Category: Reports

Categories: Accounts, Reports, What's New – Posted on

2021-04-07 Released v2.2.7

This release contains three added features and some bug fixes.

The first item you will notice, is when Simple Budget is opened for the first time after an update, a list of the new features will be shown with a brief description.

The second main feature included with this update, is the ability to specify a “Default Account” when entering Expense and Income transactions.  Go to the “Budget” menu and select “Accounts”.  Here you will be able to select a “Default” account by checking the checkbox next to the account you use most often.  Then, when you go to enter a transaction, the “Default Account” will be automatically selected.  This is handy if the account  you use the most, is not alphabetically the first, since the first one would normally be selected by default.

Select a “Default” Account by checking the checkbox next to the Account name.
When using a “Default Account” it will be automatically selected when you enter the “Transaction/Transfer” form.

The third feature added with this version of Simple Budget, is the ability for Simple Budget to automatically create several PDF Report when a “New Period” is processed.  The PDF Reports will be stored in a folder called “Reports” in the data directory.  If you don’t want the reports to be generated, click “Select None”, or check and uncheck the ones you want to be generated.  You can easily open the data directory by selecting the “Help” menu and clicking “Open Working Folder” and select the “Reports” folder to view the reports.  A PDF reader must be installed on your computer to view the files.  You can generate the reports any time by selecting the “View/Reports” menu and clicking “Generate PDF Reports”.  The reports are time stamped and will not over write each other.  You must manually delete the reports if you don’t want them.

Reports can be generated automatically when a “New Period” is processed for the data of the previous period. If you don’t want any reports generated, click “Select None”.
Categories: Bugs, Charts and Graphs, Funds, Printing, Release, Reports – Posted on

2021-03-03 Released v2.2.6

Simple Budget V2.2.6 has been released.  This update has a few nice upgrades plus a lot of smaller adjustments and fixes.

Fund Details Report with bar graphs showing the percent of the monthly budget spent.

The first upgrade to show is visible in the “View Fund Details” report.  As seen in the screenshot above, I’ve added a small bar graph for each fund.  The bar graph measures the percent amount of the monthly budget spent or deposited in the current month.   For expenses, the bar graphs are color coded.  If the amount spent is below 75% of the monthly budget, the graph is green.  From 75% to 100% the graph is yellow, and if the amount spent is greater that the monthly budget, the  color is red.  Overspending a monthly budget is not necessarily bad, for example, if you have been saving for several months for a purchase, then make the purchase, the amount spent will be above the monthly budgeted amount.  That is ok.   The color codes will help you look at a quick glance at those expenses and help you decide if they are ok or not.  All deposit (Income Funds) graphs are green.

Funds Detail Report sorted by the percent of the monthly budget spent, greater to least.

I’ve also added a “Sort Exp %” button which will sort the funds by the greater percent to lower as seen in the screenshot above.  This way, you can see, from greater to less, at a glance, which fund spending you might have to keep an eye on during the month.

Fund Details printed report with the addition of the “% of Bgt” column.

The printed report includes and additional column next to the -Debits (Expense) column that shows the percent spent of the monthly budget.  The report does not show the percent amount for Income funds.  The report will print in the sort order selected.

The “View Fund YTD Detail Report” now included additional information in the last two columns.

The next major addition to V2.2.6 of Simple Budget is in the “View Funds YTD Details” report.  I’ve added information in last two columns as shown in the screenshot above.  These two columns can be used at the end of the year to see if any Fund’s monthly budget amounts might need to be adjusted for the next year.  It can also be used all during the year to see how actual spending compares with budgeted.

In the “Total Exp/Inc” column, I’ve added two lines indicating the percent that this fund has spent (or deposited) of the total of all the Income Funds.  This will help if you want or need to keep a particular fund below a certain percent of total income.

In the Avg Mo Exp/Inc column, I’ve added two lines indicating the percent of the Average Monthly Expense of a fund compared to the current budgeted amount for the fund.  If the budget has been laid out properly, the percent of the “Average Expense” should be less than 100%.  If you find that, on average, your expenses for a particular fund are greater than 100% of the budgeted amount, you may have to look at your spending habits, or make adjustments to your budgeted amounts.  If a certain fund consistently has a low percentage, you may be able to lower the Budget Amount for that fund and place the excess amount in a more needed fund.  As with any other report, this is only a guide.  There may be situations that you know an average percent will be low or high, such as saving long term for a purchase, or a periodic purchase that has had be made knowing there won’t be another one for some time.   These are just tools available to help  you along.  They help me, so I put the in Simple Budget.

You can see more detail about all of the changes and bug fixes in this version on the Change Log page.

Categories: Backups, Bugs, Release, Reports – Posted on

2021-01-06 Released v2.2.5

This is a minor release with several bug fixes and a few new features.

Here are a couple of the new features:

Under “View/Reports” –> “View Funds YTD Details” report, I’ve added an additional column at the end that shows the monthly average Expense/Income of each fund.  After using Simple Budget for over a year now, I can see what I actually spent in each fund, and then I can compare the monthly average of the fund with the monthly Budget Amount.  That way, I can make educated decisions as to whether I need to adjust the budget amount for the next year, or if I need to be more careful spending in a particular category.

In several areas where Transactions are listed, I changed the default order to “As Entered” and changed the button from “Original” to “As Entered”.  I my personal use, I find that that having the Transactions ordered as I entered them helps me reconcile them with the bank.

I added an “Open Working Folder” option under the Help menu.  This will get you to your data, sample, and other files rapidly.

One last minor change, was the number of backup files that Simple Budget creates and keeps.  I changed the number from 10 to 20.  Every time Simple Budget closes and saves a file, it creates a backup file.  If you do a lot of report viewing and are in and out of Simple Budget a lot without making any changes, it will still save the file each time and create a backup file.  That means the backup files are identical.  Changing the number of backups to 20 increases the chance of saving differing backups.

You can see more detail about changes and bug fixes in this version on the Change Log page.

Categories: Bugs, Printing, Reports, Uncategorized – Posted on

2020-02-05 Released v2.2.2

Transaction lists and reports now have color.

Besides various bug fixes, this release features improved report colors on screen and when printed.  In Transactions type of reports, “Debit” and the debit “Amount” are displayed in red.  “Transfers” are in blue.  “Credits” remain black.

In Fund type of reports, “Expense” funds are red, and “Income” funds remain black.

Funds lists and reports now have color.

I accidentally missed the printed report for “View Funds Details” so that will be included in the next release.

You can see more detail about changes in this version on the Change Log page.

Categories: Reconcile Transactions, Reports – Posted on

2020-01-01 Released v2.2.0

Simple Budget V2.2.0 has been released.  Here are the highlights of this release.

There are two main items that this release has.  1. A persistent bug in the “Reconcile Transactions” form has been fixed, and 2. A new report called “View Transactions YTD” has been added.

 1. Reconcile Transactions bug

“Reconcile Transactions” Rec. Checkboxes

There has been a long standing, and ever eluding, bug in the Reconcile Transactions form.  When the search field was populated with a search value and the next button pushed, seemingly random transactions’ reconciled checkbox would check and uncheck.  I believe that I tracked the bug down and now the checkboxes should stay checked or unchecked as desired.

 2. “View Transactions YTD” report.

Under the “View / Reports” menu, you can now find a new item called “View Transactions YTD”.  This report only works if there are more than one month’s data entered into Simple Budget.  If there is not more than one month’s data entered, you can simply use the existing reports to view the current month’s transactions.

View Transactions YTD Selection Options

Access the “View Transactions YTD” report by selecting the “View / Reports” menu and then “View Transactions YTD”.   A window similar to the above screenshot will appear.  The window has several selections that can be made.  If there is more than one budget year present, the years will be shown in the center of the window.  Select the year that you want to display transaction data with.

On the right side of the form, are a set of checkboxes.  You can choose to look at all “available” transactions, or select a range of dates to look at.  Likewise, you can choose to look at all “available” transactions for all funds or select a specific fund to look at.  As you check or uncheck the boxes, the appropriate selection queries will show so you can select dates or a specific fund.

The data for this report comes from archived past months files that are located in the same folder as your current Simple Budget data file.  They are named like “2019-09-September.SB”  See the page on Budget Periods for more information on archived data files.

You can see what months’ data are available by running the report called “View Funds YTD Detail”.  Select the year to examine, and all the months that have data, will be displayed in the report.  See the page on “View Funds YTD Detail” for more information on this report.

Once you have made your selections on the window, click the large “List Transactions” button in the middle of the window and the report will be displayed as shown below.  The report can be printed or previewed by clicking on the “Print” button.

Found Transactions For The Specified Dates and Fund.

Other various bugs have also been fixed with this release.  You can see about them on the Change Log page.

Categories: Menus, New Period, Release, Reports, Uncategorized – Posted on

2019-12-12 Released v2.1.6

Simple Budget V2.1.6 has been released.  Here are the highlights of this release.

There are two major highlights for this release.

New Period Changes

Simple Budget “New Period” menu entry.

Previous to this Simple Budget version, when a new period was requested, Simple Budget made the current month as the new period.  What does this mean?  It means that if you were using Simple Budget for some time, then stopped putting your information into it for over a month, then you decided to “get caught up”, when you did the “New Month” operation, any previous months with no activity were skipped.  This would cause the budget process to break.  Simple Budget is meant to help you control your spending so it should be used often to keep track of your expenses and income on a regular basis.  However, if you did lapse in using Simple Budget, now when a “New Period” operation is executed, Simple Budget will advance one month only.  This way you can input that month’s information and “get caught up” with your spending plan.  Again… Simple Budget is meant to be used regularly and you should not go weeks or months without looking at your spending, but now Simple Budget will not choke if you do.

A single “New Period” menu entry replaces the old “New Month” and “New Year” commands.  Simple Budget is smart enough to know what to do at the right time.

New “View Budget Amounts” Report

With Simple Budget version 2.1.6, a new “View Budget Amounts” report is not available.  This simple report shows each fund and it’s set budget amount.  Simple!

Along with these highlights, there were numerous other small changes and bug fixes.  You can see about them on the Change Log page.