Checkbook Ease User Manual

Checkbook 

Introduction    

Checkbook Ease  is designed to help you manage your bank accounts and future expenses. Create a budget and then place money into each budget category for future expenses. As money is assigned to a budget category,  the remaining balance in each category is displayed. Checkbook Ease automatically budgets for future credit cards payments. When credit cards are used for a purchase,  money is transferred from the budget category to the credit card category  for the future credit card payment.

Checkbook Ease Features

Account Features

•  Checkbook Ease manages  Checking, Savings, Money Market and Credit Cards.

• The number of accounts is virtually unlimited.

• Transfer money between bank accounts with a one entry.

• Make a credit card payment from a bank account with a one entry.

• Checkbook Ease  displays all open transactions for easy balancing.

• Calculates a starting balance insure the  register is accurate.

• Search transactions by, type, date, amount, budget category or payee.

• Retrieve a bank statement to help find a particular transaction.

• Find expenses charged to a budget category.

• Archive closed accounts for viewing at any time

•  Using a Budget is not necessary to manage your Bank Accounts

Budget Features

• Monies are set aside or placed money into each budget category each month

• Monthly budget and balance seen while entering transactions.

• Money is automatically transferred to the credit card category for charges

• One click to see yearly summary and charts

Getting Started    

          Checkbook Ease has sample bank accounts and budget. The samples budget files are based on the set up example below.  The quickest way to learn Checkbook Ease is to: 

 Read the set up example below:

 Watch the Video Tour at  http://www.checkbookease.com/

 Use the sample files to practice using Checkbook Ease

 Use the help files and tips of the day for further information

                                                 Setup Example 

           There are four basic steps to setting up Checkbook Ease:

                Step 1.   Define your Goals

Step 2.   Enter your bank accounts and credit cards into Checkbook Ease                      

Step 3.   Enter your monthly budget to achieve goals into Checkbook Ease                      

Step 4.  Transfer money into Budget Categories

Step 1.     Define your Goals.     (Top )

              We will use a fictitious family, John and Martha Denton who have two children, a son Adam, age 14 and a 9 year old daughter Jessica. John works as a technician for Hi-Tech Partners a technical company and earns $27 per hour. His company provides a good health plan for the family and also life insurance for John.

              Martha works part time as a medical insurance specialist for Cedar Medical Center earning $12 per hour. She has just increased her hours from about 10 hours a week to roughly 30 hours a week.  Prior to her increase in hours, the family had incurred $9000 in credit card debt due to unexpected repairs they needed for their house. The  interest on the $9,000- is costing them $4,213 per year.  Martha accepted the increased hours so that the additional income (about $835 per month) could be used to pay off the credit cards and start saving money for the children's education.

                   Goals:          

             1.   Allocate $835 per month to pay off credit card debt first.....then after the debt is paid..

             2.   Save $335 per month for children's education.

Step 2.  Set up your bank accounts and credit cards     (Top)

Step 3.  Set up monthly budget to achieve goals     (Top )

                                                                        The budget should add up your total monthly income (take home pay).    

    The budget of $4,965 per month equals the total income of the family; therefore all their income has been budgeted.                               

Detailed construction of the budget  

Credit Card Payment   (Top )

           The Checkbook Ease Credit Card debt reduction planner was run. A plan using the minimum payments would take almost 11 years to pay the debt and incur $4,141 in interest charges.  

Minimum Payment Plan

         Checkbook Ease credit card planner was then used with a  fixed payment of  $835 and the option  to pay off the higher interest rate card first. This plan yielded a total interest of $696, a savings of  $3,663 in interest, and the debt being paid off in 1 year instead of 11 years!

Note: Actual interest rates were not used. This example is to demonstrate the
       effect of fixed payments and paying the highest interest rate cards first.

Fixed Expenses

         The fixed expenses category contains the fixed payments the Denton’s must make. The mortgage payment is monthly but the real estate taxes and home insurance are yearly and the car insurance is paid every 6 months. One of the major features of Checkbook Ease  is its budgeting section. Money is set aside each month into each budget category and Checkbook Ease displays the current balance (money yet to spend) for each budget category.  Checkbook Ease allows the Denton’s to set aside a monthly amount for their real estate taxes, home insurance and car insurance. This feature levels the Denton’s monthly expenses and insures the money has been set aside to pay these bills when they come due.

Item	Yearly	Monthly
Real Estate	$1800	$150
House Insurance	$1200	$100
Car Insurance	$1200	$100

 Utilities

         The Denton’s looked at last years electric and heating bills and determined the average monthly amount for their budget. The telephone, water, internet and cable bills where about the same each month. Setting money aside will help them meet the higher heating bills in winter. 

Step 4.  Transfer money into Budget      (Top )

After you have entered the budget into Checkbook Ease, the next step is to transfer or set aside money into each budget category. Money that has not been budgeted is called disposable cash. Before you budget any money, all the money in your bank accounts is considered disposable cash. You budget money by transferring money from disposable cash to a budget category by selecting the Transfer to a Budget Category. This money shows up in the balance column of the budget category. As you enter transactions and assign a budget category, the balance (the money left to spend) is either reduced or increased depending upon whether the transaction is a charge or a credit.

 If you get paid once a month, near the end of the month, you would usually set up the upcoming months’ budget after your paycheck has been deposited into your checking account. You do not have to transfer money into one category at a time. Checkbook Ease has, on the Transfer Money form, the option called Monthly Transfer – This will transfer one month of budget expenses from disposable cash to your budget balances.

 Another alternative is to use the budget split feature. As an example, you can allocate your paycheck into several budget categories. Thus your budget will be updated as you you get paid.  You can use the schedule transaction feature to automatically enter your paycheck and put money into the budget when the transaction is entered.

Additional Money Transfers

In addition to the monthly transfer,  we need to set aside the first 5 months of budget for the following Fixed Expenses:

Real Estate Taxes ... $150 per month for 5 months

House Insurance ...   $100 per month 5 months

Car Insurance ...         $100 per month 5 months

Total per month          $350 per month 

Total for 5 months      $1,750

We will transfer $1,750 from disposable cash to fixed expenses. This finishes the setup.