Entering Transactions
The transactions are the core of JXCirrus Finance... Once you
have set up your accounts and budgets, the rest of the system just
focuses on entering transactions...
What's In A Transaction
A transaction records 7 pieces of information:
- Description - This describes what you spent the money on (i.e.
Coffee).
- Organisation - This describes where you spent the money (i.e.
The Coffee Den).
- Date - This is when you spent the money (i.e. 21-Jan-2013).
- Amount - How much it cost (i.e. $2.00).
- From/To Account - Which account it came from (i.e. Cash).
- From/To Budget - Which budget it came from (i.e. Food).
- Notes - Any notes that you want to keep about the transaction.
All transactions have Description, Organisation, Date, Amount and
Notes. Depending on the transaction type, the last 2 fields will
change...
The 4 Transaction Types
There are 4 different types of transactions:
Expense - This is where you spend some money on something. It
has a FROM account and a FROM budget..
Income - This is where you earn some money. It has a TO account
and a TO budget.
Account Transfer - This is where you move some money from one
account to another. It has a FROM account and a TO account.
Budget Transfer - This is where you move some money from one
budget to another. It has a FROM budget and a TO budget.
The Transaction Form
To enter a transaction, just press one of the icons on the
toolbar:
for an expense (Alt-E keyboard shortcut).
for
income (Alt-I keyboard shortcut).
for an account transfer (Alt-A keyboard shortcut).
for
a budget transfer (Alt-B keyboard shortcut).
The application will then open the Transaction form:
- Description - Just enter what you bought here. Once you have
used JXCirrus Finance for a little while, this field will start
prompting you with auto-fill options, so often you only need to
enter the first 2-3 characters then let auto-fill take over.
- Organisation - Enter the organisation you spent/earnt (or
leave it blank). As with description, the field will give you
auto-fill options once you have started typing. The auto fill is
a little more intelligent than for description - If you have
entered "Coffee" for description, then it can look for
organisations that you have bought coffee from before, and will
put them first in the auto-fill list.
- Date - Dates can be any of: "21-Jan 6PM", "21-Jan", "yes"
(yesterday), "Thu" (Thursday this week), "Last Thu" (Thursday
last week), "12PM" (today). Date is never auto-filled.
- Amount - Just the number (no need for a "$" sign). If you have
used that combination of Description and Organisation before,
then Amount will be automatically filled for you. If you don't
want to use the last value, just type the new value over the old
one.
- Account/Budget - The last 2 fields are a pair of drop-downs
that let you select from the accounts and budgets. See the
"Transaction Types" section above for which fields you will see
here. These are also automatically filled if that
Description/Organisation combination was used before.
- Notes - This field just lists any notes that you want to make
about the transaction. You can put any text that you
want in here.
Exporting Transactions
If you want to do some more work with your transactions, you can
export them to a spreadsheet such as Excel. To export
the transactions, go to the main JXCirrus Finance window, use the
File menu, then Export Transactions. The system
will ask you for a name and location to save the file. The
file that it saves will be in Comma Separated Values (CSV)
form... This can be opened by most spreadsheets, such as
Microsoft Excel. This function is not available on
iOS.
A couple of things to note:
- The "Export Transactions" menu exports whatever transactions
are shown in the transaction list in the main
screen. If you have selected an account, then it
will export the visible transactions for that
account. If you want to export transactions for a
budget instead, then select the budget from the list of budgets
on the left side of the screen.
- "Export Transactions" will only export the transactions that
you can see in the list. If you want all of the
transactions in an account, then you will need to use the View
menu, then All Transactions.
Reminders
You can have JXCirrus Finance give you a reminder to actually pay
a future transaction.
When you are editing the transaction, if you set the date in the
future, you can press the
button and
the app will show a reminder if you open the app on or after that
time.
Press the
button next to the date,
or in the transaction view to mark the transaction as paid.
An Example
Here is an example of how transactions are used:
Lets imagine we have 2 accounts (Bank Account, Cash) and 2
budgets (Salary, Food). We are starting with an empty JXCirrus
Finance, and we are going to earn some money, withdraw it, and use
it to buy a coffee.
Here is how things look at the start:
Account |
Balance |
Bank Account |
$0.00 |
Cash |
$0.00 |
Budget |
Balance |
Food |
$0.00 |
Salary |
$0.00 |
Now, JXCirrus pays you $100 for some reason (maybe you work for
the company).
Description |
Salary |
Organisation |
JXCirrus |
Date |
18-Jan-2013 |
Amount |
100 |
To Account |
Bank Account |
To Budget |
Salary |
Here is how things will look...
Account |
Balance |
Bank Account |
$100.00 |
Cash |
$0.00 |
Budget |
Balance |
Food |
$0.00 |
Salary |
$100.00 |
Now, you withdraw money from an ATM...
Description |
Withdrawel |
Organisation |
ATM on Walker St |
Date |
19-Jan-2013 |
Amount |
60 |
From Account |
Bank Account |
To Account |
Cash |
Here is how things will look....
Account |
Balance |
Bank Account |
$40.00 |
Cash |
$60.00 |
Budget |
Balance |
Food |
$0.00 |
Salary |
$100.00 |
And you buy yourself a coffee...
Description |
Coffee |
Organisation |
Hole in the Wall |
Date |
19-Jan-2013 |
Amount |
2 |
From Account |
Cash |
From Budget |
Food |
Here is how things will look...
Account |
Balance |
Bank Account |
$40.00 |
Cash |
$58.00 |
Budget |
Balance |
Food |
-$2.00 |
Salary |
$100.00 |
So... Using transactions, you can keep track of everything...