checkMoney and checkMoney Plus Support
WPlease read readme.txt and user guide before contacting us. It is suggested that you create few "test" accounts, work with the application and get familiar it. Most commonly asked questions are: 1. How do I find palm user name? You can find in 'about checkMoney' screen within checkMoney application in your PDA. Your palm user name must be correct in order for the registration code to work! 2. Another popular question is that do I need to re-install the software after getting the registration code? The answer is No!

The checkMoney Plus version comes with a 'bigger' conduit, which is the best in the market. The checkMoney Plus conduit lets you backup/restore checkMoney data, export reports and transactions from checkMoney to your desktop. It also lets you import transactions, from CSV or QIF formats, back into checkMoney. Please see the conduit details in the conduit file or in the checkMoney Plus User Guide. We highly recommend you to utilize the checkMoney Plus conduit.

The checkMoney conduit only allows you to backup and restore the checkMoney data. You cannot export/import transactions to/from your PC.

Tap on 'About' menu, then tap on 'About checkMoney'. You will find your Palm User Name. Please send this to get your registration code.

Locate checkMoney_CategoryDB.pdb and checkMoney.prc in the directory where you have installed the checkMoney application. By default this directory is c:\program files\checkMoney. Install these files using the Palm Install Tool and HotSync.

Currently checkMoney supports Palm OS® 3.5+, OS 5 in handheld and Windows 9X, NT, 2000 and MX in desktop.

Conduit is a software program written to work with the HotSync® Manager application. The conduit helps you exchange and synchronize data between a desktop computer and a Palm OS® platform handheld computer. checkMoney conduit allows you to export/import CSV and QIF files, export category and payee reports and allows the backup/restore operations.

Your checkMoney is licensed to a single user. You can share the application with your family members. Please contact us for details.

Please read the User Guide first before using the software. You should learn the application by creating test accounts, test transactions and test categories before using the application for your real financial accounts.

You may have turned the Custom Reports Filter on. Transactions appearing in the ‘Transactions’ list are as per the filtering criteria that you have set by this filter.

Start the Palm Desktop application, and select “Custom” from its “Hot Sync” menu. Select checkMoney from the list of conduits. Choose your option and perform the Hot Sync operation.

At the time of your purchase, you should provide your HotSync ID (Palm user name). We will send the registration code. Use this code to register the application. Be careful when entering the code as it is case sensitive. You must enter it, exactly as given, including upper or lower cases or numbers.

You are the only person who should know your password. We cannot unlock your application if you forget your password. However, you can follow these steps to unlock your application :

• Make sure you have the backup of your checkMoney data before you had set the password
• Delete the application from your handheld
• Install the application
• Restore the checkMoney data from that backup

Write to us at support@pdachampion.com. Please send us your last name, email address and your handheld user name. We will send you a new registration code.

In ‘Accounts’ list screen, select the desired account and use ‘Tools->Set selected row color’ to change the color for that account row.

In ‘Transactions’ list screen, use ‘Tools->Set color for alternate rows’ to change the color of alternate rows in the transactions list.

Export your data frequently to your desktop and use the ‘Purge’ feature. This feature saves the handheld space by rolling up transactions. ‘Purge voided transactions’ will permanently delete all the voided transactions from your handheld. We suggest you to purge transactions every 4 to 6 weeks. Before using purge or delete functions you should backup the data using the checkMoney conduit.

Make sure that you have selected the right balance option from the ‘Balance’ drop down. ‘Balance as of’ displays the account balance as of a specific date only. 'Cleared Balance' displays the account balance based on the cleared transactions only. Also, make sure that you have posted all transactions. You may have to use 'Reconcile Account' feature if the account's ending balance does not match with the ending balance provided by your financial institution.

checkMoney does not display the balance when you display transactions for all accounts. Select the appropriate account to see the balance.

Make sure you have posted all the transactions. You can use ‘Reconcile’ feature to reconcile the account’s balance.

After you export an account to your desktop, you may want to unselect or unmark the account from being exported again in the next Hot Sync operation. checkMoney, by default, unmarks the accounts after each Hot Sync operation.

You'll need to enter your last name, email address and the registration code in order to fully enable the application. To find your palm user name, you can look into ‘About checkMoney’.

Select the account, tap on the ‘delete’ icon.

Select the transaction, tap on the ‘delete’ icon.

checkMoney supports two file formats both for import and export operations: CSV format and Quicken Interchange Format (QIF). The QIF files can be directly imported into Quicken or Money whereas the CSV format can be used by Excel or by any third party applications and reporting tools.

Make sure you have ‘marked’ (selected) the account(s) in your handheld before the HotSync operation. You will see a ‘|’ in front of the account name if it is selected for export. You should have also selected ‘Handheld to Desktop’ option in the conduit.

Open Money or Quicken, choose Export from the File menu, select what you want to export, and save the exported transactions in a file. You should export only the transactions (not category or class). You must end the file name with the .QIF extension. Contact your bank or visit the bank’s website to get the instructions on how to download the QIF formatted transactions to your desktop. Select ‘Desktop to Handheld’ option in the conduit. This option causes the HotSync operation to import transactions from your desktop into checkMoney. Also, the date field in the QIF file must have the supported date format. See user guide for a list of supported date formats. Please note that the QIF file must contain valid transactions (not classes or categories or accounts). Select the correct conduit date format to match with the date format of your transactions that you plan to import. Similarly, select the correct amount format, in the conduit, to match with the amount format of transactions that you plan to import. For example, assuming the 'to be imported' file contains transactions of the following type, you will select 'mm/dd/yyyy' and '1,000.00'.

Sample QIF layout :
!Type : Bank
D12/09/2002 (date format is determined by the settings in your conduit)
T-40.00
N2110
PYMCA
LBills : Health Club
M**CARD**
C*
^

D12/12/2002
T-1,230.00
N137

Psmart Electric Co.
LBills : Electricity
M**CHECK**
^

checkMoney conduit supports following QIF tags: !Type (Bank, CCard, Cash, Oth A, Oth L), D, T, N, P, L, M and C

Caution : In the unregistered version, you can only import up to 5 QIF or CSV transactions. Please create a smaller file, containing up to 5 records if you wish to test the import functionality. Also, make sure that the file, that you wish to import, appears next to the 'Install Files'.

Caution : The CSV file must be in the following format :

"checkMoney CSV Report on 07/02/2003" (date in format that you have selected in your conduit)
"Personal Savings","71110094","Savings","$1,315.00","Std. Bank" ($ will be replaced by your currency if you have not selected $ as the default currency)
"01/08/2001","withdraw","Check","111","New Edison","-$52.00","","","**CHECK**","Bills:Electricity"
"02/02/2001","withdraw","Check","103","Smart Gas co.","-$48.00","","","**CHECK**","Bills:Gas/Oil"
"02/10/2003","withdraw","ATM","","Self","-$60.00","cleared","","**ATM**","Cash Withdrawal"
"01/15/2003","deposit","EFT","7061999","Smart Motor Inc.","$500.00","cleared","","**EFT**","Wages"
"02/20/2003","withdraw","Card","","Ci Bank","-$25.00","cleared","","**CARD**","Bills:Cable"

The explanation for each field is given below :

Here is the description of the CSV formatted file.

First Row – One Occurrence

Make sure you have selected the file(s) - using 'Install files' - that you want to be imported into checkMoney. Use ‘Select’ button to populate the install files.

Make sure that you have selected the correct date format in the conduit. This option dictates how the conduit will interpret date fields from your desktop file. For example, if your QIF file contains date in dd/mm/yyyy format, you must select 'dd/mm/yyyy' in checkMoney conduit. This option does not affect the date format in your checkMoney. The date format in your checkMoney is determined by the formats that you have selected in your handheld.

Select ‘Handheld to Desktop’ option in the conduit. This option causes the HotSync operation to send checkMoney transactions to your desktop in the selected format. Also, make sure you have ‘marked’ (selected) the checkMoney account(s) in your handheld before the HotSync operation. You will see a ‘|’ in front of the checkMoney account name if it is selected for export.

Make sure that ‘Desktop to Handheld’ option is not selected in the conduit. This option causes the HotSync operation to import transactions from your desktop file into checkMoney accounts. You may have incidentally imported the desktop transactions and overwritten the existing checkMoney transactions.

Make sure that ‘Handheld to Desktop’ option is not selected in the conduit. This option causes the HotSync operation to export checkMoney transactions to your desktop. You may have incidentally exported the checkMoney transactions and overwritten the existing desktop file. Also, make sure you have unmarked checkMoney account(s).

Money does not automatically add category information when you import a QIF file. Although once you assign a category to a payee, it will memorize the relationship on future imports. You should edit category and sub-category lists in checkMoney so they match as closely as possible to your desktop financial program.

When loading QIF files in Quicken, the category names for income and expenses in checkMoney and Quicken must match. If they do not match, Quicken will ask if you want to create new categories for the names it does not recognize. You should edit category and sub-category lists in checkMoney so they match as closely as possible to your desktop financial program.

Yes. checkMoney allows you to export multiple accounts to your desktop. You must mark the account(s) for export. You will see a ‘|’ in front of the account name if it is selected for export.

Yes. checkMoney allows you to import more than one desktop files into your checkMoney. Use 'Install Files' option in the conduit to add all the files. The conduit creates or appends transactions in the matching checkMoney accounts. Conduit uses the file name as the account name to locate it in checkMoney. For example, if you have a desktop file ‘Checking.qif’, conduit will look for checkMoney account ‘Checking’ and will create the account if it does not exist.

Yes. You can filter the transactions you want to export. For example, you may want to export only uncleared transactions or transactions between certain dates.

By default, checkMoney marks exported transactions as ‘Reconciled’ in your handheld as well as in the exported file but you can unselect this option if you do not want to mark transactions as reconciled.

By default, checkMoney marks all posted transactions as cleared (C) except the ‘Check’ type transactions which are marked as uncleared (Blank Status).

You should export transactions every week. This will help you keep the entries synchronized with your desktop application. This will also free up your handheld storage.

You can use checkMoney as a standalone money tracking application or with your desktop financial applications. Although you can use it in any way it fits your individual needs, here are few typical scenarios for using checkMoney.

• checkMoney as the standalone application
  1. Setup accounts and categories
  2. Track your transactions
  3. Reconcile accounts with your financial statements
  4. Get reports within checkMoney and/or
  5. Export transactions in CSV format to your desktop for your custom reports



• checkMoney using transactions from your financial institution
  1. Setup accounts and categories
  2. Download transactions from your bank/financial institution in QIF format
  3. Import QIF file(s) into checkMoney using the conduit
  4. Track your transactions
  5. Reconcile accounts with your financial statements
  6. Get reports within checkMoney and/or
  7. Export transactions in CSV format to your desktop for your custom reports



• checkMoney with your desktop financial applications
  1. Setup accounts and categories
     Do you use desktop financial application as the primary software for tracking? If yes, then follow these steps
     1. Import transactions from your financial application into checkMoney using the conduit
     2. Track your transactions either in checkMoney or in your financial application or both
     3. Export checkMoney transactions to your financial application
     4. Reconcile accounts in your desktop financial application
     5. Repeat step 1 through 4 as per your requirements
     
     Do you use checkMoney as the primary software for tracking? If yes, then follow these steps
     1. Track your transactions either in checkMoney or in your financial application or both
     2. Import transactions from your financial application into checkMoney using the conduit
     3. Reconcile accounts in checkMoney
     4. Repeat step 1 through 3 as per your requirements
  2. Get reports within checkMoney and/or
  3. Export data in CSV format to your desktop for your custom reports



• checkMoney with Excel
  1. Setup accounts and categories
  2. Track your transactions either in checkMoney or in your spreadsheet or both
  3. Import transactions from your spreadsheet into checkMoney using the conduit
  4. Reconcile accounts in checkMoney
  5. Repeat step 2 through 4 as per your requirements
  6. Get reports within checkMoney and/or
  7. Export data in CSV format to your desktop for your custom reports