Chapter 1. Screen Layout and Forms

Edit Form

Summary Form

Currency Converter

Chapter 2. Basic Concepts

Working with Expenses

Working Set

Default Currency

Check Marks

Chapter 3. Entry Menu

Check All Command

Uncheck All Command

Reverse Check Mark Command

Modify Checked Command

Delete Checked Command

Change Signs Command

Export Command

Chapter 4. View Menu

No Filter Command

Checked Entries Command

Unchecked Entries Command

More Filters Command

Sort Command

Columns Command

Colors Command

Chapter 5. Options Menu

Preferences Command

Security Command

Delete Command

Categories Command

Accounts Command

Currencies Command

Calculator Command

Appendix.  To Get Help

To switch among these three forms, just tap on one of the three icons shown at the upper right corner of the screen (see the picture on the right). Next  we will explain in detail about how to use these forms.

Buttons to Switch Forms

On the right is a screen shot of the Edit Form. At the upper-right corner of the screen are three icons that allow you to switch among the three forms. The Range pop-up trigger above the table lets you chose a date range to view the entries.

Choosing a Date Range  To select a range of dates to view the expense data, just tap on the Range pop-up trigger and a pop-up menu will show. In this menu, you can choose any month, week, day, or even year-to-date as your viewing range. Moreover, the two triangular icons to the right of the Range pop-up trigger are the Date Range Navigation Buttons. They let you easily flip through your data. When your current view range is a month, tapping on these buttons will shift the date range by one month; similarly, if you're viewing one week's or one day's data, tapping these buttons will shift it by one week or one day. If you have chosen a custom date range of, say 10 days, then the shift amount will be 10 days.

Entry Table  In the middle of the form is the Entry Table that shows all entries in the current Working Set. Each column in the Table corresponds to one of the expense attributes assigned to each expense. Columns shown in this picture are, from left to right, Check Mark, Date, Category, Amount, and Note. You can choose to show or hide a column by using the Columns command, or sort the entries, change the colors, and use filter-related commands to show/hide part of the entries. Export command can be used to export expense entries to Memo Pad in CSV format. (CSV stands for Comma-Separated Values. This format is widely accepted by many financial/accounting software on Microsoft Windows, such as Microsoft Excel.)

• Total Amount In the footer of the table is the total amount of entries currently displayable in the table (called Working Set.) Expense Diary calculates the sum only for entries in the current Working Set, entries that are not viewable are not counted. In our example, the total of 29 viewable entries is $2,537.22. This total amount is always displayed in default currency. 

Edit Form

• To change column widths, just drag a vertical separator in the table header (the red circles in the picture on the right) .

• To check/uncheck entries, you can tap on the first column (the chek mark column) to check/uncheck an entry. Please refer to the Check Marks section for details about check marks and operations.

Column Separators

• To review notes,  just tap on a note icon when the Note column is showing. This will bring up a text box which shows the first three lines of an item's note. This gives you a quick way to review notes. To close the text box, just tap anywhere on the screen. To change the note text, however, you'll have to use the Modify button at the bottom of the screen.

• Double-tapping  You can double-tap on an entry to bring up the Modify dialog box, this is the same as using the Modify button. But note that don't tap on the check mark column or Note column, because tapping on these columns has already been defined as explained earlier.

At the bottom of the screen are three buttons that let you add, modify and delete entries. Note that you have to have an entry selected before using Modify and Delete buttons. To select an entry, just use your stylus to tap on any entry in the table.

Review Notes

Number of Entries  At the lower-right corner of the screen shows two numbers: the denominator is the total number of expense entries in the database, the numerator is the number of entries in the the Working Set. Only entries in the Working Set are displayed, others are hidden. In this example, there are a total of 44 entries in the database, but only 29 are of them in the current Working Set and thus displayed in the Entry Table. The rest of the 15 entries are hidden.

All menu commands work only on entries belong to the current Working Set. You will never accidentally do anything that can affect entries that you can't see.

Number of Entries

What follows is the same Range pop-up trigger as the one seen in the Edit Form. You can use this pop-up trigger to set up your Working Set. Summary Form calculates totals only for entries in the current Working Set; entries that are not displayable in the table are not included in the calculation.

Note that Edit Form and Summary Form share the same Working Set. That is, once you have set either the date range or the filter in one form, this change will automatically be applied to the other form.

All amounts shown in Summary Form are in default currency. To change default currency, please use the Preferences command; to change exchange rate, use the Currencies command.

Colors used in the table can be customized by using the Colors command; entries in the table can be sorted by the Sort command or exported by using the Export command.

Summary Form

To use the converter, simply enter an amount into any of the four fields and the rest of the three fields are automatically updated to show the converted results. Other than using Graffiti to enter numbers, you can also tap on the calculator icons located on the right to call up the calculator screen. In there, you can do some calculations and then tap the Enter button to make the result filled into the corresponding field. To change currency, use the currency symbol pop-up triggers.

If you wish to modify currency definitions (such as exchange rates), you can either use the Options> Currencies command from the Options menu, or you can choose the Edit command shown in the list that appears after you have tapped on a currency pop-up trigger. The Edit command is the last one in the list.

Currency Converter

New/Modify Expense  To add an expense, use the New button at the bottom of the Edit Form. 

To enter negative expenses, just put a minus sign in front of the number. If you want to edit the definitions of categories or accounts at the time of creating or modifying an entry, just taps on the corresponding pop-up trigger, this will bring up a list of selections for you to choose. At the bottom of the list, there is an Edit command, choose this command and you will be brought to another dialog box which allows you to edit the definitions. (Please refer to the Options> Categories and Options> Accounts commands sections for details on those dialog boxes.) Once you have done with editing, the modified list of categories or accounts will be available in the corresponding pop-up list.

To modify an expense entry, use the Modify button at the bottom of the Edit Form. This brings up the same dialog box as the New button.

Modify Multiple Entries  If you want to modify multiple entries so that they have the same value in an attribute, e.g., modify 5 entries and let their Category be "Hotel", you can use the Entry> Modify Checked  command.

Delete Multiple Entries  If you want to delete more than one entry at a time, you can use the Entry> Delete Checked command.

New/Modify Dialog Box

Expense Diary is designed to be able to handle multiple currencies. That is, you can define the exchange rate of each currency, enter expense amounts in different currencies, and view entries in their original currencies. But in some operations, such as adding up the total or sorting entries by amount, there has to be a "common ground" for the operation to be sensible. For example, 1 US Dollar and 2 Japanese Yens is not 3 US Dollars, and 1 US Dollar is not less than 2 Japanese Yens.

To make things sensible, the program converts all amounts into Default Currency before the operation starts. In the above example, 2 Japanese Yen will be converted to a few cents of US$, assuming the default currency is US Dollar, before adding together with 1 US Dollar.

Usually, the default currency is your home currency, and all the other currencies are just the ones you use when you travel abroad. Expense Diary comes with several pre-defined currencies, of course you can change them, delete them, or add new ones. But in any case, Expense Diary will need at least one currency to be the default currency. Please refer to the Options> Currencies command for details about how to manage currencies, and Options> Preferences command for how to choose a default currency.

Note that because the exchange rates of pre-defined currencies are wired-in the program few months (even years) before you obtained this software, so they are outdated by now. You must enter the latest exchange rates yourself before using them. To do so, please use the Options> Currencies command. 

Choosing Default Currency

Check marks are a special mark used to flag expense entries. The meaning of the check marks is totally up to the user, the program does not make any assumption about the meaning of them. For example, you can use a check mark to indicate an entry has been reimbursed, or a purchase's mail-in rebate hasn't been mailed yet. Or, you can use it as a way of selecting more than one entry for modification or deletion (see Entry> Modify Checked and Entry> Delete Checked commands.) Anyway, the meaning of the check/uncheck state is totally up to you.

Check mark of expense entries

Note that if your current filter setting is based on check marks, changing an item's check mark state will make the entry "disappear" from the table. See the Working Set section for more information.

Other than the operations mentioned above, the user can also use Entry> Check All and Entry> Uncheck All commands to check or uncheck all entries in the Working Set; use Entry> Reverse Check Mark command to reverse the state of check marks for all items in the Working Set. To modify or delete all checked entries in the Working Set, you can use Entry> Modify Checked or Entry> Modify Checked commands.

Show/Hide columns

When you first enter the dialog box, all the fields in it are empty. If you assign a value to any field, then that field of all the checked entries will have the value you assigned when you tap the OK button. For example, if you set the Category field to be "Hotel", then all the checked entries' Category field will become "Hotel", but other fields will remain intact.

This dialog box is basically the same as the New/Modify dialog box with the addition of the Note pop-up trigger. If you leave this pop-up trigger empty, then the Note text will not be changed. If you set it to "Change" (the only selectable entry in the Note pop-up list) and enter some text in the text field below, then all the checked entries will have the same note text; if you set it to "Change" and leave the text field empty, then all the note text of the checked entries will be removed.

This command is only available in the Edit Form. 

Modify Checked Command

Data are exported in the same format as the table is currently showing. To make sure the data you want get exported, you should first use View> Columns command to choose the columns you want to export. If you're in the Summary View when this command was activated, the data exported will always be the Name (or Date) and Amount columns.

• Name of export set -- Because of the size limit of Memo Pad records, the exported data may have to be broken into several records. In order to let the user know exactly what records in Memo Pad were exported from Expense Diary, the user can give a name for the set of records. This name will be shown in the first line of each record. Furthermore, a sequential number will be automatically appended to this name to identify them more clearly.

• Convert amounts -- This checkbox is used to indicate that you want the amounts, no matter what currencies they're in, be converted into default currency when exported.

• Currency symbols -- These three checkboxes allow you to decide how you want the currency symbols be exported. The choice is entirely dependent on how you're going to do with the exported data. If you just want to print them out, then you may want to choose the middle one which exports amounts in the same format as we usually see them -- dollar sign followed by amount. If you want to use the data in another software, then you have to think about how well the software handles currency symbols, especially when there may be more than one kind of currency symbols. Take Microsoft Excel for example, if it encounters a currency symbol that is not its default, it'll treat the number as text, instead of numeric, value, which is probably not what you want. Check your software, and maybe do a few experiments to see which option suits you best. 

Export dialog box

Based on your choice in the Field pop-up trigger, you will be prompted to enter different values:

Filter dialog box

Choose categories

Enter an amount

Sort dialog box

The Note Text and Note Icon columns are mutually exclusive. That is, when one is selected, the other is automatically deselected. The Note Text columns shows the actual text of the notes, whereas the Note Icon column uses an icon to represent non-empty notes.

This command is only available in Edit Form. 

Columns command

The Factory Default button brings you back to what they were like the first time you installed the software.

Colors command

• Sales tax – This is to set up the default sales tax percentage that is used in the built-in calculator. It gives you a quick way to calculate how much the total amount after tax.

• Tip – Also used in the calculator. It's for you to quickly calculate how much the tip should be.

• Use minus signs – When checked, negative expenses are displayed using a minus sign, e.g., -$13.38. By default, negative numbers are displayed using parenthesis, e.g., ($13.38).Confirm – This option makes the program to display a confirmation message before deleting an expense.

• Confirm before deleting – When checked, a message will pop up to ask you if you really want to delete an expense.

• Retain sort order – When checked, the table sort order will be remembered when you leave the application. It will be re-applied when you re-enter the application.

• Retain filter – the filter you used in the last session will be remembered and automatically applied when you enter Expense Diary next time.

• Default – This pop-up trigger lets you choose a different currency as the default currency. When chosen, all exchange rates will be re-calculated because all exchange rates are based on the default currency.

• Show in default currency – If checked, all amounts shown in the program will be converted to default currency. For example, 120 Japanese Yens will be displayed as 1 US Dollar (or so). But this conversion is done only for display purpose, the data saved in the database are not affected.

• Convert before saving – If checked, all amounts will be converted to default currency before saving. For example, you made a purchase of 120 Yen, and you entered it as 120 Yen, but when this amount was saved into the database, it's saved as 1 US Dollar. This conversion implies that the Yen-to-Dollar exchange rate will be "frozen" at the rate on the date when you entered the data, and the amount (in Dollars) won't change even if you change the rate in the future. Checking this option helps you preserve the expense's equivalent default currency amount. But on the other hand, you lose the information of the original amount. You can use this option depending on which information you want to keep in the database.

• Show currency symbol – If not checked, the program displays only the numeric value of amounts but without the currency symbol. If your expenses are all in one currency and if you want to save some screen space, this may be a good choice for you.

If your device is a SONY Clié series device and it supports high resolution, there will be a third folder in this dialog box, called "SONY HiRes." There is only one option in this folder: "Small font". This option directs the program to show text in SONY's unique small font and thus can show more rows and columns in the table, but it may at the same time cause legibility problem to some people. You can use this option depending on your need.

Preferences command

When security mode is on, you will be asked to enter the password before entering and using Expense Diary. You can deactivate this mode by going to Security dialog box and uncheck the options.

Security command

Password Dialog Box

Or, you can tap the Delete All button to delete all expense entries from memory. This deletes only the expense entries, other information such as list of categories, accounts, currencies, or other preference settings are not affected.

Database command

When you tap the New or Rename button, a second dialog box pops up which lets you give a name for the new category, or change the name of an existing category.

The Beam button lets you merge the list of categories with that on another handheld device. The beaming is a merge operation. That is, when beaming, only categories that do not exist on the receiving handheld will be added, but existing ones will not be affected.

Categories command

New Category Dialog Box

The second part, the detailed definition of a currency is different. The second dialog box is shown on the right. In this dialog box:

• Name -- Enter the name of the currency here.

• Currency symbol -- Enter currency symbol of this currency here.

• Symbol after digits -- Makes the currency symbol to appear after the digits.

• Number of digits -- When displaying an amount of this currency, how many decimal digits should there be? For example, amounts in US Dollar usually have 2 digits, whereas Japanese Yen usually has no decimal digit.

• Exchange rate -- Note that there are two ways to enter the exchange rate: either use the default currency as the basis, or use this currency that is being edited. For example, if you're editing Japanese Yen and the default is US Dollar, then most likely you'll choose to use the first option that uses the default currency as the basis and enter 120. But if your default currency is Japanese Yen and US Dollar is the foreign currency, then you may want to do it another way round -- use the second option which uses this currency (US Dollar) as the basis of the exchange rate and enter 120.

New Currency Dialog Box

When tapped on the Enter button, the calculator window closes and the current value is returned to the caller of the calculator, if the caller can accept a value. If tapped outside of the calculator window or inside of the LCD display area, the calculator window closes.

Calculator command