Various suggestions

As of 24th December 2013 version 2.0 is no longer available for purchase. This is a general discussion and self help section for version 2.0, for people to post stuff they have found useful.
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tycariadus
Posts:5
Joined:Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:23 pm
Location:Jersey, Channel Islands
Various suggestions

Post by tycariadus » Sat Mar 07, 2009 4:00 pm

1) Accounts screen. Would it be possible to reduce the space between accounts on the "Accounts" scren to fit more items on it, or make it user defined?

2) Transfers. When you do a Transfer, using "Transfer" as a category, it works fine for the debit account, but on the credit side it comes through as a "Credit" type therefore ignoring the category entered. Why? It then means that the balance of category "Transfer" does not equal zero!

3) Reconciliations. What practical steps should you go through with this software to reconcile an account? I'd have expected to have an option to "Show Reconciled balance" like "cleared funds" which should then match the physical statement.

4) Refunds (tip). To post a refund, against say an expense category, you need to enter a "minus" in front of the amount.

5) Amount field. The amount field defaults to 0.00, which is fine if you are entering say £100 so you just ad 10 to the field but more often than not, you are entering a number using the decimal point, so the field should be default to blank.

Further, if you have a scheduled transfer for say a credit card bill, it would be best to allow a Zero (0.00) amount, which you can then edit as an when but at the moment the software says it needs a valid amount entering!

6) Sub category. It seems you can type a sub category into a transaction, but if it does not exist in the main list of categories it will just use the category heading only, without warning that the sub catyegory does not exist. You should also have the ability to jump to the category screen to update while part way thru a transaction.

7) Copy facility. A really useful tool would be to copy an existing item, into the same account or another account. Autofill is okay to an extent but a simple copy & paste would be much quicker?

8) Wages & salary. How do you enter a full payslip, with minus items such as taxes? Further, it seems you can not "allocate" under scheduled items, such as a payslip?

9) Payment type / autofill. If you enter a letter, say "c" it should just bring up the nearest item in the table automatically, i.e. "Cheque", like the "Type" field does?

Likewise, in the payee field, if you start entering a name, it should recognise previous similar entries and then autofill the category boxes etc. Further it does not assume the same amount, and I'd suggest it should.

10) Cheque or credit slip ref number. Can I suggest a seperate field for this? Autofill copies the description used last time which is currently where the cheque number has to go, so you have to change the item afterwards defeating the purpose of an autofill.

11) Scheduled transactions. Why when entering an item to scheduled transactions, from "add transaction" in an account, does it not then save the item in the account? Am I doing something wrong?

12) Screen goes back to the top. If after enetering a transaction, and close the "add transaction" screen, the screen goes back to the beginning and not the bottom.

13) Inventory. A content inventory would be useful which is linked to a transaction, so if when entering a new expense item, you want it recrded in your inventry, you tick a box a new screen comes up afterwards with the amount, payee details etc already entered and allows you to add a file (say a scanned receipt, or initiate scanning), insurance values, location, type of item etc etc.

14) BankTree licence. Is it possible to run the application, under teh same licence on another machine in teh same house? For example sometimes I might want to do the accounts in the lounge on the laptop?

BankTree Support
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Post by BankTree Support » Sat Mar 07, 2009 5:36 pm

1) No user defined option, can go the account transaction screen by setting the start-up account, and then navigate by selecting the account. Account summary useful for grouping and sub totals.

2) You can amend the category on the CREDIT side of your transfer manually. Amending the credit part of the transaction will not break the relationship between the DEBIT side of the transaction.

3) The Reconciled balance is available under Balance Accounts.

4) You can create a REFUND category of type Income if you so require.

9) Type first letter and press the down key. More than one category can be assigned to a payee so current logic is correct.

11) Saves as Uncleared Funds (show Cleared Funds unchecked in both account and account transactions)

12) Preference to work in date descending order so transaction at top.

13) This would be outside the scope of the product.

14) Use the BankTree backup and restore functions. (Amended next release)

For all un-answered items they are either part/fully available in the next update.

tycariadus
Posts:5
Joined:Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:23 pm
Location:Jersey, Channel Islands

Response

Post by tycariadus » Sun Mar 08, 2009 7:44 am

2) Manually changing the other side really is not practical. This "feature" has created 247 such items already for me as it's only the beginning of March. Both sides should have been "Transfer". Please can this be fixed?

3) Thanks! When balancing an account however, two suggestions which are i) do not assume uncleared items are reconciled (so they should not have a "tick" against them, and ii) ability to right click and edit an item when reconciling or indeed an an item in, or delete an item.

4) Suggest you would not; just put minus in the amount, and use the original category used.

9) Noted, but "Payment type", "Payee" does not work as well as the "Type" field! If you entered say two letters, it might then be able to quickly identify the item previously entered, and yes, the payee may have more than one previously used categories, but it would certainly help if it brought up the previous one by default which you could change.

12) ok, I've turned the sort order around so the last date is at the top. Suggest you have this as a default in the software so that users understand the logic from teh outset and don't get annoyed at it jumping back up all the time?

13) Shame. I think it would be a great add-on, even if a bit more was paid!

14) Noted, but the laptop version is expecting me to register / buy a new copy??

New: Ability to jump to opposing entry or account on right click option?

General: Don't get me wrong, my comments are intended to be constructive. It's a great piece of software and does what it says on the tin!!

BankTree Support
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Post by BankTree Support » Sun Mar 08, 2009 12:24 pm

Thanks for your input, we will consider these in the next updates. If you have specific problems using the software please contact support directly.

** Updated to see what in the latest update 15 March 2009 **

http://www.banktree.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13

tycariadus
Posts:5
Joined:Sun Feb 22, 2009 4:23 pm
Location:Jersey, Channel Islands

Reconciliations

Post by tycariadus » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:13 am

Ref #3, suggest also that a date may be entered when balancing a account. That date should be the statement date so you will know next time the point when it was last done.

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