewhere until they are presented. This is because their monetary value will have been taken into account in your reconciled balance, and if you reenter them into MPD your account balances will be incorrect. You will notice that as you tab to, or click in the Date box, a small calendar icon appears. If you click on this, you can select a date. Click the Today button to select today s date. You will notice this feature throughout the MPD program. Throughout the Set-Up stage, you will notice a Check Progress button. Clicking this informs you at what stage of the process you are at. If you make a mistake, you can click Back at any time. Once you have entered all the information, click Next. Additional stages of Step 3 will be the same as above. Important note: If you have a credit card, DO NOT enter the balance as a negative figure UNLESS the account has surplus money in it. MPD recognises that a credit card figure is money you owe and this is shown as such later. 8 MPD Instruction Manual

9 Step 4 is the record of the number of Loans you have, whether in or out. You MUST enter a zero for whichever of these categories which do not apply to you. When done, click Next. 9 MPD Instruction Manual

10 Step 5 is similar to Step 3. Here you need to enter all the details of your Mortgage(s), Loan(s) In and Loan(s) Out. Again, you should have all this information to hand before you start Firstly enter the name by which you choose to identify this mortgage/loan. 2. From the Payment from Account drop-down, select the account from which your repayments will come. The drop-down will show the accounts you have just set up. Then enter the repayment amount, the frequency, e.g. every month, and the date the next payment is due. 3. At the bottom, enter your most recent balance, the date at which it was/is current, and the nominal interest rate. The nominal or simple interest rate is not the APR or compound interest rate. For more information about the differences between interest rates see Chapter 8 Loan Accounts. 10 MPD Instruction Manual

11 It does not matter whether your interest rate is fixed or variable you can change this at any time. If there is no interest applicable to the loan you must enter a zero in the box before you can continue to the next stage. Once you have entered all the information, click Next, and repeat the steps for each mortgage and loan. Step 6 is a record of all cash and vouchers you have to hand (including any store credit notes). To make it easier to keep track of vouchers and to reconcile them it is suggested that all vouchers be included in one account. New voucher accounts can be added later if required. If you prefer separate voucher accounts for different stores, you can set these up by clicking on Separate Voucher Account. 11 MPD Instruction Manual

12 You can set up as many of these extra accounts as you need. Enter the New Voucher Account Name and the Current Amount held then click Add to List. Do this for each new voucher account, and when this is complete, click Next. 12 MPD Instruction Manual

13 Step 7 is where you choose which of the pre-set Expense Headings you want to use. Initially all the headings are ticked which means they will all be used. If there are any that do not apply to you, or are not specific enough, un-tick the box and the heading will not appear in your MPD details. You will then have the opportunity to add your own customised expense headings in the next step. When you have finished, click Next. 13 MPD Instruction Manual

14 Step 8 is where you can enter any of your own special Expense Headings. For example, if you want to keep track of entertaining expenses separately from your everyday grocery expenses, you could set up an Expense Heading called Entertaining. See example below: 14 MPD Instruction Manual

15 Simply type the new heading in the box on the left and click Add New Heading. Enter as many different headings as you wish. When completed, click Next. Step 9 is where you enter previous figures if you want MPD to continue on from your paper version, or whatever other expense tracker you have been using. However, if you do not wish to enter previous figures, just click Next. If you have entered a date in Earliest Month to Import, clicking on Next will take you to Step 10 and the following screen where you can enter whatever figures you have from previous months. The earliest month in the range is the first one to come up on the screen and each time you click Next after completing one month, it will start again from the top 15 MPD Instruction Manual

16 (i.e. Council Tax) for the next month until all previous figures are entered. At the end of the last month, click on Next. Step 11 is to program in a reminder, designed to pop up and remind you to do all your end-of-period reconciliations, etc. This can be set to recur daily, weekly or monthly, or on whatever day or date that suits you. When you have completed this stage, click Done. Congratulations! You have now entered all the financial data required for MPD to operate accurately. As suggested on the screen below, it is a good idea to set up regular payments, budget figures and maybe more reminders as soon as you can. These functions are 16 MPD Instruction Manual

17 explained in more detail in other chapters of the manual. To proceed to the final stage before you actually begin to use MPD, simply click on OK. After you have completed the setup stage of MPD you need to Activate it. You will have received a product key via , enter this into the boxes shown below. You can enter each set of 5 characters manually into each of the five boxes ringed in red, or you can copy and paste the entire code into any one of the boxes, and press Tab. 17 MPD Instruction Manual

18 Once you press Tab another button will appear on the screen, called Get License Key, as shown below. Click on the Get License Key button and the following screen will appear, with your License Key and Expiry Date showing. To exit from this screen to the Main Screen, simply click on Save. 18 MPD Instruction Manual

19 Chapter Two Main Screen Overview After you have finished the Set-Up stage and clicked Save, you will see the Main Options screen. This is the screen that will show once you have logged in and is also the starting point for anything else you need to do in MPD. The box in the middle shows at a glance the balance of all your Bank Accounts, Mortgages, Loans In and Out, Cash and Vouchers. Negative figures are shown in red. Anytime you go back to this screen the figures will reflect any transactions or changes you may have made. These balances reflect ALL entries in the system, whether or not they have occurred yet. I.e. future dated payments and cheques issued will be deducted, although the money may actually still be in your bank account. 19 MPD Instruction Manual

20 The buttons on either side of the box in the middle take you to different areas and MPD tools. Their uses are outlined briefly below: Money Tracker: This feature is for keeping track of daily transactions. You are able to edit or delete, and view previous transactions, and you can also see account and budget basics. See Chapter 3. Expense Summary: At a glance, you can see monthly expense totals (and thus compare them with each other), averages, as well as your set budget. See Chapter 4. Budget Setter: For setting and updating your budget figures, this includes useful information such as averages and highest and lowest spends, in order to help you to revise your budget if necessary. See Chapter 5. Regular Payments: For setting-up of any automatically recurring, ongoing payments of regular amounts. These can be edited or deleted as required. See Chapter 6. Bank Accounts: Shows at a glance, a list of all accounts, excluding loans, with actual and available balances, and also lets you review and edit individual accounts in more detail. See Chapter MPD Instruction Manual

21 Loan Accounts: This is the same principle as Bank Accounts, but for loans. See Chapter 8. Special Savings: Allows you to reserve and keep track of money set aside for particular items or aims, but without the necessity of opening a separate bank account for the purpose. See Chapter 9. Reminders: Allows you to set up reminders with your choice of information to pop-up when you wish, triggered either by date or by an event. See Chapter 10. Reports/Export: For further analysis of your transactions, you can view them in a table, print them out or send them to an Excel workbook. See Chapter 11. Options/Settings: Allows you to personalise certain areas of MPD to best suit your needs. See Chapter 12. A tab will appear along the top of the MPD screen for each different screen you have open. The current active screen tab will be orange; all others will be grey. The tabs are there for convenience when using more than one section of MPD at a time but MPD will respond quicker if you don t have more screens open than necessary. There is also a button at the top entitled New Entry with a drop-down beneath. This is for making new entries in Money Tracker. It is really a short-cut that you can use to make a quick entry without needing to open the Money Tracker screen. The function of this button is explained in detail in Chapter 3 - Money Tracker. Chapter Three Money Tracker 21 MPD Instruction Manual

22 The Money Tracker is the core of MPD. The most likely thing you will do each time you open this screen is Enter New Transactions. There are three types of transaction which you can enter here: the default, which is General, Income, or Transfer. The General form is obviously going to be mostly used for Spend entries, but is actually a universal entry form and can also be used for making Income or Transfer entries. It is the only form in which Mixed Transactions can be made. To select which one you wish to use, click on the dropdown to the right of the Money Tracker heading and choose the transaction type from the list. For General, the following screen will appear: 22 MPD Instruction Manual

23 Here you need to enter the following details: 1. Date of transaction 2. The transaction amount 3. A brief description e.g. Sainsbury s, Doctor 4. Payment reference for your own future reference, enter the method of payment used, e.g. Debit Card 5. Payment made from from the drop-down select the account that the payment is being made from, e.g. Current Account 6. To expense category from the drop-down select the expense category to which the payment is being allocated, e.g. Electricity. Mixed Transactions These can be made in both the From and To categories. For instance, if you have a transaction paid for with cash and vouchers, or a supermarket entry that has both Housekeeping and Food, you can select Mixed from the top of the dropdown in the Payment Made From and/or To Expense Category box. This will bring up a further set of drop-downs where you can select the different categories and enter the relevant amounts. Note that if your total mixed amounts do not match your main transaction amount, you cannot complete the entry. Once you have filled in the mixed descriptions and amounts, you need to press the Tab button one more time so that MPD registers the last entry you made. Note: mixed transactions can only be made in the General entry screen. 23 MPD Instruction Manual

24 The new entry can only be finished once all the information has been entered. Once you have entered all the details, two buttons will appear: Add Another Entry and Finish. Clicking the Add Another Entry button will save the entry and bring up a fresh screen, ready for a new transaction. Clicking Finish will save the entry and exit to the Money Tracker screen. Income will bring up the screen below: Enter the information in the boxes as explained under the first 3 steps of a General transaction (see page 20). Then enter the account into which the money is going. Once you have entered all the information required, a new Finish button will appear. Clicking on this will save the entry and take you back to the main Money Tracker screen. Note: mixed transactions cannot be made in this form; you must use the General entry form. Transfer will bring up the following screen: 24 MPD Instruction Manual

25 Again, enter date, amount and description as detailed in the first 3 steps of a General entry. Then select from the drop-down the account the money is being transferred From, and To. No expense headings will show in either of these drop-down lists as the Transfer option is only designed for transferring money between accounts (i.e. not spending it). Once you have entered all the details, two buttons will appear: Add Another Entry and Finish. Clicking the Add Another Entry button will save the entry and bring up a fresh screen, ready for a new transaction. Clicking Finish will save the entry and exit to the Money Tracker screen. Note: mixed transactions cannot be made in this form; you must use the General entry form. Important Notes: MPD will only recognise entries dated on or after the initial set-up date. If you have predated entries that you need to insert into the system you will need to re-date them to ensure that they show up in MPD. Do not forget to enter any other applicable transactions such as cheques- as outlined in the Bank Balance section of the Set-up process on page 5. To enter money received where you have originally paid it out (e.g. received back as a refund or reimbursement), the correct - and easiest - way to do it is to put it through as a Spend, but with a negative figure. For payment From and To, enter the same account details as the original payment out and the amount will be added back into your balances. Once you have entered transactions, you can Edit or Delete them. To edit, first click on the transaction to select it, then click Edit Entry. This will bring up the same entry form as for a 25 MPD Instruction Manual

26 new entry but with all the details completed. You can make changes as needed using the same method as when you entered the original transaction. To delete an entry, first click on the transaction to select it, then click Delete Entry. You will be prompted to confirm that you really want to proceed, because once you have deleted a transaction, you cannot regain it. The small box next to each transaction under the heading Rec is for reconciliation. There is an automatic reconciliation feature built into the program, but in the event of an unmatched bank statement and MPD transaction listing, it may be necessary to reconcile them manually using these boxes, which can be ticked one by one. Of course, if you wish to reconcile a transaction for any other reason, you can do so at any time. For more information on reconciliation, see Chapter 7 Bank Accounts. In the top right-hand corner you can change the period for which transactions appear in the MoneyTracker screen. From the drop-down select your choice. The default view is By Month. Below that is a list of periods in which you have transactions; by clicking on any of them you can view that period's transactions. You can also change the way the transactions are ordered, by selecting from the Order By drop-down box. The default is by date, with the oldest entry first. Below the Order By box are the balance read-outs. Normally these show the balance for the current day, but you can change the date shown by entering another date into the Balances at Date box. It is important that you take note of what date this is showing, because if you have any future-dated payments entered in Money Tracker, they will not be accounted for in today s balance. The current day s balance will often be different from the balance shown on the main screen as the main screen balance takes into account ALL entries for the month. It is important to remember that if you have set up any Special Savings accounts, the reserved savings will also be subtracted from the available balance on your account, as a reminder that it is not there for spending. To change which account 26 MPD Instruction Manual

27 balance is on view, simply select another account from the Available In drop-down. You can also view how much of your budget is still remaining for any individual expense heading or for the total budget figure. This is shown in the Remaining In Budget For box, and, again, you can change this by selecting from the drop-down. If you want to search for, or only view a particular type of transaction, you can use the Filter on the left-hand side. Click the drop-downs to pick out which transactions you want to show on the screen; then click Filter and the matching entries will be shown. Click on Show All to clear the filter selections and show all entries again. When you have finished using the Money Tracker, click Close Tracker. Chapter Four Budget Setter 27 MPD Instruction Manual

28 This is where you Set Your Budget figures for each of your expense headings. The only box you need to enter anything into on this screen is the New Budget For [...] box. The other fields you see are simply to give you information. On the left-hand side are your Expense Headings with the current budget figure next to each heading. The total budgeted amount is shown at the top of this list. Clicking on one of the headings will bring up that heading in the main box to the right, with any applicable spending details. To go through all the headings in order, click on the first heading from the list and then use the Next and Previous buttons. Presumably you already have some sort of budget which you are working to. If not, the average of the last three months spend is a good amount to start with. If you have not been keeping track of your spending before now, start using your Money Tracker by entering every transaction, and after three months you will have a set of figures which you can use as a starting point. To Set the Budget Figures, click on an expense heading to bring up the details as mentioned earlier. Enter your desired budget figure in the New Budget For [...] box. Once you have made this entry, the Save New button will activate click on this button and the figure will be saved for that expense heading. Do this for each of the expense headings which you use. To Change the budget figures, first select the expense heading by clicking on it from the list 28 MPD Instruction Manual

29 on the left. You can then either enter the new figure into the New Budget For [...] box and click Save New, or if you want to change it by a percentage you can enter the percentage amount into the Change The Budget By box and click on + or - to increase or decrease your budget. Then click Save New if you are happy with the new amount. Chapter Five Expense Summary 29 MPD Instruction Manual

30 This is a list of all Expense Headings, actual spend, average spend and budgeted figures. Any entry made in Money Tracker is automatically entered into the Expense Summary. This makes it very quick and easy to see your monthly expense totals and compare them with each other, with averages as well as your budget. To expand the main headings, click on the + in the first column, whereupon all sub-headings for that category will be shown. If you have entered any of your own expense headings in the Set-Up stage, these will all be listed under Personal. If you have overspent your budget for the current month, the figure will show in red. To exit, click Close. Chapter Six Regular Payments 30 MPD Instruction Manual

31 The purpose of this section is to enable you to set up any regularly occurring transactions, whether payments or income, to be entered into MPD automatically as the date comes around. This is a time-saver and also ensures that your regular transactions are not overlooked. Once they appear in Money Tracker they are no different to any other manually entered transaction and can be edited in exactly the same way. Editing the payments in Money Tracker has no effect on what is already set up in this section, nor does editing settings under Regular Payments affect what has already happened in Money Tracker. If during the set-up process, you entered repayment details for any loans or mortgages you have, a regular payment will already have been generated for this. These will be listed on the screen the first time you open up Regular Payments. To set up a new regular payment, click on Add New. Firstly, click in the Detail box. This is where you enter the details or category to which the payment or receipt relates, e.g. Salary, Mortgage, Water Bill. Next, in the Ref box, select the payment reference from the drop-down list e.g. Income, Direct Debit, then enter the amount of the payment in the Amount box. 31 MPD Instruction Manual

32 In the Paid From Account box, select the relevant account from the drop-down, and then do the same in the Paid To box. These two boxes also give you the option to have Mixed Transactions. This works much the same as in the Money Tracker (for more detailed information refer to Chapter 3). If appropriate, select Mixed from the drop-down and fill in the necessary information. If the regular payment is money received, you should select From Income, and To whatever account the money is paid into. This applies to any regular receipts into your accounts, for instance your salary or credit interest. In the First Payment On box, enter the date on which you wish the first payment to occur, then select the frequency of the payment for example daily, weekly or monthly. If you have a different payment amount for the first or the last payment, there is provision to enter this information here in the grey boxes. If a payment is ongoing, just leave the Last Payment On box blank. It is essential to enter information in all the white boxes; but the grey boxes are optional and if they do not apply to you, simply leave them blank. There are also three small boxes which you can either tick or leave blank; these will affect how and when payments are entered. They are all fairly self-explanatory, but the function of each one is outlined below. i. Warn me before entering the payment If you tick this box, an alert will appear as the applicable payment becomes due, and you will be prompted to accept the entry before it is entered into the Money Tracker. ii. Don't make payments on weekends; wait until next weekday If a payment is set up for a particular date each month, it may sometimes fall on a weekend. Ticking this box means that the payment will appear in Money Tracker on the next weekday, rather than the weekend, which might make it easier to reconcile with your Bank statements. iii. Show the payment as soon as the month starts If you tick this box, it is important to be aware that the payment will show in Money Tracker as soon as the month starts, and the account balance as per the main screen will have the payment amount already deducted even if the due date has not yet come around Your Available Balance will show you how much is available TODAY, not taking into account future dated payments or receipts. You can Edit a regular payment or receipt once it has been set up in the system. To do this, click on the payment line that you wish to edit, in the box on the right-hand side. This will bring up the details in the boxes on the left, and you can then change any details you wish by clicking in the boxes just as when you first set up the payment. 32 MPD Instruction Manual

33 When you click on a payment line to edit it the Done button will change to Cancel and the Add New button to Save. If you change your mind about editing it, simply click on the Cancel button. This will not delete or change any information. You can also Delete a regular payment or receipt. Again, click on the payment line and then click on Delete. You will be asked to confirm whether you want to delete the payment. If yes, click on Yes and the payment will be removed from the list and no further transactions will appear in the Money Tracker, although previous entries will still be there. To exit from the Regular Payment screen, click Done. Chapter Seven Bank Accounts 33 MPD Instruction Manual

34 The Bank Accounts screen shows a list of your current, savings and any credit-card accounts. Accounts can be added, deleted or modified. At the very top are the combined funds of all your accounts. Below this you will see that there is provision to change the details of an account, namely Account Name, Interest Rate, Account Type, Allow Negative Balances a personalised Reference and a space for notes. You can see the details of different accounts by clicking Next or Back. The Back and Next buttons will change to Save and Cancel if you edit any of the information. If you leave the Allow Negative Balances box unticked you cannot pay out more than the account contains, e.g if you try and transfer $200 and the balance is only $100, the transfer amount will automatically adjust and notify you with a pop-up. If you do tick this box, it will allow you to transfer/pay more out than the amount in the account, but the balance will go into negative figures, which are shown in red. To the right, there is a button and drop-down for adding a new account. To Add an account, select the type of account you want from the drop-down and click Add Account. This will bring up a window from the set-up stage in which you need to enter all the details of your new account. For more details see Chapter MPD Instruction Manual

35 To Delete an account, click on the Delete button for the applicable account. You will be prompted to confirm whether or not you want to proceed. If you do, every entry relating to the account will also be deleted. NOTE: As stated above if you delete an account you also delete all transaction history for that account. As a suggestion, if the account is no longer to be used but you want to retain the transaction history you could rename the account for example to Old Savings Account or Inactive Current Account In the main window at the bottom, actual and available balances are shown for each account. The actual balance is the true total of the money in the account. If there is a Special Savings account held in one of your bank accounts, the available balance is the difference of the actual balance less any special savings amounts. If there are no Special 35 MPD Instruction Manual

36 Savings amounts then the available balance will be left blank. To view all transactions for any of these accounts click View Transactions in the applicable account line. A transaction listing called Bank Statement will be shown in a new window as below. The name of the account is shown in the top right box. Transactions for a certain period only can be shown by changing the Start Date and Finish Date. To do this, click in the box and enter a date or choose one from the calendar. You can Reconcile your transactions with your bank statements when you receive them. The MPD Reconcile function is designed to help you reconcile your accounts quickly and easily. Click on the Reconcile button for the applicable account and the following screen will appear: 36 MPD Instruction Manual

37 On this screen there are three fields you can change. These are the two white boxes at the top of the screen called New balance from statement and at date, and the Rec column in the transaction detail section of the screen. Under the heading Money Tracker Balance there are four boxes with figures in them. The first box Balance is the figure that Money Tracker has calculated as the current day s account balance. The next two boxes, Unreconciled In and Unreconciled Out are as they suggest any transactions to or from the account which are unreconciled. The last box Actual Balance is the difference between the Balance and the unreconciled transactions. When you receive the account statement from your bank it will have a closing balance at a certain date. You need to enter this balance and closing date into the two blank boxes near the top of the screen. Once you have entered the date (in DD/MM/YYYY format) press the Tab key on your keyboard and a fifth box will appear on the left hand side of the screen, called Difference. This shows the difference between your statement balance and the Actual Balance as calculated by MPD. Next you need to go through each transaction on your bank statement and compare it to those shown on the Bank Reconciliation screen. The transactions shown are all the entries made to or from the selected account, from the last time you reconciled until the date you enter as the statement closing date. As you match each transaction from your statement to that shown in MPD, click the Rec box at the end of the applicable line to tick off the entry. You will notice there is a button in the bottom right-hand corner called Show All Transactions. This button controls which transactions appear in the list once you have started to reconcile. By default, each time you reconcile a line, that entry will no longer appear in the list. If you want to be able to see reconciled as well as un-reconciled 37 MPD Instruction Manual

38 transactions, click on the Show All Transactions button and all transactions will be shown. The button will change to Show Only Un-reconciled, click on it again to return to the default setting. Each time you click a Rec box the figures in the Unreconciled In, Unreconciled Out, Actual Balance and Difference boxes will automatically adjust to reflect the new balances. Assuming you have entered all transactions correctly, when you have finished matching up the unreconciled transactions the Difference box will disappear and the Cancel button will change to OK!. This means that everything up to the date you entered at the start of reconciling is balanced and you can click OK! to finish. If, at the end of your bank statement, the OK button does not appear, you will need to go over and recheck ALL transactions for that account again, since you last reconciled, until you find where the difference is. It could be due to a double entry, an overlooked transaction, a mismatched transaction date or simply entering a wrong figure. If you reconcile on a regular basis it shouldn t be too hard to track down where the problem occurs. You will know the date of when you last reconciled, so obviously the error is between then and now! You will also be able to see any un-reconciled transactions for that period listed on the screen. If it something obvious like one of the possible causes described above, you can very easily rectify it by making any necessary adjustments in Money Tracker, adding, editing or deleting entries as required, or making an adjustment entry so you can complete your reconciliation. After you have made any necessary fix-up entries, go back to the Reconcile screen and tick off any entries that are now able to be reconciled. Note: There are two common problems of which you should take careful note. They both relate to the dates of transactions. The first one can occur when you have sent out a cheque. If you dated the transaction in MPD as the date you sent it out, this could cause a problem, depending on how long it takes to be processed by the bank: e.g. if you sent a cheque on the 14 th of the month but it was not banked till the 25 th, and you may have tried to reconcile on the 21 st, obviously it will not balance. The best solution to this problem is to have the cheque transaction date as the date it is processed. This just involves keeping an eye out for it and changing the transaction date once it is processed. Alternatively, you could keep a separate list of your cheque transactions somewhere apart from MPD and just enter them as they are processed. The second problem is very similar to the first but on a shorter time scale: you may make a card transaction on a Friday and it might not get processed by the bank till the Monday, so the dates on MPD and your bank statement could differ by three or four days sometimes even longer. We suggest that the first thing to check when your figures don t reconcile is the transactions around the date you are trying to do your reconciliation, and make sure the transaction dates in MPD match your statement. 38 MPD Instruction Manual

39 By default, payments made using cash or vouchers are automatically reconciled because there is nothing to check them against. That can be changed in Options/Settings. From this screen you can also click on Go To Money Tracker which obviously will open up the Money Tracker screen, or View Transactions which will bring up the Bank Statement screen as described earlier in this chapter. Chapter Eight Loan Accounts 39 MPD Instruction Manual

40 The Loan Accounts screen is very similar to the Bank Accounts screen. It shows a listing of your borrowings and your lending, i.e. Loans IN/OUT. The top section of the screen shows all the loan details such as the loan term, Interest rate, payment amount and frequency of payment or receipt. Clicking on another line in the bottom section, or using the Back / Next buttons will bring up the details for that loan, in the top section. All this information is what you entered in the set-up stage. If you need to add, delete or change any item you can do it from this screen by clicking in the applicable box and re-entering or selecting from the drop-downs. You do not have to go back into the set-up menu to adjust this information. If you make a change, the Back and Next buttons will change to Save and Cancel. You can also add or delete a loan. To add a new loan, click the Add Loan button at the top of the screen. You can then enter all the details for the new loan into the blank fields and click Save to finish. If you click on the View Details button for a loan a new screen will appear, as shown below: 40 MPD Instruction Manual

41 This very useful screen shows details, as follows: Nominal Interest Rate and Effective APR (Annual Percentage Rate): It is important to be aware of the difference between these two kinds of interest. Nominal Interest (or Simple Interest) is calculated only on the principal amount, or on the portion of the principal amount that remains unpaid. APR is also known as the comparison rate and is the annual percentage rate of interest on a loan or mortgage, representing the true cost of the loan or mortgage over the full term, as it shows any additional payments beyond the interest rate. It assumes interest rates remain unchanged and helps you to compare various financial products by providing a method of calculation that is common across all providers. This is generally found with loans and mortgages, and is the reason why by law in some countries the banks must publish the APR - the APR is the true cost to you, and is always higher than the nominal rate. Naturally, the banks would rather advertise the nominal rate. Both of these rates are in MPD, because you need to know which rate you are dealing with, in order to be able to reconcile and adjust your workings. Savings towards: This box shows just how much you have saved in an optional Special Savings account relating to your home loan. Special Savings accounts are explained in Chapter Nine. To set up a Special Savings account specific to this loan, click on the Savings 41 MPD Instruction Manual

42 for this loan button. This will create a Special Savings account specifically for this loan. Enter in the rest of the details required, then click Done. Total Balance: This is the total outstanding balance on your loan. Debt-free Date: This is the date you should be debt-free from this loan. This date is automatically calculated by MPD, based on your repayment information. Number of payments: This is the number of further repayments necessary to pay off the loan. Interest still to pay: This is the total amount of interest you still need to pay for your loan, based on the APR (Comparison Rate). If you pay an extra: Entering an amount in here and clicking on Recalculate will show you how much sooner you could be debt-free, and how much less interest you would pay if you made additional monthly payments to your loan. Clicking on any of the Go To buttons will take you to the applicable area e.g. Loan Listing, Regular Payments or Special Savings, and you can view any payments or savings records set up for the loan account. If there is not already a Special Savings account set up, you can do it when you click on the Savings For This Loan button. For more details on how to set up a Special Savings account and how they work, see Chapter Nine. To exit the screen, click Done. 42 MPD Instruction Manual

43 Chapter Nine Special Savings It is possible to set up a Special Savings account which exists only within MPD. A Special Savings account is designed to help you save for a specific item without actually having to open another account with your bank. The Special Savings are held in one of your accounts already set up and you can transfer money to the Special Savings using regular payments. Any money set aside in a Special Savings account is not included in the available balance of the chosen account, which means you cannot spend it in the MPD program. To set up a Special Savings account, open up the Special Savings window from the main screen and click on Add New. This will bring up the screen shown above. Once you have completed the basic details such as account name and target date and amount, you can set up a Regular Payment by clicking on Go To. For more information on setting up Regular Payments see Chapter Six. A Special Savings account does not have to have a target. If you wish to save an unspecified sum of money, enter the account name and then tick the small box on the right hand side where it says Make this account a non-target, flexible one. The only other information you need to enter now is the account in which to store the money. Once you have entered all the details, click Done. As mentioned in Chapter Seven, you can also set up a Special Savings account from the Loan Detail screen. Accounts set up in this way will still appear in the Special Savings list. 43 MPD Instruction Manual

44 If you already have savings that you want to record, once you have completed the Special Savings Account set-up you can do a Transfer entry in Money Tracker for the amount you already have saved. When you make payments to a Special Savings account always use the Transfer option in Money Tracker, and select the name of the Special Savings account from the Transfer To Account drop-down. The next time you view the special savings screen, it will show as below. Your Saved So Far amount will show on the bar indicator. 44 MPD Instruction Manual

45 To close a Special Savings account, click on the applicable account from the Special Savings screen and then click on the Close Special Savings Account button on the right-hand side of the screen. You will be asked to confirm the deletion: 45 MPD Instruction Manual

46 Chapter Ten Reminders The Reminders section allows you to set reminders in the system, triggered by date or an event, to pop up and ensure that you remember to do certain things. When reminders appear on the screen they look like this: Click on OK to dismiss this screen. Clicking on the Reminders button on the main screen will bring up the following screen: 46 MPD Instruction Manual

47 The Accounting Period reminder that you set up in Step 11 of the Set-up process will be showing on the screen already. To add another reminder, click on Add New, and the screen below will appear: 47 MPD Instruction Manual

48 In the first box, enter a brief description of what you want to be reminded about. This is what will show as the Reminder heading in the Reminder listing, and also when the pop-up appears at the time that the trigger for the reminder comes around. Enter any extra information you want in the second box this is optional. When you tab or click out of the second box a Next button will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Now select the applicable option from the bottom section of the screen, then click on the Next button. 48 MPD Instruction Manual

49 Select the trigger for the reminder. This could be every certain number of days, weeks or months on a particular day or date, when an account or budget figure is more, less or equal to a given amount, or a set amount of time since you last performed a certain action. Once you have set the trigger, click on Done to save the reminder. If you change your mind before you have saved it, simply click on Cancel. You can Edit or Delete a reminder. To do this, click on the Edit or Delete button on the main Reminder listing screen; this will enable you to change any reminder details in the same way as when they were initially set up. 49 MPD Instruction Manual

50 Chapter Eleven Reports/Export The Reports/Export feature allows you to build reports of your transactions and, if required, export them to an Excel Spreadsheet, where you can arrange the data in many different ways. This is very handy for comparing expenses in different periods, and working out where you can save money. Clicking on the Reports/Export button on the Main Options screen will bring up a screen as follows: There are three kinds of reports/exports you can generate: transactions from an account, transactions to an expense heading, and all transactions. The default setting is ALL Transactions. To create a report/export of transactions from one or more specific account(s), select from Account, and then choose the account from the list that will appear. You can select multiple accounts, whereupon each selected account will be highlighted, and you can deselect them by clicking them a second time. Next, on the right, select the date you want the report to show From and the date you want it to show To. NOTE: for this particular screen, you actually need to type in the date in the following format DD/MM/YYYY, as there is no calendar drop-down. At the bottom of the screen you can select whether you want each transaction shown, or the total amount of the transactions shown by day, week or month. 50 MPD Instruction Manual

51 When you have selected all your criteria, click on either View Detail, Print or Excel Export. View Detail will open a new screen called Export Data, which is a view-only page you cannot add, edit or delete information from here. To exit from this screen click the Close button. If you would like to print off this data instead of just viewing it, simply click on Print. To export the information to Excel, click the Excel Export button, give the file a name and choose where you want to save it. To create a report/export of transactions to one or more specific expense categories select to Expense Heading and follow the same procedure as above. For a report/export of ALL transactions, the process is the same, except that, obviously, you don t need to choose any expense headings or accounts. Once you have finished, click Close. 51 MPD Instruction Manual

52 Chapter Twelve Options/Settings This button on the Main Options screen will bring up a screen that looks like this: To view all options, you need to scroll down on the screen. NOTE: Some of the options/settings should not normally need to be altered. They only exist in case of a problem and should only be used under direction from a support technician. 52 MPD Instruction Manual

53 Back-Up There is a helpful fixed button in the Main Options screen called Backup Data File. By clicking on this button you can save the file in which all your data is stored. This could either be for the purpose of keeping an extra back-up file in a different location, or for getting all your data off your machine in order to transfer it to a a new or different one for whatever reason. To carry out this backup, simply click the button which will bring up the following screen where you can select the location you want to save in, and click OK. To find out how to transfer this data to a new machine see the section titled Licensing further on in this chapter. 53 MPD Instruction Manual

54 Manage Headings This is where you can Add, Delete, Deactivate and Reactivate your Expense Headings. Active Headings, including your Personal ones, are shown on the left. Any Headings you have made inactive will appear on the right. Below the Active Headings box, you will see a box with a drop-down which will show any, as yet, unused default headings in the system. You can select one of these; or type your own heading, then click the button Add This. You can add as many new headings as required, but think carefully whether an existing heading could do the job. More headings mean more complexities. Any customised headings you enter will be grouped in the Personal category. To the right, you can Reactivate, Deactivate, or Delete a heading. To do so, select the heading from the relevant drop-down and then click the button next to it. You can only delete a heading if there are no entries on the MPD system for that heading. Deactivating a heading means it will stay on the system, so that you can still see payments made to or from it, but it is removed from any selections options, so that it cannot be used for any new entries. It can be reactivated at any time, thus causing it to become available again. 54 MPD Instruction Manual

55 Spending Here you can select whether or not you want cash payments to reconcile automatically. This means that if you select Cash as the Payment made from in a MoneyTracker entry, it will automatically make it a reconciled payment. Usually if you are entering a cash payment you will know that it is correct and as you won t have it shown on a bank statement, it is a good idea to leave it set to Auto Reconcile. You also have several options for allowing your account balances to go into negative figures. You can choose Always Allow, Warn Me, Allow if Account Allows, or Never Allow. Voucher Accounts This is where you can Add, Delete, Deactivate and Reactivate your Voucher Accounts. Active Voucher Accounts are shown on the left. Any Voucher Accounts you have made inactive will appear on the right. In the box below the Active Vouchers box, you can type the heading for the new Voucher Account, then click the button Add This. You can add as many new accounts as you wish, but bear in mind that more accounts means more complication and more things to reconcile. On the right you can Reactivate, 55 MPD Instruction Manual

56 Deactivate, or Delete a voucher account. To do so, select the account from the relevant drop-down and then click the button next to it. You can only delete a voucher account if there are no entries on the MPD system for that account. Deactivating an account means it will stay on the system, so that you can still see payments made to or from it, but it is removed from any selections options, meaning that it cannot be used for any new entries. It can be reactivated at any time, thus causing it to become available again. Reminders It is possible that some reminders you have set could pop-up regularly during working on MPD, depending on what they are. Here you can choose whether you want this to happen only once per session or whenever relevant. Automatic Entries Automatic Entries generally refers to regular payments; in other words, entries which can appear in the Money Tracker without you manually entering them. The reason this section is not called Regular Payments is because it also includes automatically calculated interest payments. If you untick Allow Automatic Entries, no regular payments will be made, even if you have them set up. If you tick Always warn me before making Automatic Entries, then these entries will be made but you ll get a pop-up box advising you first, and you will have the option to cancel them. Calculate interest payments on loans splits the entries for mortgages, loans etc, into repayment and interest. If you untick it, it will become all repayment and you will need to manually account for the interest, separately. Payment References and Detail Text 56 MPD Instruction Manual

57 This section is where you can add or delete Payment References, and add, delete and change Payment Detail text in Money Tracker entries. When using the filtering option in Money Tracker, these lists are also two of the options for filtering, which you can choose. The Payment Details list is automatically updated each time you use a new description when making Money Tracker entries (e.g. a new shop-name, etc), and you can also add new details to it if you wish. The Payment References list is pre-set, but if you want to use a reference that is not already included, you must first add it to the list. To Add an entry, click in the box below the list you wish to update (this will clear whatever is already showing in that box). Type the new text you wish to use, then click on Add New. To Delete an entry, scroll through the applicable list until you find the entry you wish to delete. Click on this entry, and it will display in the box below the list. Click on the Delete button: but note you will not be prompted to confirm the deletion first. To Change an entry, click in the box and type your edited entry. Then scroll through the list until you find the entry you wish to change. Click on this entry and then click on Change to change the entry. You will be prompted to confirm that you want to change all Payment Details from original text entered in the list to new text entered in box. You can select Yes or No. Bear in mind that if you delete or change a heading you won t be able to use the original heading in the Money Tracker filter option. 57 MPD Instruction Manual

58 Licensing Screen Shot Missing This option is where you can view your Activation License expiry date, and deactivate you License in order to set up your data on a new or different machine. 58 MPD Instruction Manual

59 59 MPD Instruction Manual

60 Error Logging Under normal circumstances this option should not need to be changed. If you do ever have a problem with your system then you may be asked to change this setting on a temporary basis by support personnel, in order to help them identify the cause and rectify the problem. 60 MPD Instruction Manual