XMAN Reference Manual Introduction XMAN is a very simple application for tracking expenses on the Psion-3A palmtop. Its sole function is to allow you to enter expenses along with date and reference information. Expenses are sorted by date and displayed in a table view on the 3A. The data can be printed directly to a printer or to a file in ASCII format suitable for transfer to another computer system. XMAN is a shareware program with a modest registration fee of $10. You may use XMan for up to 30 days, but after that time you must either register the program or remove it from your computer. As an incentive for registering, you get a special registration number that enables two additional features: Expense amounts can be entered as formulae that are evaluated (so you could enter .28 * 15 to yield 4.20). The names and sizes of the expense fields can be changed to suit your personal preferences. To register XMAN, send $10 in cash, money order or cheque to: C. E. Steuart Dewar Pimlico Software 11622 West 87th Street Burr Ridge, IL 60521 OR register on-line through Compuserve by entering GO SWREG and following the instructions to specify that you want to register the XMAN Program. Installation The XMAN.ZIP file contains three files: xman.opa the actual application program xpnames.txt An ASCII file that contains the names, sizes and sort order for the six fields that are tracked with every expense (only significant on registered versions of the program) xpcats.txt An ASCII file that contains a list of the expense category names After unzipping the file on your MAC or PC, copy the XMAN.OPA file into the standard OPA directory on the Psion 3A palmtop using the copy command and copy the two TXT files into the OPD directory. XMAN will also create the expense.opd file in the \OPD directory when you first enter an expense. Install XMAN by selecting the install option on the Apps menu of the System program. Running the Program When the program is first run, it will display a registration screen that either provides registration information or displays the name of the registered user Adding an Entry To add a new entry, press the diamond key. Xman will display a dialog screen requesting information on the expense. Changing an entry To change an entry select the entry with the cursor keys and press the ENTER key. Xman will display a dialog screen requesting information on the expense. Deleting an entry To delete an entry select the entry with the cursor keys and press the DELETE key. A confirmation screen appears: press Y to delete the entry or N to leave the entry alone. Deleting all entries To kill all entries in the expense file, press Psion/K and then press the ENTER key to confirm the deletion, or press CANCEL to ignore the request. Printing the expense file The expense file can either be printed dirctly to a printer, or to an ASCII file. When Psion/P is pressed, XMan displays a dialog screen. Press P to output to a printer, F to output to a file, or esc to exit the print function. If a printer is selected, a dialog screen appears to select the printer port. Press P if the printer is attached to a parallel port, S if the printer is attached to a serial port or esc to exit this function. If the print-to-file option is selected, a dialog screen appears to get the filename for the expense file. This filename is defaulted to expense.txt and placed in the \opd directory. Press the ENTER key to generate the file or esc to exit this function. If there is already a file with that name, you will be asked whether or not you want to overwrite that existing file. Toggle Sorting on/off Whenever an expense item is added to or changed in the expense file, XMAN sorts the entry into the appropriate position based upon the date field. This sorting procedure does take a moment or two and could get lengthy if the expense file got large. By pressing Psion/S, this feature can be enabled or disabled. When disabled, an asterisk appear at the end of the status line at the bottom of the screen, and entries will not be sorted. When pressed again, sorting is re-enabled. When toggling to the enabled condition, the entire file will be resorted. Exiting the Program To exit from the program, press Psion/X. No data is ever lost as the expense file is always updated on the disk whenever a new entry is added or an existing entry modified. Selecting an entry To select an entry or scan through the expense listing, use the cursor up and down keys to move the selected line up and down by one expense record. Use PgUp/PgDn (Psion/up-down) to move one sceen page forwards and backwards, and use Home/End (Psion/left-right) to move to the first or last entry in the display. Help screen Press the HELP key for a quick summary of all the available functions in Xman. Filling in the expense entries When the diamond or ENTER keys are pressed, XMan displays a dialog screen to enter or change the fields of the current expense record. The default values (which can only be changed on registered versions of Xman) are: Type Press cursor left or right to cycle through the available expense types, or TAB to display a vertical list of all the expense categories. The expense types are listed in the xpcats.txt file. Amount Type in the expense amount as a number. With a registered version, you can type in an expression and XMan will calculate the result (example: exchange rate is 1.55 for pounds to dollars, so you could type in 23*1.55 to convert 23 pounds to the dollar equivalent). Reference This is a free-format text field intended to provide a reference for the expense (1-255 characters, but should generally be kept fairly short. Note Another free-format text field intended to contain additonal information about the expense (1-255 characters). Reimburse This is a Yes/No field that determines whether the expense is reimbursable. For many business people, certain prepaid company expenses or non-reimbursable personal expenses still need to be tracked and reported even if they are not going to be reimbursed. Date The date for the expense. Today's date is supplied as a default. You can cursor to the month, day or year and press the period or comma keys (orange + or -) to advance or backoff that field in the date. You can also press the TAB key to open up the Psion calendar (press TAB again to switch between 1-month, 3-month and 12-month views). Select the desired date with the cursor and press the ENTER key to select that date. Modifyingthe XPCATS.TXT file The expense types that Xman uses are defined in the xpcats.txt file. To change these expense types, open up the file with the Word application, but remember to save the file in TEXT and not the NORMAL format! Edit the file to list the expense types/categories that you want to track. Each type should be separated with a comma and everything should be on one line. Make sure that there are no redundant spaces and that the entire line is no longer than 255 characters. When you are finished editing, press Psion/A or use the SaveAs command to change the file type from NORMAL to TEXT and save the file under the name xpcats.txt in TEXT format and overwrite the old version of the file. Do not use the plain Save command as it will save the file in NORMAL and not TEXT format. If you save it in the wrong format by mistake, simply recall the file and do the SaveAs again in TEXT format. Registered Versions The following section is only applicable to registered versions of the XMan program. Registered versions of Xman can provide new legends and field sizes for the six fields of the XMan database. However the field types cannot be changed. So the reimburse field could, for example, be relabelled as foreign to track whether the amount was in a foreign currency or not, but the value of the field could still only be Yes or No. The xpnames.txt file is a TEXT type file, so be sure to do a SaveAs command to save the file so you can change the filetype from NORMAL to TEXT (see note above on editing the xpcats.txt file). Line 1 contains the registration number and name for registered users. Line 2 contains the title line to appear on the printed file listing of all the expense records. Line 3 contains the title line to appear on the screen display listing of all the expense records. Line 4 contains 1-6 digits that identify the fields to be displayed and the order in which they are to be printed. This order should match the legends you used for the title line on line 2 of this file.. Field numbers are as follows: 1 Date 2 Type 3 Reference 4 Amount 5 Note 6 Reimburse Line 5 contains 1-6 digits that identify the fields to be displayed and the order in which they are to be displayed on the screen. This order should match the legends you used for the title line on line 3 of this file. Line 6 Legend for date field, comma, field width for display screen, comma, field width for print-to-file. Line 7 Legend for Type field and then field widths as described above. Line 8 Legend for Reference field and then field widths as described above. Line 9 Legend for Amount field and then field widths as described above. Line 10 Legend for Note field and then field widths as described above. Line 11 Legend for Reimburse field and then field widths as described above. Software Support If you encounter any problem with Xman, or if you would like to suggest improvements etc., the best way to communicate is to send an email to Pimlico on Compuserve at 71165,1115, send a fax to 708-850-9321 (USA) or send a letter to: Pimlico Software 11622 West 87th St Burr Ridge, IL 60521 Thank you in advance for your registration... Regards, CESD