New to Bank Genie

[dajoco]

Hi

I have just bought Bank Genie to replace Quicken (which is being used for a charity account) and Microsoft Money (which I use for home accounts).  It has taken a bit of time to get to grips with this new software but I had some very useful help from George by phone (thank you George!) and I am now enjoying experimenting with the software.

I have a tip and a question. 

The tip concerns restoring a disappearing menu bar.  Not long after installing the program the top menu bar disappeared after I had maximised the program.  I don't know whether this is a quirky Windows 8 thing. I noticed that, even though it had been maximised, there was about a cm gap between the bottom of the program screen and the Windows taskbar.  I dragged the bottom of the program screen down to be level with the top of the Windows taskbar.  I then closed and restarted Bank Genie and - hey presto - the menu bar had re-appeared. 

My question is, "What do the 'Default Category' and 'Active' check boxes do in the Define Categories program (BS420S02)?"  Is there anything about this in the User Guide? I couldn't find anything.

[ideasguy]

Nice talking to you today, David, and welcome to the forum!
You have a very interesting application having taken on that post to act as treasurer for that Charity.
We had a quite wide ranging conversation
I learned that you have to submit monthly figures to HMRC. Once per year is stressful enough for me.
As a reminder, I offered to help ease the pain. Bank Genie Pro has a P&L program. Also, the Transaction Analyser program allows figures to be generated in Categories and sub categories (and in your case, sub-sub categories! - Gosh!!) and the Save button allows export to txt files or to Excel.
Something should work for you! Let me know if anything needs tweaked. If you need it, so will others!

Your tip:
The disappearing menu bar problem was one of your initial questions and the reason we get to talk to try to sort it out.
As we chatted, you managed to fix it. Quite remarkable
This is a Windows 7/Windows 8 "feature" - not related to Bank Genie.
If you surf for disappearing menu bar windows 7 you will find lots of light reading!
Example:
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/3058-windows-7-adding-menu-bar-in-explorer
and to quote:-

Go to Control Panel > Appearance and Personalisation> Folder Options > Views
Tick " Always show menus"
Click Apply and then OK

Why, oh why would anyone want to hide the menu bars???
The frightening thing is Ive read that MS are moving to remove Menu bars in new apps.
You'll find other "solutions".
Problem is, they don't all work for restoring the Bank Genie menu bar as I discovered when two other customers reported this problem. Ive spent at least an hour trying to find them on my email correspondence and on the forum (I thought I started a topic!). Need to try some more! I need to add this to the FAQ on the User Guide.

Your questions -
1) the Default category:
You can set one Category as default in BS420.
When you go to add a transaction in Manage Transactions-BS421, the program will automatically set the category for the transaction to the default. You can change this of course before adding a transaction.
This screenshot shows adding a transaction using Bank Genie 4.
http://www.bankgenie.net/UserGuide/421/bs421s31-3.gif

2) The active button in Categories-BS420
If you have categories which you don't want to use, the idea was that you could uncheck the Active checkbox.
However, I haven't applied that functionality to the Manage Transactions program as yet.
Question to you folk - would that be something you would use?

[dajoco]

Thanks for the quick reply and the information.  I have fully set up my "home" accounts now - imported from Microsoft Money.  I have managed to reorganize  categories and sub-categories so that they are more to my liking - Genie is much more flexible than Money or Quicken.  I have also successfully reconciled the account.  The C button certainly helps to keep track.  I have also saved a report to excel and then rearranged it for presentation of a balance sheet.  I don't really need to do that for home accounts but I thought it would be good practice for when I need to do it for my charity account.

It would be very useful to hide categories that I am not using.  My home accounts go back several years and there are a lot of categories that are no longer used that clutter up the list.  I cannot delete them because they are linked to old transactions so hiding them would be a great help.  I have renamed some redundant categories a:1, a:2, a:3  etc to get them out of the way at the top of the list but hiding them would be a better option.

I have really enjoyed using the program today and look forward to exploring it further.  Many thanks.
 

[ideasguy]

That was time well spent on the phone, David
I'm very pleased to read how much progress you have made today (and those comments ).

I'll revisit that hiding categories feature.
One reason for not implementing it may have been the case you have just mentioned - where transactions are linked to the categories. When you edit an old transaction then I would have to programmatically deal with the possibility of an error if the Category was made inactive.
If they are not linked to transactions, you can simply delete them of course.

That brings me to another request by another user is to provide the feature to allow Categories to be merged.
The Transactions to one Category could be moved to another, and the unused Category could then be deleted.
I hope to provide that soon.

[dajoco]

Merging categories would be useful.  I had tried to do this by renaming a category to one that already existed but the program wouldn't let me!  If this feature was available then I would be able to merge all redundant categories into one.

[ideasguy]

Good thinking David!
Its on the To Do list!

RE:

I had tried to do this by renaming a category to one that already existed but the program wouldn't let me!

Yes, the Genie knows the dangers of allowing users to do that

[dajoco]

I had a further play with the transaction analyser this morning and discovered how much flexibility and how many options were available.  The more that I get into Bank Genie, the more delighted I am with it.

[ideasguy]

Its an action packed program David!
I didn't explain this yesterday, but if you right click on transactions you will find more functionality and options.
The ability to make all that "intuitive" is somewhat elusive

[barryl]

1) I like and would use the "inactive category" feature if it also affected "manage transactions".

2) "merge categories" Quicken does some of this automatically: if you delete a subcategory, any transactions (after a warning) are merged into the parent. I have certainly found this useful in the past.

[ideasguy]

Will do Barry and David.
2) should be easy enough.
1) needs consideration about how to deal with Inactive Categories in the program Manage Transacrtions (BS421)