Back to the main Quik Budget page
INTRODUCTION
A Quik Overview
PART I
Installation
Some Basic Concepts and Some Decisions to Make Before You Start
Account managers vs. Budget managers
Basic Concepts of Quik Budget
Decision Time
A QUIK TOUR - A BASIC USER'S GUIDE
Main Wallet List
Setting Up
Pay Period
Wallets
Expense History
Spending/Depositing Money
Using Shortcuts
Display Options
PART II
Everything You'll Ever Need To Know About Quik Budget
Wallet Details
Sub-Wallets
Using Quik Budget With Account Managers
Using Foreign Currencies
Defining And Editing Foreign Currencies
Searching And Filtering Reports
Show Options
Expense Details
Beaming / 2 Pay Days
Preferences
Purging Old Transactions
Transferring Money Between Wallets
Security
Tracking Fuel Usage
Palm Keyboard Support
Export To CSV (Excel) In Windows
Backup Conduit
PART III
APPENDICES
Appendix A: How do I recover my data if my Palm crashes?
Appendix B: What Is The "Calculator Pass-thru"?
Appendix C: Quik Budget in Spanish and German!
Appendix D: How Do I Register?
Appendix E: Frequently Asked Questions
Appendix F: Why Did I Write Quik Budget?
Appendix G: How Much Does It Cost?
A wallet is something in which you keep money to buy things. Unfortunately, most of us have only one wallet and the money flows in and out for all of our purchases, taking us to the end of the week wondering where it all went. Imagine how much easier it would be to stay on budget if you had 10 or 20 wallets that you filled every payday. You would know instantly if you were eating out too much if your dining wallet was empty on Tuesday. The problem is, my pants don't have enough pockets.
Quik Budget solves that problem by allowing you to create many virtual wallets in your Palm. Just tell the wallet how much to add and it will do it for you every week, 2 weeks, half-month or month. The wallets can overflow into *Savings if you were particularly frugal one pay period. QB gets you started with Dining, Entertainment, Groceries and Household wallets.
Spending money from wallets is easy. Just click on the name of the wallet and add a new transaction. Enter the amount and a comment about the purchase. If you enter the same comment again later, QB will auto-fill for you. QB also includes a tax and tip calculator. After you hit OK, QB will deduct the money from the wallet and add the transaction to the list.
It has never been easier to stick to a budget. If it is 4 days to payday and you only have $7 left in Dining, you know it is time to start eating at home (or someplace really cheap).
Back to topBefore you do anything on your Palm you have to install the software. If you are using a Windows PC, to install Quik Budget just download QuikBudget.exe and double-click to open it. Follow the onscreen instructions.
If you are using a Macintosh, you will need to download the SIT file and install the PRC file.
Most people have heard of Quicken and Microsoft Money and know basically what they are for. They are account managers. There are many account managers available for the Palm. Quik Budget is a budget manager. There is a big difference between account managers and budget managers.
An account manager is designed to show you how much is in your various accounts and how much you owe on your credit cards and loans. It can't tell you how much more you should spend for entertainment or spend dinning out this pay period. A budget manager is designed so that you can set limits on how much you spend in various categories such as entertainment and dinning out but doesn't know anything about how much is in your accounts. More simply, an account manager is designed to show you how much more it is possible for you to spend. Quik Budget is designed to show you how much more you should spend. They are different tools designed to do different jobs.
Some users try to use Quik Budget as both an account manager and a budget manager but that can be counter-productive. The ultimate solution would be to use both. Quik Budget is designed to work hand-in-hand with several account managers so that transactions that apply to both can be just entered one time. There is more information later about using Quik Budget with an Account Manager, and a list of the account managers that will work with Quik Budget.
The best way to use Quik Budget is to use it for discretionary funds only. That means that you wouldn't put any mortgage/rent, credit card, utility bills, etc. in Quik Budget. The reason for this is that you are setting up limits to spending so that you can put extra money to the other bills and get them paid off. You don't want to set limits to how much you can send in on your mortgage. Also, as explained above, Quik Budget is not set up to show you how much you have in any accounts. All numbers in Quik Budget are virtual.
As a result, the payday you set up in Quik Budget can be whatever you want it to be. It does not have to correspond to your actual payday. You want to set a pay period that in not so short that one large expense throws you off, but that is not so long that it is hard to tell how you are doing. Bi-weekly is probably good for most users.
The goal here is to always spend the same amount of discretionary funds (or less) regardless of how much you have in your accounts. If you want to allow for a once a month splurge, factor that in. You can set up wallets such as gifts, car repairs or vacations and then trickle funds into them. If you don't spend all of the money in a wallet on one pay period, that money will still be there in the next pay period (assuming you have that wallet set as cumulative).
* The first thing you will want to decide is what pay period you want to use. This will affect what you use for the budget amount for each wallet. You can change your pay period whenever you want but you will need to adjust the budget amount for each wallet, which can be time consuming if you have a lot of wallets set up.
* Do you want to micro-manage or macro-manage your budget? Some users like to set up four or five wallets for everything. Others like to have dozens of wallets and sub-wallets.
* Do you want to use Quik Budget with an account manager? You can change your mind on this later but it might be a little easier to set up both at the same time.
* Finally, what budget amount do you want to set for all of your wallets? This is the amount that will be added to each wallet at the start of each pay period. All of these can be adjusted whenever you want so don't worry about getting it perfect right from the start. There are two techniques that we recommend for setting your initial budget amounts.
1. The first is to just leave all of your wallets set to zero for the first month or two and see how much you are spending in each wallet. Then set them all accordingly.
2. The other way is to calculate how much money you have coming in and how much of that goes to non-discretionary items. What is left over is your discretionary funds. Divide that up among your wallets.
The actual mechanics of how to set all of this in Quik Budget follows. One thing to make sure of, though, is that you are not budgeting more money than you actually have to spend. There is not much point in using a budget manager if you use it to budget yourself into the red.
Back to topNow, let's take a walk through the primary functions of the program so you can get started using it. First of all, you need to set up your wallets, upon which the entire program is built. To do that, first open the program to the main screen, the "Wallets" screen.
Back to topWhen you start Quik Budget, you begin on the Wallets List. By default, Quik Budget will create *Savings, Dining, Entertainment, Gas, Groceries and Household wallets. Note the list of wallets and the columns for the budgeted amount and amount remaining for each. You'll also notice the Expenses button, the Payday button, and the New button on the bottom of the screen. We will discuss each of those momentarily.
Just above them, you see a button that changes when you tap it between List, Quik, and Edit. This is where you select what screen you get when you tap on a wallet. When list is selected, tapping on a wallet name will give a list of transactions in the selected wallet. When Quik is selected, you can enter new transactions quickly. When Edit is selected, you can edit the wallet details.
You can use the list in the upper right to filter out wallets you are not interested in. This list will make much more sense after you read about Wallet Details and Sub-Wallets in Part II.
You can directly edit the amount budgeted and amount remaining figures from this screen. The exception to this is the Total row, which is calculated automatically by summing up the wallets.
If you are running an account manager that works with Quik Budget, you can click on the tab for that program to go directly to it.
Back to topWhile you are still in this screen, you will want to perform your initial set-up. Here you must determine how much to allocate to each of your wallets. Determine first the total amount that will be available for each pay period.
Remember that these wallets are intended to help you keep to your budget with your discretionary income. In other words, you are using this to manage the money over which you exercise some control. You should not have wallets set up for such things as rent, insurance, or car payments, which are typically paid on the same date every month, six months, or year. Even if these figures vary from period to period, this program is designed to help you stick to your estimates of how much is available each pay period.
Once you have decided how you will allocate those discretionary funds to each of your wallets, you are ready to enter them. You can build up to sixteen master wallets and almost unlimited sub-wallets, as we will discuss in Part II of this manual.
Tip: A handy way to estimate what your budget for each wallet should be is to leave the Budget column empty for the first pay period. Use the wallets like normal and let the negatives add up. At the end of the pay period you will have a good estimate of your spending habits.
Back to topFrom the initial "Wallets" screen, hit Payday to select your payday. Choose the pay period that works best for you and set the date that you want for your next payday. A calendar appears when you tap on the date.
If you want to tie your pay period to your actual payday, there a couple of features that will help keep your Quik Budget the same as your actual payday. If you choose monthly, you can select to have the payday occur automatically on the last day of the month. If you get paid either monthly or semi-monthly, you can choose to have Quik Budget skip weekends. With this option, any paydays that land on Saturday or Sunday will automatically be moved forward to Friday. Don't worry if the date still shows as being on Saturday or Sunday in this dialog, the payday will still occur on Friday.
Tip: Since your wallets are virtual wallets, your pay period can be whatever you want it to be. If you get paid once a month, you don't have to set your pay period to monthly. It is easier to see if you are over-spending if you set the period a little shorter. You might want to divide the amount you have budgeted for each wallet by 4.3 and set your pay period to Weekly or divide by two and set your payday to Semi-Monthly.
Back to topTo create a new wallet, tap New. Enter the name of the wallet, the amount you want to allocate each pay period and the amount you have left until next payday. You are limited to sixteen master wallets, but you will learn in Part II of this manual how to create a nearly unlimited number of sub-wallets.
Every payday, the "Amount per pay period" is added to whatever is left in the wallet. If, for instance, you allocate $100 to dining but only use $50, on payday you will end up with $150 remaining in Dining. If you want to prevent this overflow, you can put a check in "Send to [Wallet] if over:" and specify a cap. Then the overflow will be entered as a credit in the specified wallet. Your overflow amount must be more than your budgeted amount. If you wanted your dining to be no more than $150, you would set it to overflow if over $150.
Tip: You might want to have two wallets overflow into each other, for instance, Dining into Groceries and Groceries into Dining. Then anything left over in one will go into the other. If both wallets end up overflowing, the remainder will automatically be sent to *Savings.
Once you have set up a wallet, you can edit the amount per pay period and the amount remaining directly in the main Wallets screen. You can get back to the Wallet Info screen by clicking in either numeric field of a wallet, hitting Menu and choosing Edit Wallet. Alternately, you can tap the List/Quik/Edit switch until it says Edit. Then you can just tap on the name of the wallet you want to edit.
Tip: From the Expenses and New Expense forms, you can edit the wallet details by clicking on the name of the wallet at the top of the form. You must have a wallet selected for this feature to work; it will not work when "All" is the category selected.
Back to topTo see the expense history for a wallet or spend money, just click on the name of the wallet when list is selected. This will take you to the Expenses screen. Here you can see a record of all of your transactions. You can edit the date, comment, currency (if, as discussed in Part II of this manual, you have currency shown) or amount directly on this screen. If you change the amount of a transaction, the amount remaining and total will automatically be adjusted. If you want to move a transaction to another wallet, click on the transaction and choose details. From the Expense Details screen you can change categories, change accounts, add notes, etc.
You can change wallets from this screen by selecting a different name in the upper-right hand corner. If you want to see a history of all of your transactions from every wallet, you can choose All. You can also click on the boldface name of the wallet to go directly to the Wallet Info screen.
If you click on the Menu button you can delete and duplicate transactions as well as edit and purge the wallet. You can also transfer money between wallets.
Back to topTo spend money, select a wallet and tap New. If you tap the Spend button, it will change to Deposit to allow you to add money to a wallet.
Enter a comment (restaurant name, item purchased, etc.) and use the calculator to enter the amount you spent. You do not have to tap on the fields. Text will automatically go to the Comment field and the calculator will automatically select the Spend How Much field. You can click on the tax and tip buttons to add tax and tip.
QB includes a full tax, tip and currency calculator. Just calculate the amount of your portion of the bill and tap Tax and Tip. You can change the percentage of the tax or tip at anytime. The tax and tip calculator should always do what you expect.
One very useful feature of the calculator is the round-up/down buttons (the up and down arrows on the keypad.) If you round after hitting the Tip button, the calculator will automatically show the new percentage of your tip. You can round the total or the tip by tapping in the field you want to round.
The account list normally contains a predefined list of accounts. However, if you have an account manager installed, this will become a list of accounts. If you choose an account for the transaction, the record will be created in both Quik Budget and your account manager.
Back to topOne of the most useful tools is the Pop-Up Menu. To access The Pop-up Menu hold down the Stylus on a wallet, allowing you fast access to:
1. New Transaction: This will take you to the New Transaction screen for the
selected wallet.
2. Transfer: Click here to bring up the transfer window to transfer money between
wallets.
3. List: This will take you to the Expense History screen for the selected wallet.
4. Purge: This will purge old transactions.
5. Delete: This will remove the wallet and all of its expenses.
6. Beam Wallet: This will beam the selected wallet.
7. Edit Properties: This will take you to the selected Wallet Info screen.
Quik Budget allows you to choose your font size. To do this, tap the menu button. Then select the Options menu and tap Font. This will allow you to change font sizes from standard, bold, or large. You can have different font size on the Main Wallet List and Expense History screens.
Back to topIf you tap the Details tab from the Wallet Info screen, you will be presented with a few advanced features. These are:
1. Sub Of: Please see Sub-Wallets below for detailed discussion.
2. Type: There are three types of Master wallets. Normal wallets are just what they say they are. The other two types are both summary wallets. Shared Summary wallets are wallets that you would set up if you were going to use Shared sub-wallets under them. Percentage Summary wallets would have Percentage sub-wallets under them. Summary wallets cannot have transactions of their own. They just summarize the wallets under them. The budgeted and remaining amount of the Shared Summary wallet is the total of all of the Shared sub-wallets under it. For Percentage Summary wallets, you will need to set a budgeted amount in the master wallet and then set a percentage in the Percentage sub-wallets. Please see Sub-Wallets below for more information about the types of sub-wallets.
3. Personality: This determines what kind of calculator the wallet uses. These include None, Tax, Tip, Tax & Tip and Fuel.
4. Favorite: This allows you to mark the wallets you use most. Then you can set the main wallets list to display only your favorites.
5. Private: You can also mark a wallet as private. Private wallets do not show in the Wallets list unless you have your Palm set to show private records in the Palm OS Security application. If you are going to let your spouse borrow your Palm, for instance, you may want to hide your Gifts wallet. Without the password, nobody will be able to see any evidence of the wallet including any of the transactions.
6. Cumulative: You probably want this on. With it off, the wallet will always be set to the budgeted amount on your payday. With it on, the budgeted amount will be added to whatever is currently in the amount remaining field. This is the recommended setting.
Back to topQuik Budget gives you the capability to create sub-wallets. A sub-wallet is contained in a master wallet. You can make a wallet a sub-wallet by using the "Sub Of" list in Wallet Details. After you choose a master wallet you can choose the type of sub-wallet you want. There are 4 types:
1. Independent: This is essentially the same as a master wallet. It is simply contained within the master for organizational purposes.
2. Shared: Shared sub-wallets have their own values for Budget and Remaining, but any expenses are deducted from both the sub-wallet and the master.
3. Percentage: With these, you can specify a percentage of the master that you want to use for the budgeted amount. The remaining amount may be freely set. Like Shared, expenses are deducted from both the sub-wallet and the master.
4. Minor: These are great for minor wallets that you want only for documentation purposes. They do not have independent Budget and Remaining values. Expenses are simply deducted from the master. As an example, you might want to have Car Wash, Routine Service, Oil Change, Major Service and Parts as minor sub-wallets of your Auto wallet.
Back to topQuik Budget can work with any account manager that supports the Financial Posting Interface. A list of account managers that support FPI is provided below. In most cases, FPI is built right into the account manager but some venders distribute their FPI support as a separate plug-in. When you have installed an FPI-compliant account manager on your handheld, Quik Budget will recognize it automatically. To see if it is working properly, start the account manager and then start Quik Budget. At the top of the main screen, there should now be two tabs. One says Wallet and the other has the name of the account manager. If there is just the tab that says Wallet then you probably have an older version of the account manager or they haven't added in the plug-in yet and you will need to get it from them as a separate file
When you have an account manager installed on your device and it is working with Quik Budget, any transaction created in Quik Budget will also be created in your account manager and the balances will be adjusted accordingly.
Note: Currently, with the exception of Accounts and Loans and PocketMoney, this is one way only. If you change the transaction from your account manager, Quik Budget will not be updated.
Accounts and Loans - http://accsnloans.com/
Customer support email address - jleung@accsnloans.com
BankBook
Complete Finance
MAM - This is a dead program. It has been replaced by a new program that does not currently have a plug-in to work with Quik Budget. If you have MAM, it will work with Quik Budget. If you don't, chooses one of the other options.
PocketMoney 3.0 - http://www.catamount.com/PalmApps/PocketMoneyPalm.html
Customer support email address - pocketmoney-palm@catamount.com
Qmate - http://www.qmate.com/
Customer support email address - none
SplashMoney - http://www.splashdata.com/splashmoney/index.htm
Customer support email address - info@splashdata.com
Ultrasoft Checkbook and Ultrasoft Money 2.x & 3.x - http://www.ultrasoft.com/
For an updated list of supported account managers, go here: http://www.quiksense.com/Acctmgr/index.htm
Back to topIf you click on the currency indicator on the New Expense form, a list of countries will be displayed. You can tell which country is your default country because it is displayed in bold. If you choose a foreign currency, the New Expense form will show both the foreign currency and your home currency. You can use the calculator in either field and QB will automatically calculate the correct amount. QB will remember your foreign currency selection. When you want to return to using your home currency, click on the currency indicator and choose your home country.
Back to topYou can edit exchange rates and symbols as well as create new currencies by choosing Menu->Options->Define Currencies from most screens in Quik Budget. This will take you to the Currency form.
To edit existing currencies, select the country whose currency you wish to edit from the Country popup and edit the values directly.
When defining new currencies, you must specify:
1. A country name
2. A currency symbol such as $. This must be unique for each currency.
3. A currency code. Preferably the international currency code for the given
currency. QB will use this in the future to allow for updating currencies automatically
over the Internet.
4. Specify whether or not the currency uses a decimal.
A new feature in QB3 is the ability to view currencies based either in the home currency or the foreign currency. Just tap on the selector to switch it. In the above screen, the selector is the dotted line around '=$1'. We have created a few currencies to get you started.
Tip: Because of the ever-changing exchange rate, we added a feature to make sure each foreign transaction matches your statements. For example, if your credit card statement shows a 1.63 rate but you used a 1.53 rate at the time of purchase, you can change the rate for that transaction by simply changing the home currency amount in the list screen to match your statement. This will automatically recalculate the exchange rate for that transaction and preserve the original foreign amount spent.
Back to topQuik Budget supports transaction filtering in two ways. First, you can enter a few letters into the 'Filter' field. Only records beginning with those letters will be shown. Case is ignored so do not worry about capitalization.
The second way to filter transactions is by clicking on the From checkbox. This enables from and to dates. The default is to show only those transactions in your current pay period but you can click on either the From or To date to change them.
Tip: If you set To to a date prior to the From date, the From date will automatically be moved back by an equal amount. If you set From to a date after To, To will automatically be moved forward an equal amount.
To the right of the To and From dates there is a left and right arrow. It will change the To and From Dates forward or back, leaving the same time period. For example, if you leave the dates at the default, which is the current pay period, clicking on the back arrow will show you the transactions from the previous pay period.
Together, these features allow for very flexible reporting. Remember that if you change your wallet to "All", you can see the expenses that meet the criteria you set from every wallet at the same time.
Back to topYou can also specify a number of Show Options by tapping on the Show button from the Expenses screen. The first page shown is the Filters page. Tapping on the Display Options tab provides a few more options.
On the Filters page, if you put a check in "Hide transfers," QB will not show transfers between wallets in the expense list. This is very convenient when you want to see how much you really spent.
"Hide credits" will cause deposits and transfers from other wallets not to be shown on the Expenses lists for wallets.
"Hide payday transactions" will cause transactions automatically generated by QB to deposit money into wallets on paydays not to be shown in the Expenses lists for wallets.
If you check "Hide cleared transactions", QB will not show cleared records. This is useful when you are comparing a wallet to your statements.
"Show current pay period by default" causes Quik Budget to start with the From checkbox on and the current pay period selected as the date range.
"Show account list" causes a popup list to be displayed on the Expenses form. You can use this list to show only transactions from the specified account. For example, if you only want to see the list of transactions charged to your checkbook, you would specify Checking.
"Hide sub-wallet transactions in master wallet list" will prevent transactions entered into sub-wallets from appearing on the Expenses list for the master wallet. For example, if you enter a transaction in your Gas folder, and you have the Gas wallet set up as a sub of Auto, you will not see that transaction on the Expenses list for Auto.
Over on the Display Options page, "Show credits as negative" causes credits to wallets to be displayed as negative numbers, i.e. -50.00. With this off, credits are shown in parenthesis, i.e. (50.00).
"Show car names" will cause the name of your selected car to appear in the Expenses list for transactions made with the Fuel personality instead of the information entered in the Comment block (probably the name of the gas station). For example, if you enter "Exxon" in the comment block of a transaction in your Gas wallet and select "Toyota" for the car, the line item on the Expenses page for your gas wallet will say "Toyota," and not "Exxon."
If you "Show currencies", Quik Budget will add a column to show the currency symbol. With this option off, QB will show the amount of the transaction in your home currency.
"Show cleared checkbox" will cause boxes to appear next to the transaction amount. Check the box to mark which transaction has cleared.
Back to topIf you would like to change the account, mark the record private, protect it from being purged, change the date/time or enter a longer note for a particular transaction, hit Details from the Expenses screen. You can also change wallets and delete records from here. If you move transactions, the money will be credited back to the original wallet or account and debited from the new one. Deleted transactions are credited back to the wallet and account.
If the transaction is a transfer between wallets, the Account list will be replaced by a Transfer list. Here you can choose to change the wallet with which the transfer is made.
Back to topQuik Budget supports transaction beaming. You can beam individual wallets or all wallets between any two handhelds with Quik Budget. In order for transactions to beam successfully, the wallets must have the same name on both handhelds. Not all wallets need to have matching names, only those that you want to have a shared budget. For instance, if only John has a wallet called "John's spending money", all transactions from that wallet will automatically be discarded by John's wife's handheld if she does not have a wallet with the same name.
To beam all wallets transactions, tap the Menu button and select "Beam All Wallets". The transactions will beam and automatically adjust the receiving Palm's wallets. Once one user has completed beaming, the other user should beam as well. Then both users should be in sync.
There are two strategies for sharing a budget. The first is to have the identical budget on both handhelds and to have the exact same payday. Remember that your payday in Quik Budget does not need to be tied to your actual paydays. Be sure to turn off the "Create Payday entries" option in preferences if you go this route.
The second strategy is to split the budget between two handhelds. For example, if John and Sally want to budget $400 per month for groceries, and John gets paid once a month while Sally gets paid every two weeks, John can budget $200 for groceries and Sally can budget $100. That will add up to approximately $400 per month. Alternatively, Sally can have the entire grocery budget while John has the entire Auto budget. If you want to use Quik Budget in this way, be sure to enable "Create Paydays Entries". This will create a transaction entry in each wallet. When the couple beams, the paydays will beam with the transactions and automatically adjust the remaining amount on the receiving Palm.
Back to topYou can change the preferences from the Wallets, Expenses or New Expense screens by hitting Menu and choosing Options | Preferences. The screen comes up with three tabs - General, Numeric, and Currency.
On the General tab, the first item is the "'Calc' button" Pass-Thru. This allows you to override the Calculator button to launch Quik Budget. See in Appendixes below.
"Quik entry on launch" causes Quik Budget to go directly to the expense entry screen when you start the program.
"Show master name" will display sub-wallets prefixed with the master name, i.e. Dining: Lunch.
With "Create payday entries" selected, QB will generate transactions automatically to deposit money into wallets on payday, just like a transaction you would enter from the New Expense screen. With this option off, QB adds the money but does not create a transaction. You would mainly want to use this if you are sharing a budget between two handhelds. See Beaming / 2 Pay Days.
"Left Handed" - We know some people are left handed, so we added support for you folks. This will put the scroll bars on the left hand side.
On the Numeric tab:
"Use thousands separators" places commas in numbers to separate thousands (e.g. 10,000 vice 10000.) This can be critical for big number currencies.
"Tip on Tax" - Most people pay 15% tip on the whole bill. But some pay only on the pretax amount. If you prefer to tip on the full amount, select Tip on Tax.
"Max number width" - Most people in the U.S. don't need more than 7 characters for number fields. That is big enough for 6 digits and a decimal, i.e. 7000.00. The Koreans, however, need much more space as their currencies often use 7 or more significant digits. This field will specify how much space to allocate in tables for numbers. Set this as low as you can so that you can see as much of the description fields as possible.
"Round by" - Specifies how much to round by in the calculator with the round up and round down buttons.
"Home Currency" - Specifies which country you live in. If you change countries, QB will automatically recalculate all of its exchange rates.
Back to topIf you would like to purge old transactions without adding the money back into the wallets, just choose purge from either the Wallets or the Expenses page. From the Expenses page you can purge a single wallet. From the Wallets page you can purge all wallets. You can choose to purge records that are over 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months or 4 months old.
If you would like to protect a transaction from purging, select Details on the specified transaction and select Never Purge.
Back to topIf you click the Menu button from the Expenses form, you can choose Transfer. This will allow you to transfer money between two wallets. Quik Budget will create a To transaction in one wallet and a From transaction in the other. These two transactions will always be kept in sync. If you change the date, amount or details in one, the change will be made to both.
Back to topFrom the Options menu, you can choose Security to change Quik Budget's password options. Quik Budget uses the system's "Hide/Show/Mask private records" state. Using the security options, it is possible to Show, Mask, or Hide private transactions from within Quik Budget. If your security level is set to Mask, private transactions will display but their comment field will be hidden behind a gray bar. Your private wallets, however, will be completely hidden. The thinking here is that if you want the entire wallet to be private, you probably don't want people to know that the wallet even exists. If you tap on a masked record, you will be prompted for your password before you are allowed to edit the record.
NOTE: The security level you set here becomes the minimum security level of QB. If you choose Mask or Hide here and then change the system level to Show using the Palm Security application, your records will still be masked or hidden when you return to QB.
You can also specify that you would like a password to be required every time you run Quik Budget. Since you may want to go in and out of QB quickly, you can specify that a password is only required if you have been away from Quik Budget for a certain number of minutes, hours or days. You can do the same for hiding and masking private records. Tap on the popup to switch between Mask and Hide for the timer.
Back to topOne of the Wallet personalities needs comment. Quik Budget can now track your gas mileage. Simply edit the wallet details for the wallet you use to track gasoline purchases and select the Fuel personality. Now when you enter transactions in that wallet, Quik Budget displays a screen like the one shown to the left. You can track up to 15 cars. When you get gas, just enter your odometer reading, the amount of gas, the price and any miscellaneous charges such as car wash or a 25-cent ATM card fee.
When you choose Done, Quik Budget will ask if you filled the tank. If you did, it will calculate the gas mileage. Otherwise, it will remember how much gas you put in so that it can accurately calculate the gas mileage next time you fill up. Quik Budget will automatically remember the last 4 prices and miscellaneous expenses.
To see the fuel statistics for a transaction, just open the details for the transaction and click on the Car button.
Back to topQuik Budget has excellent support for the Palm keyboards. On the Wallet Info and New Expense forms, you can use the Up/Down arrow keys and the Tab key to navigate between fields. You can also use the keyboard for doing calculations on the New Expense form. Use * for multiply, / for divide, etc. Use ` for Tax and ~ for Tip.
On the Wallets form, you can use the Up/Down arrow keys to choose a wallet. Tab switches between the Amount and Remaining fields. Enter will take you to the Expenses form for the selected wallet.
On the Menus you can use the Up/Down arrow keys to navigate and the Enter button to select.
While in a screen with multiple tabs such as the Show screen, you can toggle between the tabs by holding down Ctrl and Left/Right arrow keys.
Back to topQuik Budget comes with a program called QB2Excel. If you installed the full version of QB, it should be in the Quik Budget folder on your Start menu.
Select Export to simply create the file or Export and Load to create it and attempt to load it into Excel. This will only work if Excel is in your path.
The exporter creates a text file with a CSV extension. These may be loaded into virtually any spreadsheet as well as text editors, word processors, etc.
Back to topQuik Budget does automatic backups of your data to your PC using the standard Palm backup conduit. See Appendix A for where to look for your databases.
Back to topQuik Budget does not have a conduit that backs up its data. All of the Quik Budget databases are backed up by the standard Palm conduit. If your Palm crashes and you lose your data, all of the databases should be in one of the following locations:
For Palm devices look here:
c:\palm\[username]\backup
For Handspring devices look here:
c:\Program Files\Handspring\[username]\backup
For Sony devices look here:
c:\Program Files\Sony Handheld\[username]\backup
Here is a list of the databases:
QBWalletsDB.pdb
QBCurrencyDB.pdb
QBExpensesDB.pdb
QCarDB.pdb
Just syncing your device should restore all of your programs and databases. If "should" is not good enough for you, you can double click on each of these databases to add them to the Palm Install Tool. Also add QuikBudget.prc to the Install Tool or run QuikBudget.exe, then hot-sync.
To make sure that you don't lose your data, it might be a good idea to occasionally backup these files on your computer by copying them to another folder where you can find them later. Another consideration would be to get BackupBuddy from www.BlueNomad.com. It backs up everything on your device, and, if your Palm crashes, can restore everything.
Back to topThe most convenient way to access Quik Budget is to use the Calculator button on your Palm device for both Quik Budget and the built-in calculator (or app of your choice.)
From Quik Budget, click and choose Options | Preferences. Check the box next to "Calc" Button on the General tab. If you want to use a different calculator from the default, choose it from the list.
Now when you hit the Calculator button, Quik Budget will start. If you hit it again, the calculator or app of your choice will start.
Back to topIf you sync your device to a Windows PC, just download QuikBudget.exe from our download page ( www.quiksense.com/QuikBudget/download.htm ). When you start the install, it will ask for a language. Picking Espanol, Deutsch, or Français from the list will install that version on your device. All other languages in the list will only change the language of the text in the installer. For users on Linux or a Mac, you should download QuikBudget.sit or QuikBudget.zip. There is a language overlay file for each language in both the .sit and .zip files. Install the one you want in addition to QuikBudget.prc. If you already have Quik Budget on your device and have ever opened the program, installing the overlay will not change the names of your wallets.
We would like to thank Luis F. Palomino Miranda for doing the Spanish translation for us. He did the translation for free and did it very quickly.
We would also like to thank the fine people at Palminfo.de / dragiton.com for doing the German translation. They also did the translation for free. They are a reseller of Palm software in Germany. If you are looking for a program in German, they might be a good place to look. Finally, the French translation was done by Vincent Poty. He also did the translation for free and we thank him for it.
Note: Just the program is translated. The manual is still only available in English. We also can only provide support in English.
Back to top
If you have received a registration code for Quik Budget, start the program, click on the Menu button and choose Options->Register. In the space provided, enter your registration code. If you would like to purchase Quik Budget but do not know your user name, you can find it here. Be sure to specify the exact spelling including case, punctuation and spacing. If you need to purchase Quik Budget, you can purchase it on your device using PocketPurchase. To do so, start Quik Budget, click on the Menu button and choose Options->Buy. You can also buy it on our site: http://www.quiksense.com/QuikBudget/purchase.htm . Either way, it is a mere $19.99. Purchasing with PocketPurchase immediately enables Quik Budget (the transaction is completed and your credit card is charged the next time you sync your device - see Appendix H for more details). If you purchase from our site, an email with a Registration Code will be sent once the payment is verified.
Back to topWe are always happy to receive feedback from users and ideas for new features.
In fact, that is the primary reason that Quik Budget has matured so quickly.
Just send us email at Support@quiksense.com. Following are a few common
questions I receive:
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Q: I recently registered Quik Budget for my palm and I love it. My wife and
I are using Quik Budget and QMate to each keep our own personal spending recorded
in order to bring it together in Quicken. Unfortunately the registration code
I received only works with my Palm. Is there any way to get a second registration
code at a reduced rate for family members?
A: We sell the second copy for $15.99 on our site. You can get purchase details
here: http://www.quiksense.com/QuikBudget/family.htm
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Q: I ordered and paid for a registration number for Quik Budget but the number
doesn't work on my Palm. Why not?
A: You are most likely using QB 2.6 or older. The registration code system was
changed for version 2.7. You can download the latest version at http://www.quiksense.com/Text/download.php
Try downloading the updated version and your code should work. You will not
lose your data if you install the current version. Never remove your old copy,
as this would delete all of your data. QB is always backwards compatible.
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Q: Where can I get some typical budget numbers?
A: One of the best ways to find the numbers that are best for you is to start
with everything set to zero. Then just use Quik Budget for a month or two and
see how negative the numbers get. Also, you might want to read "Your Money
or Your Life" (Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, Penguin Books, $12.95.) This
came highly recommended by a QB user.
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Q: I installed the latest version of Quik Budget and it didn't ask me what account
manager I am using when I installed it. Now the button for the account manager
does not show in Quik Budget and the transactions are not being transferred.
How do I fix this?
A: Quik Budget now uses plug-ins to interact with account managers. ANL, BankBook,
Complete Finance, SplashMoney and PocketMoney have the plug-in built into their
programs and nothing more should be required. Make sure you have the latest
version of their program to be sure that you have the version with the plug-in.
Qmate, MAM and the Ultrasoft products do not yet have the plug-in built in.
Ultrasoft Checkbook -
http://download.ultrasoft.com/files/QBPlugin-UCB.prc
Ultrasoft Money 2.x -
http://download.ultrasoft.com/files/QBPlugin-UM2.prc
Ultrasoft Money 3.x -
http://download.ultrasoft.com/files/QBPlugin-UM3.prc
QMate - http://www.quiksense.com/QMate-PlugIn.prc
MAM - http://www.quiksense.com/MAM-PlugIn.prc
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Q: Do I have to pay $20 again if I install an upgrade for Quik Budget?
A: No, all upgrades are free.
A few years ago my wife and I decided to buy a house. We found a new one that was due to finish building 6 months down the road. We did the numbers and realized that if we stuck to a pretty strict budget and maybe sold one car, we would be able to save the down payment in the time remaining. At first we used the Quicken credit card for virtually everything so we could try to track the budget in Quicken but this was not a satisfying solution.
Finally I wrote a prototype of QB in Satellite Forms. By the end of the 6 months, we had saved so much money that, not only did we have enough for the down payment, but we were able to pay off the car that we had thought we were going to need to sell.
I knew I was on to something so I started over in C++ and spent 4 months writing Quik Budget 1.0. The response has been fantastic. It has been really great getting email from so many people who have found Quik Budget as useful as I do. And, of course, many of you have had some great ideas that have resulted in Quik Budget growing up so fast.
Update: As of July 2000 I was able to quit my full-time job to focus on Palm applications exclusively. Be sure to check out WordSmith, which I created with Blue Nomad, LLC. It is the highest rated word processor available for any handheld computer. You should be able to find it anywhere that sells software for the Palm.
Back to topThe better question is how much does it save. So that you can find out for yourself, we have made QB free for the first 50 transactions. After that, it is only $19.99 to register.
For details, please go to http://www.quiksense.com/QuikBudget/purchase.htm
You can always find the latest versions of Quik Budget at http://www.quiksense.com/Text/download.php
Back to topQ: What is PocketPurchase?
A:
PocketPurchase is a revolutionary new way to buy software for your handheld
device, even if your device is not wireless enabled. It allows you to buy software
on your handheld and unlock it immediately. The software will be completely
enabled for the next 7 days. The next time you sync your device to a computer
that is connected to the Internet and that has the PocketPurchase conduit installed,
your transaction will get uploaded to the PocketPurchase server and your credit
card will be charged. At that point, the software will be registered fully,
as per the terms of the license agreement of the software. Shortly after that,
you will get an email with the receipt of your transaction.
Q: What is the PocketPurchase return policy?
A: Your purchase is backed by at least a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee.
Some products offer a longer guarantee. If you are dissatisfied with your purchase
for any reason, login to pocketpurchase.com or contact the original product
vendor.
Q: How do I find out what the terms are?
A: The first screen of the purchase screen will have a button that you can tap
to see the Terms.
Q: What is the PocketPurchase privacy policy?
A: PocketPurchase never shares your information with outside companies unless
you make a purchase. When you make a purchase, your name and contact information
is sent to the developer and distributor. No information about products you
are evaluating is ever sent to an outside company. PocketPurchase may tell a
developer how many users are trying their products and what devices are most
popular, but your personal anonymity is protected.
Q: Is it safe?
A: Yes. When you enter your credit card number, it is immediately encrypted
and can only be decrypted on our server.
Q: If you choose to have PocketPurchase remember your credit card, you must enter a password any time you make a purchase with that card. The password is encrypted and sent along with the order to ensure that ONLY YOU are able to use that card to purchase software through PocketPurchase.
Q: Once you connect to our server, we will remove the credit card number from your handheld and keep a copy on our secure server. That server is separate from our web server. Only our secure server can access your encrypted credit card number.
Q: Can I make it safer?
A: Yes. By default, the nickname will be the credit card type and the last four
digits, for instance "Visa-7827".
For improved security, change the nickname of your credit card to something
that does not include the card type or any numbers, such as "BankOne Platinum".
If you choose to have PocketPurchase remember your credit card, long passwords
are safer than short passwords.
Q: When can I use my application?
A: Immediately. However, you must sync within 7 days to ensure uninterrupted
use. Some applications may include additional features that are unavailable
until you HotSync.
Q: Should I 'remember' my cards?
A: We think so. Having PocketPurchase remember your credit cards means that
later purchases can be made much more quickly. Instead of typing in all of your
credit card details for each purchase, you need only a password. Since your
credit card number and password are encrypted, there is no significant risk
of your credit card number being used without your permission.
Q: Can I pay by check?
A: Not yet. Internet checks are still in their infancy. As soon as this technology
matures, we will add pay by check to PocketPurchase.
Q: What encryption do you use?
A: We use 1024-bit RSA public key encryption to protect your credit card number
and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) to protect all communication between
you and the PocketPurchase server. Public key encryption means that the data
can be encoded with one key and only decoded with a separate key. Once your
data is encrypted, it cannot be decrypted again except on the PocketPurchase
server.
Q: What do you encrypt?
A: We encrypt your credit card number and credit card password on your handheld
with RSA immediately. We also use a simple encryption to protect all of the
other data you enter on your handheld. When you make a purchase, we encrypt
the purchase authorization. When we send your data to our server, we use RSA
to encrypt an AES key. Then all communication is encrypted with the AES key.
At this point, your data is encrypted twice.
Q: What data do you collect?
A: PocketPurchase retrieves your "HotSync" user name and device identifiers
such as your device serial number, Palm OS version and make and model of your
PDA. We also place a 4-byte ID on your computer. We send no information about
what software is on your handheld. We send no information about your computer
except for the identifier that we created.
Q: Why do you need this data?
A: Two reasons. First, many applications use your "HotSync" user name
to generate your unique registration code. PocketPurchase handles this for you
so that you do not need to do this manually.
The second reason is to help you recover your purchased applications if you
should lose your device or experience a hard reset. If you have the same "HotSync"
user name and either your device serial number or your desktop ID is the same,
we can automatically restore your registration keys.
Q: When do you send this data?
A: For each PocketPurchase application, you can elect to have PocketPurchase
check for coupons, language files and program updates. If so, PocketPurchase
will remember that you are trying the application so that we can prepare the
information you need in advance. If you do not wish to check for updates, PocketPurchase
will not send any information unless you make a purchase. Whatever you choose,
PocketPurchase never notifies the vendor that you are using their product unless
you purchase it. PocketPurchase preserves your anonymity.
Q: How does auto-update work?
A: Certain products may take advantage of the PocketPurchase auto-update mechanism.
If you choose to receive update notifications, you will be told when an update
is available and the PocketPurchase conduit will offer to download and install
the updates when they become available.
Q: How do coupons work?
A: Coupons come in many varieties. You will only receive coupons if you have
elected to receive them.
1. Coupons can be time based, i.e. "$5 off if you purchase before July
4th."
2. They can be based on your hardware. In fact, some software may be free depending
on the model of your handheld.
3. You may be entitled to a coupon based on software you already own, i.e. "As
an owner of 'X-Clone' you are entitled to $5 off of 'Z-Clone'."
4. They may be based on who you are, i.e. student discounts, family discounts,
etc.
If you have a coupon, it will be shown and used automatically when you make
your purchase.
Q: Who provides support?
A: Support will be provided by the software developers. You will get a confirmation
email when the transaction is processed that will contain the support email
address. If you have a problem with the purchase process, you can contact support@pocketpurchase.com.
Q: Am I safe from Trojan horses?
A: PocketPurchase information is safe because it is encrypted throughout the
whole transaction. Someone could get the information off of your computer if
you have a Trojan horse, but it will appear as garbage characters to them since
it is encrypted. A Trojan horse is a program that allows other people to see
what you are doing on your computer and also allows them to access files on
your computer. It is usually installed on your computer as part of an email
attachment. The reason that your data might not be safe if you get one is that
the person on the other end of the Trojan horse can see your information as
you are typing it. Even if all you see is asterisks (*), they can see the real
data because they are intercepting it directly from the keyboard. In other words,
when you are on a webpage that encrypts your data when it is submitted, your
data might still not be safe if you have a Trojan horse because the person behind
the Trojan horse can access your data before it is encrypted.
Since your PocketPurchase data is never on your computer in unencrypted form,
they will not be able to see it.
Q: How do I know if the conduit is installed?
A: The conduit is installed whenever you install any software that is PocketPurchase
enabled. If you only sync your device to one computer and you have PocketPurchase
on your device, then the conduit is most likely installed on your computer.
If not, just reinstall the program you are trying to purchase on the computer
you are currently syncing to and you should be all set. You can check to see
if PocketPurchase is installed by right-clicking on the HotSync Manager icon
in the system tray (the bottom-right corner next to the clock). Click on Custom
from the menu to bring up a list of conduits. Make sure your user name is selected
in the list at the top and then look for PocketPurchase in the list. You'll
notice that the conduits are not in alphabetical order.
Q: Can I complete my order directly from a wireless enabled device?
A: A wireless enabled device is a device that is connected to the Internet wirelessly.
As of now, you cannot complete a transaction with PocketPurchase directly from
a wireless enabled device. The device still needs to be synced to a computer
that is connected to the Internet and has the PocketPurchase conduit installed.
(c) Copyright 2006 Quik Sense Software