Q: The difference on the reconciliation register is a negative number, what does that mean?

A: The difference is from MacMoney’s point of view. When the number is negative it means that MacMoney’s balance is less than the bank. If the number is positive (has no minus in front of it) it means that MacMoney’s balance is greater than the bank.

Q: Ok, so my difference is negative, where do I look for the problem?

A: These are some of the reasons MacMoney may show less than the bank:

1. You marked a check as cleared in MacMoney that is not on your statement.
2. You forgot to enter (or clear) a deposit in MacMoney that is on your statement (i.e., your interest).
3. A check was entered in MacMoney for a larger amount than appears on your statement.
4. There is an outstanding check from last year that was entered into MacMoney but has not yet cleared the bank.

Q: I wrote a check last year that was lost. My reconciliation difference is the amount of that check, how do I take care of it properly?

A: Open the bank account where you wrote that check and enter a transaction to reverse it using the same category as the original transaction. The kind of transaction you use depends on how you want it to show in reports. These are the options: 1. A deposit to show that you are adding the money back in. 2. A check with the same check number as the original and the amount as a negative number (just use the - sign). [I like this because I have a reference to the original without looking at the memo.] The replacement check will balance out the category so that there is no affect on the expense category used for this years’ numbers. Now if you are not replacing the check you might want to simply enter an adjustment transaction to the bank account to increase the balance by the amount of the check. However you reverse the check make sure it is marked as "cleared" in your reconciliation register and your difference should go to zero.

Q: How can I use the + and - numbers above the Statement Balance on the reconciliation register to help me find an error?

A: Usually your bank statement will give you a total for checks cashed and deposits made. The + number should be your deposits and the - number should be the checks. Now, you have to be careful because MacMoney would include the service charge withdrawal as a - number and it may be listed separately on your bank statement. Also, any bank interest paid my be listed separately on your bank statement and MacMoney would include it as a + number. So, look at your bank statement and add up all the numbers that reduced your bank balance (checks, automatic payments, service charges, etc.) and that should be the - number in MacMoney. If it’s not, then your error is in a check: one missing, not marked cleared, double entered, or entered with an incorrect amount. The same is true for the amounts that increase your balance.

Q: What if the + and - numbers match my statement but I’m still out of balance.

A: When this happens there are a couple of things to check:

1. Have you changed the starting balance of the bank account?
2. Did you edit any cleared items before you started this reconciliation session?
3. Did you start this reconciliation session still in balance from last month? [If you were out of balance last month you will be off by the same amount this month if the + and - numbers match the bank statement.]
4. Have you had a power failure or computer freeze up while MacMoney was running? If you have the data may be damaged and therefore would be out of balance.
5. If you added a transaction while the reconciliation register was open then cleared it, check to see if the amount of the difference is equal to that transaction amount. If it is try closing and reopening the reconciliation register. [Note: this will reset the + and - numbers]

A Trial Balance is a report that shows that all the "debits" equal the "credits" in your accounting. It can be a variation of the category list or you can get this information by comparing the Net Worth on the Balance Sheet report to the Net Income on the Income and Expense report. Usually with double entry accounting software you don’t need a trial balance as a check to make sure the accounts are balanced but just to have a record of what affected the category. If you do not use adjustment transactions, change balances from enter balances or change the starting balance from the category add/edit window, and your data is not damaged you cannot get out of balance if you started in balance with MacMoney.

MacMoney does not produce a formal trial balance report but it does give you several ways to document what has happened to the categories (see below). With the help of a spreadsheet and some accounting knowledge about which categories contain "debit" and "credit" balances you could also generate your own to make sure the debits equal the credits.

The broadest report about what has affected a category balance would be a Custom Transaction Activity report, "All transactions, All categories," sorted by Category, with all the categories selected under Show List on the second selection dialog. This will group the transactions by category and then give you subtotals by category at the end of the report. These subtotals are the change in the category during the year. If the category is an income or expense type category the subtotal represents the current balance. For any other category type you would need to add the starting balance to the subtotal to determine the current balance.

The Register Report available in version 4 is a nicer report but it must be done category by category. In version 3.5 the running balance option on the Custom Transaction Activity report also gives you the balance after each transaction but it can be difficult to read. The Register Report in 4.0 gives a nice plus/minus and running balance columns as it lists the transactions that affected the category. For non-income and expense categories the starting balance is included so the final balance is the current balance. This report is a good journal listing for one category at a time.

Either of these reports can serve to document the affects of your transactions on category balances.

One of the frustrating things about previous versions of MacMoney was going from one year to the next, when you didn’t get all of last years’ figures until almost February and you didn’t want to wait until then to start the new year. To solve this problem the extended year feature is designed to give you a "thirteenth month" to enable you to continue working (writing checks and making deposits) after your accounting year has ended, but before you completely finish with your year end wrap up.

To use the extended year just date your transactions in the new year (i.e., 1/5/96 in your "current accounting year was 1995). The first time an extended year date is used during a session MacMoney will warn you that you are using an extended year date. By using the extended year the balances for income and expense type categories on your category list keep getting bigger because they are showing you the "thirteen" months of data. Other category balances reflect the new balance as a result of that transaction. That is why it is important to do the start new year at some point, and MacMoney will not allow you to "extend" the year beyond 270 days into the extended year. Use the Custom List report to give you a report of the "Year End" balances or use the regular Income and Expense report which will only go through the last month of your year.

As you enter current transactions to keep your records up to date you can go back and enter any transaction that affects your ending/starting balances, such as last minute service fees that you didn’t know about until you received your statement in the middle or end of January. As statements come in you have all the previous months’ transactions to make the reconciliation easy.

When you have all the reconciliations done (all of last years’ transactions have been cleared) and other records entered for the year just ended perform the start new year as directed in the manual. This will create a new set of data files for the new year and only the transactions with a date belonging to the new year will be transferred. [Note: The old year will still contain the extra "extended year" transactions. After you are sure that the start new year was as you expected and you won’t want to do it over again, and you have made a backup of the data, open the past years’ data and go to the Utility command on the Edit Menu and choose "Year End Cleanup". This will remove all the extended year transactions from that years’ data.]

There are a couple of things to be aware of as you use the extended year. First, double check the year on your transactions as you enter them. The default and shortcuts will use the real accounting year of the data. Next, your financial reports will only be for the real year of the data, therefore you cannot get the Balance Sheet report for January of the "new" year. A January report will be for the past year. Last, a Register Report for any period in the extended year must start in the real year of the data or the balance will not be correct. For example, if your year is January to December 1995 and you are in the extended year of 1996 and want a Register report for February 1996, you would have to give the date range of 12/1/95 to 2/29/96. All of these things added up to encourage you to start your new year as soon as possible.

NOTE: InvoicIt does not support the extended year feature. Therefore, you will need to perform the start new year which affects both MacMoney and InvoicIt and follow the hints below for dealing with items across the year end.

When the Extended Year has not been used or you really need to make changes in the previous year after doing a Start New Year.

This is a reprint from a previous newsletter that gave tips on how to work with the versions of MacMoney prior to 4.0 (the references are all to the 3.5 version of MacMoney, but it should give you some ideas of what to do).

First, let’s say you have started your 1989 {the new year} and you have just received the bank statement which shows a charge for printing checks dated in December 1988. You need to open your 1988 MacMoney data system and enter the withdrawal to the bank account; then open your 1989 MacMoney data system and make an adjustment dated 1/1/89 to the bank account category only {in version 4.0 you could also just change the starting balance}. This is true for any bank account, credit card, cash, asset, or liability type category whose starting balance for 1989 becomes incorrect because of a last minute 1988 change. If the category has not yet been used in 1989 you can directly change the starting balance of the category. It is useful to wait as long as you can to start the new year, then use an adjustment to correct balances.

Next, reconciliation. Your first statement in 1989 clears some checks that were written in December but maybe there are a couple from December, that haven’t cleared yet. When you use the Reconcile Account option from the Transactions Menu MacMoney says you are out of balance with the bank. What is wrong? Usually nothing and no adjustments are necessary. Because those 1988 transactions are not physically in the 1989 data (just the balance carried forward as if the checks were cashed) MacMoney cannot subtract them from the bank’s number when it tries to compare the balances to see if you agree. If you are actually in balance, MacMoney will think you are out of balance by the amount of uncleared 1988 transactions.

Let’s get more detailed. When you reconcile, MacMoney takes the bank balance you enter, subtracts the amounts for uncleared checks, withdrawals, and service charges, and then adds uncleared deposits to get a number that it compares with the internal balance. After a Start New Year MacMoney does not have access to last year’s transactions so it doesn’t know if they are cleared or not. Therefore, for purposes of calculation the transactions appear to be cleared. That means MacMoney cannot subtract any actual uncleared December checks from the bank balance and you get the message about being out of balance. It is only out of sync not out of balance. When everything from 1988 actually clears the bank MacMoney will get back in sync with the bank.

Here is a specific example and a way to make sure you are really okay with the bank:

The last check you write on 12/31/88 is for $10 and your ending MacMoney bank balance is $90.00. You do a Start New Year and your starting balance is $90.00. On 1/3/89 you enter a check for $5.00 and your new balance is $85.00, then on 1/10/89 you get the bank statement, everything for 1988 has cleared except that $10 check and the $5.00 check for 1989 is also uncleared. Your MacMoney balance is $85.00 and the bank statement says you have $100.00.

If you did a reconciliation in MacMoney you would have the $5.00 check in the register. Click on the Reconcile button and enter 100.00 for the bank balance. MacMoney does the following calculation: $100.00 (bank balance) - 5.00 (uncleared 1989 checks) - 0.00 (uncleared 1989 withdrawals) - 0.00 (uncleared 1989 service charges) + 0.00 (uncleared 1989 deposits) = $95.00. It compares this $95 to its balance of $85 and says "Your balance is less than the bank’s by $10.00" The difference is the amount of uncleared 1988 transactions, $10.00.

In February you have not added any new transactions and the bank statement indicates that the above two checks have cleared. Your bank statement balance will be $85.00 and MacMoney will still say $85.00. You are back in sync! If there are other cleared and uncleared checks in 1989 the calculations are the same and when all the 1988 transactions clear you will be back in sync unless some other error has occured.

Here is a step by step method to account for last year’s uncleared checks until you get back together:

1. When you get your January statement, open 1988’s MacMoney data. 2. Select Reconcile Account from the Transaction Menu and open the appropriate category. 3. Mark as cleared any 1988 transactions that have cleared the bank (those that appear on your statement). 4. Close the reconciliation register. (It is not necessary to click the Reconcile button since this bank balance may have 1989 data and will not balance.) 5. Print a Custom Transaction Activity report for that bank account of only the not cleared transactions. 6. From the total line do the following calculation to get a total for 1988 uncleared transactions: Check - BnkDep + BnkWth + BnkSvc 7. Close 1988’s MacMoney system and open 1989. 8. Select Reconcile Account from the Transaction Menu and open the appropriate category and mark as cleared any 1989 transactions that appear on the statement. 9. Click on Reconcile and enter the bank account balance from the statement. 10. The amount you are out of balance should equal the number you calculated in step 6 above. If not, you need to go through the regular procedure to try and find the difference. (Make sure the amounts for checks in MacMoney are the same as the bank subtracted, make sure all bank transactions have been entered into MacMoney, etc.)

Repeat the above steps in February and until all 1988 transactions have cleared. If for some reason a check stays outstanding for more than six months the check should be reversed and cleared in the current year as a voided check (banks aren’t supposed to cash a check with a date more than six months old).

This is a fairly simple procedure but the idea can be confusing. Again, we are working to make this easier. Just transferring open transactions into the new year may solve the problem of uncleared transactions but it creates some others.

If while you are opening a bank account or even just opening a MacMoney data system you get a confusing dialog that says something like "The file ????? was not found." With ID = -39 (or sometimes ID = - 40) in the lower left corner of the dialog and an OK button then there is some kind of data problem.

As MacMoney saves transactions to a file on your disk it also records an "End of File" mark to let MacMoney know where the end of the data is. Any information on the disk after this mark doesn’t mean anything to MacMoney. While opening the data or opening the check register MacMoney is trying to read data from the disk. The -39 means that from the Macintosh’s point of view MacMoney tried to read data that didn’t make sense because it didn’t find an End of File marker. What this means to you is that the data is damaged. This can be caused by a power failure while MacMoney is running or some other interruption during operation.

Don’t panic! The good news is that USUALLY most of the data can be recovered. If you get the error click the OK until you get some kind of normal MacMoney window then quit, make a backup making sure you don’t erase any previous backup that might be in better shape in case this one is unrepairable. Depending on the damage you can still use this damaged copy to get reports and numbers until it can be repaired, but further use (i.e., entering new transactions) can cause unexpected results and make things worse.

Then contact Survivor for instructions on how to get your data repaired, either by doing it yourself or sending data to technical support. When contacting Survivor provide us with your full name, address, version number of MacMoney you are using and serial number, if possible, which will help us serve you better. You do not have to be registered to get support.

General Q&A

These questions and answers appeared in the Issue #8 of the Survivor’s
Edge, but since they are still questions that our technical support people
get asked, we will include them here.

Q: I get an alert with the following text when I double-click on a data
file icon: "Some documents could not be opened. Try opening the documents
from within the application."

A: You are probably using System 7 and are on the Finder level and MacMoney
is already running. You just need to use the Application menu (the little
icon at the upper right end of the menu bar) and choose MacMoney. The menu
bar will change to the MacMoney options and you are ready to continue.
Close the data you are working with and Open the one you want to use.

Q: The title of my Categories list window is stuck under the menu bar
and I can’t move it. What’s wrong and how to I fix it?

A: We’ve seen this happen occasionally, usually if you switch from a
large monitor to the small one. To reset it: 1) Choose any report from
the Reports menu but just click Cancel (this closes the window), 2) Choose
Preferences from the File menu and unselect "Remember last window
position" and click OK, 3) Choose Show Categories from the Lists menu
and the list window will appear in the default position, and 4) Turn the
preference back on if you wish, and move the window where you want it.
Use this same technique if your check form is stuck in a split size. Close
the form and turn off the preference then open the form and turn back on
the preference.

Q: I have had a power failure while InvoicIt was open, how can I make
sure I am still in balance?

A: There are three different ways to get the total Accounts Receivable
balance due. If these don’t match each other, then there is something wrong
with the data. First, the AR total at the bottom of a Clients List report
tells you how much they owe by adding the client due balances. Second,
the AR total at the bottom of the Aging report tells you how much is due
by adding up unpaid invoices. And third, the AR category balance on the
Categories list tells you what MacMoney thinks is due as a result of accounting
transactions.

Q: When starting opening my data with MacMoney I get an error dialog
that tells me that the file "xxx MMTR" not found and that it is
returning to the Finder. What has happened?

A: If you are using a version prior to version 4.0 check the data files
to see if indeed the file it tells you is missing. If it is, find it and
put it back into the folder with the other 9 data files that start with
the same name. If you can’t find it try to locate a backup and call Survivor. You may be in big
trouble since this file contains the actual transaction records.

If you are using version 4.0x, this file actually does not exist and something
else is wrong. The most common problem is that something has happen to
what we call the header file, the one that has no "extension"
after the name of your file set. If it is missing or had its file type
changed, etc. MacMoney tries to look for something it expects based on
that bad file and the result is that MacMoney gives the error about not
finding the MMTR file.

To fix the problem [for this example the data name was "MacMoney 96"
so you should have at least 7 files that start with this name] - if you
don’t understand these directions, contact Survivor:

1. Make a backup of these data files.
2. Check to see what files might have been created because of the damage.
   If you now have two files that start with part of the name of your data.
   In our example our data is called "MacMoney 96" so I would look
   to see if I have "MacMon" (name is five characters shorter than
   the data name you gave the data originally) and "MacMon MMPF".
   If these two files exist, throw them away. If they don’t exist just go
   to the next step.
3. You must now create a new header file to replace the bad one. To do
   that create a new folder in the folder where your data lives. This will
   be a temporary folder so it is okay to leave it called "untitled."
4. Run MacMoney from the application and click Create to create a new
   MacMoney system. Save the System as the same name as your original data.
   In our example this would be MacMoney 96. Make sure the data will be saved
   in the untitled folder you just created and click Save. [Note: if you are
   asked if you want to replace files of the same name, you’re not saving
   in the untitled folder so click CANCEL.] On the next dialog of the save
   make sure you set the year to the same as the one you are attempting to
   repair. In our example it is January to December 1996 .
5. When you are asked to select a bank account, select Personal checkbook.
   The categories are not important.
6. Enter one check for $1.00 to the Cash Account and Save.
7. Quit MacMoney.
8. Locate the new header file "MacMoney 96" in the untitled
   folder and drag it on top of the original/bad "MacMoney 96" file
   if you are viewing files by Icon or Small Icon. When you are asked if you
   want to replace files of the same name, click Replace. [If you are viewing
   files by other that Icon or Small Icon you will need to drag the file on
   top of the icon for the folder that contains the old "MacMoney 96"
   file in order to replace it.]
9. Throw away the untitled folder.
10. Try opening your data again and it should open correctly.