FINCAL: A Financial Calendar FINCAL is a disk-oriented program written in BASIC which provides for text entries and two (2) calendar-like outputs of financial records. Nine (9) options are available from the menu. Two (2) of the options provide formatted output in either a text or graphic calendar form. Four (4) types of entries are provided for along with calendar search, payment schedule calculations and disk file creation. Each day's entries can total 256 characters, including delimeters and subject indicators. The entries are unformatted. Delimeters and subject indicators can also be entered as part of the text. Subject indicators are placed at the beginning of a text string. This allows the user to search for the subject categories automatically designated by the program. Other subject categories may be created by the user by simply placing a unique character or string of characters in the appropiate calendar entries. As will be discussed later, this adds flexibility to the file structure. Three subject indicators are automatically entered by the program. The "heart" (SHIFT-S) is used to designate both the credit card entry and the monthly update. That is, the first character of a credit card entry or the monthly update entry is the heart. The "spade" (SHIFT-A) is the first character of the single entry character string and the "club" (shift-X) is the first character of the tax entry character strings. The user is given the option to either overwrite or append to the entry already present on the calendar. If neither overwrite or append is selected, nothing is done to the entry. The resulting entry is then displayed and the user is asked if this entry is OK. If the entry is OK (answer "yes"), the new entry is written to disk; if "no", no action is taken. Answers other than "yes" will result in no action taken. Only one delimeter is recognized by the program, the slash ("/"). The slash is placed automatically at the end of each entry. This is for formatting purposes. The slash causes a line feed-carriage return. This provides for each entry to be printed on a new line and indented to line up under the previous line. If necessary, a slash may be entered anywhere in the text where an additional line feed-carriage return is desired. The options provided for on the menu are: 1 - TEXT CALENDAR 2 - GRAPHIC CALENDAR 3 - CREDIT CARD PAYMENT 4 - MONTHLY UPDATE 5 - SINGLE ENTRY 6 - SEARCH CALENDAR 7 - TAX ENTRY 8 - PAYMENT SCHEDULE 9 - CREATE DISK FILES 10 - EXIT Initally, disk files for the year must be created (option 9). This takes approximately thirty minutes. At least 370 sectors must be available on disk. Each calendar is identified by the year and an identifier, chosen by the user. This allows multiple calendars for a given year or purpose. For example, one calendar may be "1984TRS" and another calendar for the same year may be identified as "1984LBJ". In this instance, only three characters were used to identify the calendar. The maximum allowable number of characters in the identifier is nine (9). The text calendar option (#1) dumps the entries of the calendar to either the screen or the 1525 printer. Each entry is placed on a different line for clarity. The total number of days to be displayed is entered by the user. The graphic calendar output (#2) displays the entries on the screen of an entire month. Within the block for each date either an "E" (single entry), "C" (credit card entry or monthly update entry) and/or a "T" (tax entry or interest payment) is entered. These indicate either a single or multiple entries have been made for this date. The credit card payment selection (#3) provides for an entry which 1) projects and places an entry in the next payment due date; 2) calculates interest charges incurred during this period; 3) marks the interest charges as a tax entry ("club" - SHIFT-X); and 4) enters the newly calculated balance derived from the current payment, current balance and interest charges accrued. This entry is also marked as a credit card entry. The graphics character "heart" (SHIFT-S) is used as the credit card marker. Therefore, on the graphic calendar a credit card entry will be displayed as a "CT". Option #4, the monthly update, allows the user to input a starting month and an entry. This entry is then entered at the same day each month through the end of the current year. This option can be used for such entries as mortgage payments, auto payments, etc. These entries are marked as "C" (SHIFT-S or "heart") type entries on the graphic calendar. The entire entry is copied into each appropiate date. The single entry option (#5) is self explainatory. Entries such as one-time payments or memos can be entered and are displayed as an "E" on the graphic calendar. This type of entry is designated by a "spade" or SHIFT-A as the first character of the string. Option #6 which is the search calendar option allows a search of the calendar files for any text string. The user can dump to the screen or printer a limited range of entries or all entries which contain the text srting specified. For, example by entering the indicator for tax entries (the graphics symbol "club" - SHIFT-X), all occurances of tax entries will be displayed. All occurances of a particular text string entry, for example, "VISA" may be displayed by entering "VISA" as the search string. Also, by prefacing an entry with a particular graphics symbol, a new category may be established for a given need or a standard category may be modified to provide a subcategory. For example, the tax entries identified by the "club" (SHIFT-X) graphics character may be modified by adding a second graphics character, like the "diamond" (SHIFT-Z) graphics character to designate traveling expenses. In this manner, a subcategory related to the tax category is created. All of the entries pertaining to this subcategory is then displayed by searching for the "club/diamond" (SHIFT-X/SHIFT-Z) character string. Since the search is a general search, the limitation of this feature is left to the ingenuity of the user. The tax entry option (#7) provides for entries which are automatically marked as tax entries. This provides for listing all entries pertaining to taxes using the search function. The graphic symbol which designates a tax entry is the club (SHIFT-X). This is merely a convience feature and can be easily be duplicated by placing the club symbol (SHIFT-X) in any entry. Another convience feature is the Payment Schedule option (#8). The information requested by this operation is load balance, payment amount and percent nterest per payment period. A table is generated which displays each period's balance, interest payed and the period number. Also generated is the total amount of interest and the total amount of dollars paid for the load. This function can be used to determine the number of periods required to pay out a credit card balance if no furthur charges are accrued. It can also be used to determine the effect of payment amount and/or interest percentages on the total dollars payed and the duration of the loan. Option #10 clears the screen and returns to BASIC. I hope you find this program useful! I'll be glad to respond to any queries through EMAIL. Tyrone R. Smith [75465,1753]
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