Sample Workbook
The easiest way to try the features of Home Credit Card Manager Lite is to open the sample workbook and follow the examples and exercises listed below. You can open the sample workbook at any time by selecting from the menu.
If you are new to Home Credit Card Manager Lite you may wish to read the where to start help topic first.
Contents of the Workbook
The sample workbook contains two credit card accounts. The "Credit Card Gold" account currently contains six months of statements and transactions, and the "Credit Card Platinum" account contains eight months of statements and transactions.
When you first open the sample workbook, the "Credit Card Gold" account will be selected and the main screen will be displaying the Statements for the account.
To work with a credit card, click on the account name in the list on the left hand side (under the Accounts title). You can view the Statements for the credit card you are working with by clicking on the Statements button in the toolbar, and you can view the Transactions in a statement by clicking Transactions button in the toolbar.
Reports
The reports are designed to give you instant summaries of your credit card expenses. From the Reports menu select the Yearly Total report and you will see a yearly summary for the "Credit Card Gold" account for 2011.
- Click on the Year and change it to 2010 to view the expenses for the previous year.
- Click on the Detail button to switch from the summary view to the detail view.
- Click on the column headings to sort the information (for example, clicking on the Amount column is a handy way to find your biggest expenses).
- Click on "Include All Accounts" to view a grand total across all your credit card accounts.
Matching Transactions and Categories
Before the reports can provide you with a summary of your expenses, you need to allocate categories to each of your transactions (and you will see later that the auto-matching tool does most of the work for you).
First, let's manually allocate categories to the transactions.
- Check that the "Credit Card Gold" account is selected in the account list.
- Click on the newest statement for the account (which has a date range of 01 January 2011 to 31 January 2011).
- Switch to the Transaction view (either by clicking on the Transaction button in the toolbar, or double-clicking on the statement).
- Click on the "Select Category ..." values on the screen and chose an appropriate category from the list. As you allocate categories to the transactions, the totals on the right hand side of the screen are updated. The blank category represents the total of the transactions that don't currently have a category.
- Click on the Summary and Detail buttons to switch between the summary and detailed view of the expenses for the statement.
- Click on the table headings to sort the transactions or the expense categories. For Example, click on the transaction Amount header to sort by transaction amount (this is a quick way to find the largest transaction in the statement).
Adding a New Statement
Next we'll add the latest statement to the "Credit Card Gold" account:
- Select the Statement View screen for the account (from the menu choose or click on the Statements button in the toolbar).
- Select the statement Add button (located under the STATEMENTS title).
- In the New Statements Details form enter a start date of 01/02/2011 and an end date of 28/02/2011 (assuming a date format of DD/MM/YYYY). Set the reporting year to 2011 and the opening balance to 866.79, then press Ok.
Importing Transactions
To save you typing in all your transaction details you can use the import wizard to load your information automatically from a .CSV file (refer to "How do I get my transactions into an import file?" further down the page for more information on CSV files). The latest transactions for the "Credit Card Gold" account are available in a .CSV file in the sample directory, and here is how you can load them:
- Click on the Import Transactions button on the toolbar (or from the menu choose ).
- Check that the "Statement To Update" is the new one created in the step above.
- Click on the Browse... button, locate the samples directory, select the file named "SampleStatementFeb2011.csv" and click on the Open button.
- Click on the Start Import Wizard button and the Import Transaction Wizard will be displayed.
- The first step of the Wizard allows you to define the characteristics of the file. For this example we have selected comma as the delimiter and we are starting the import at row one (you may need to start at a different row if your file contains header rows you wish to skip).
- Click on the Next button.
- The next four steps of the wizard allow you to define the amount(s), the date and the description fields in the file. You can select the required column by clicking on the column in the table or by typing in the column number. The first time you run the Import Transaction Wizard it will be set up to load the sample file, so you shouldn't need to change any values.
- Continue to click the Next button until you reach the final step. This step will list any important information before the file is imported.
- Click on the Finish button. If everything is ok, then the transactions will be loaded into the statement. If everything is not ok, then you will be shown where the errors are in the file and you will need to go back through the steps and correct the problems.
How do I get my transactions into an import file?
Most banks allow you to view your transactions online via their Internet banking site, and provide you with the option to download your transactions to a CSV file.
When viewing your transactions online, look for the download or export option and select the CSV format (other names for the CSV file format include: CSV text file, Comma Separated Values (CSV), Spreadsheet file, Plain Text file). If you can't see any of these options please contact your lender for more information on how to download your transactions into a CSV file.
Once you have downloaded your transactions and stored the file on your computer, it is ready to load directly into the software using the import wizard.
Category Auto-Matching
At this stage, the new statement created above should have 36 transactions.
- In the Transaction View you will see 36 transactions with a category of "Select Category ..."
- Click on the Auto Match button on the toolbar (or from the menu choose ).
- Check that the "Statement To Update" is the new one created in the step above.
- Check that the "Match to Category Wildcard Patterns" is ticked and "Match to Statements Previously Loaded" is set to "All Statements"
- Click on the Auto-Match button.
- All the categories will be automatically allocated except for six transactions.
- Manually select categories for the remaining transactions.
Other Exercises
Try the following:
- From the menu choose . Select different statements, sort the columns (by clicking on the headers), view the summary and detailed positions.
- From the menu choose . Edit a category, add a new category and add a wildcard.
Summary
You have now covered some of the major features of Home Credit Card Manager Lite.
If you need help creating your own workbook, refer to the help topic entering credit card details.