Option | Arguments | Description |
---|---|---|
-f | QHACC_HOME | Using this switch will override whatever value is currently stored in the QHACC_HOME environment variable, if any. This options allows multiple QHACC_HOMEs to be used for different purposes. If it is used, the -f option must be the first argument. |
-w | none | show warranty information |
--cron1 | scheduled transaction filename | see Scheduled Transactions below |
--archive1 | a date string2 | see Archiving below |
--restore | archive directory | see Archiving below |
--preport | account identifier3 | "Totals by Payee" report. seeReporting below |
--breport | account identifier3 | "Monthly Balances" report. seeReporting below |
--dreport | account identifier3 | "Monthly Deltas" report. seeReporting below |
--accounts | none | display account names, balances, and number of transactions |
--transactions | account identifier3 | display all the transactions in a particular account |
--version | none | display the version, warranty information, and compile-time options |
--help | none | show these options |
If you are not using a mouse, the Account Chooser is navigable with the
up and down arrows. Pressing the spacebar will open the account.
In both cases, the selected account will be printed in bold font and a
colored highlight bar will illuminate the account in the Chooser.
The popup menu available in the Account Chooser allows you to reconcile,
edit, add, or delete an account. It is not necessary to open an account
in order to use these functions. (i.e., You can be viewing your checking
account, and open your savings account for reconciling.) Please be
careful when using this liberty to make sure you don't delete the wrong
account. The popup also allows you to toggle the Account Chooser's view,
to show or hide categories. If you are not using a mouse, these
functions are available from the Account or Preferences
menubar.
The Account Viewer window has two different popups, depending on what is
currently highlighted. When a transaction is highlighted, the popup will
allow you to edit the current transaction, or add a new one, reconcile a
single transaction, or memorize one. Please see the section below for more details on memorizing
transactions. If the "<new>" transaction is highlighted, the popup
will allow you to insert either a new or memorized transaction, or
change the system preferences.
The Account Viewer can be sorted based on date or transaction payee,
though the default is by date. Sorting by payee is provided with the
hope that it makes finding a specific transaction easier, but this
preference will not be honored across saves. That is, if you exit the
program, all the transactions go back to sorting by date.
Interface Layout
The QHacc window consists of just three main parts: the Account
Chooser, the Account Viewer, and the Status Bar. The Account
Chooser is on the left side of the screen, and displays all your
accounts and their balances. The rest of the screen is devoted to the
Account Viewer. The Account Viewer displays all the transactions in a
specific account. The Status Bar runs below the Account Viewer and the
Account Chooser. It displays information about the currently-opened
account such as it name, type of account, number of transactions, and
account balance. It also notifies the user if any information has been
changed since the last save.
The Account Chooser
The Account Chooser is the navigator and maintenance hub for
accounts. Clicking on an account will open that account, and display all
its transactions in the Account Viewer. Double-clicking on an account
will bring up the Account Edit Dialog box. More about that later.
The Account Viewer
The Account Viewer displays all the transactions in the opened
account. It looks vaguely like a spreadsheet display, with serveral
columns and resizeable column headers. Underneath the headers are all
the transactions in the account. Clicking on a transaction will open
the Transaction Editor. Alternately, you can click on the "<new>"
transaction to insert a totally new transaction. Alternately
alternately, you can use the keyboard to navigate the Viewer. Using
the up and down arrows will select transactions. As with the Account
Chooser, pressing the spacebar will open the transaction for editing.
Key | Scope | Function |
---|---|---|
CTRL-X | Global | Save files and exit QHacc. |
CTRL-S | Global | Save files. |
CTRL-Q | Global | Quit QHacc without saving files. |
CTRL-V | Global | Toggle category view of account chooser. |
CTRL-O | Global | Toggle the red/black hilighting in the Chooser. |
CTRL-W | Global, if a transaction is hilighted in the Viewer | Write the hilighted transaction to a schedule file. |
spacebar | Chooser | Open the hilighted account in the Viewer. |
del | Chooser | Delete the account hilighted in bold. |
del | Viewer | Delete the transaction hilighted in bold. |
CTRL-C | Viewer | Copy the hilighted transaction. |
CTRL-P | Viewer | Paste the previously-memorized transaction. |
i | Viewer | Insert a transaction. This new transaction will have the same date as the previously-hilighted transaction. |
e | Viewer | Edit the hilighted transaction. |
spacebar | Viewer | Open the Transaction Editor for the hilighted transaction. |
spacebar | Reconcile Window | Mark the hilighted transaction as reconciled. |
ASSET |
LIABILITY |
EQUITY |
EXPENSE |
REVENUE |
MARKET |
You can get more information about how to use these accounts in the Accounting Primer.
Accounts can also be made into categories. A category is an account in every sense of the word, but just a little different. Categories are not included when computing a personalities' total equity. There is also a preference item to exclude Categories from the Account Chooser. This preference is available through the Preferences Dialog or the Chooser's popup. This feature allows a user to maintain a eyeball on those accounts that are most important to him/her, while hiding the ones that are less important.
When considering writing scripts or the like using the account information given by the --accounts command line option, it should be noted that account ids can change during the normal course of using QHacc. Therefore, it is not adviseable to write scripts based on hard-coded account ids.
Note that Market functionality can be omitted with a compile-time option.
Double-Entry transactions are just like single-entry transactions,
except that each transaction must be part of two accounts. Double-Entry
transactions are generally split between an income and expense account,
though this rule is not a requirement. In any event, when you specify
double entry bookkeeping, the Transaction Editor will get one more
field--the double entry account field.
Split Transactions are a special type of transaction where one
transaction has many different double-entry pairs. The most common use
of this type of transaction is probably for entering your paycheck, I
think. Your employer generally pays you one sum, but also pays taxes on
your behalf, or splits your paycheck between several different accounts,
like a checking and savings account. All these splits can be entered
into a different account, but still only take up one transaction in your
"job" account, for example. Is that clear?
In order to change a regular double-entry transaction into a good
old-fashioned split transaction, one just needs to push the "split"
button in the Transaction Editor. This will open the Split Editor, and
you can go merrily on your way. If, on the other hand, you have a split
transaction that you would like to make into a double-entry transaction,
set its sum to "0" or just leave the appropriate sum field blank. When
the transaction is saved, splits with 0 balance will be removed.
When using the Split Editor, it is important to remember that
transactions are not modified until the Enter key or the "Enter"
button is pressed. When the "Okay" button is pressed in the Split
Editor, the transaction editor will display updated values, but the
transaction is not modified. Opening the Split Editor again will
display only the updated values. To get back to the original values of
the transaction, hit "Cancel" in the Split Editor. This will reset all
the splits to the transaction's original values.
To remove a transaction from the "memorized" list, delete the
transaction that you originally memorized.
QHacc supports copying and pasting transactions as well. The mechanism
is exactly the same as for memorized transactions, but the only one
transaction can be pasted at a time. Also, pasted transactions retain
their original timestamp. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-P are the cut and paste
shortcuts, respectively.
In addition to scheduling a flat dollar value when using scheduled
transactions, QHacc supports scheduled transactions whose sum is based
on a percentage of the account's balance at the time of entry. See the
schedule format section of the manual for details.
Presently, only adding transactions is supported in --cron mode.
The reconcile window is a fully-capable Account Viewer. That is,
transactions can be added, removed, or edited just as they can be in the
main Account Viewer. Both displays will remain synchronized while the
reconcile window is open. Any transactions added while the reconcile
window is open will automatically be marked as reconciled, regardless of
which display is used to enter it. The reconcile window is modeless, so
several accounts be reconciled at once.
An account cannot be deleted while it is being reconciled.
The opposite of --archive is --restore. It must be followed by the
directory from which to read the archive files. With this functionality,
it can be useful to move all archived files into a time-stamped
directory for safe-keeping. Then, restores can easily occur from within
that directory.
Similar to Market Accounting, Graphing and Reporting can be omitted at
compile time.
When using the GUI for graphs and reports, multiple accounts and groups
of accounts can be selected at once. Select an account, and then hold
the shift- or ctrl-key to select either a range of accounts, or
individual accounts, respectively.
When switching bookkeeping styles, QHacc performs what I will call
"lazy" updating. That is, if you used to use double-entry bookkeeping
and you switched to single-entry, none of the links will break. The
links between transactions remain intact until the transaction is opened
and then resaved. Likewise, single-entry transactions will remain
pairless until they are opened as double-entry transactions. This is
true even across saves.
Transaction Operations
QHacc has a number of different types of transactions. They all work in
the same way, so using them is easy. All transactions have five main
fields:
Normal Transactions
If you use single-entry bookkeeping, most of the transactions you will
probably enter into QHacc will be classified as normal transactions. They
contain only the fields listed above. As described above, clicking on the
"<new>" part of the Account Viewer is the usual way to enter a new
transaction. An opened transaction can be saved by hitting the enter
key. The changes can be discarded by pressing esc.
Market Transactions
QHacc also provides preliminary support for market transactions. You
must have a market account to make market transactions. Market
transactions are similar to normal transactions, except that you must
specify shares and price instead of a flat sum. If you are using double
entry bookkeeping and you edit a market transaction from a non-market
account, the market transaction will be replaced by a regular
double-entry transaction.
Split/Double-Entry Transactions
Split and Double-Entry transactions are handled the same way in
QHacc. In order to use this transaction type, you must specify double
entry bookkeeping from the Preferences Dialog.
Memorized Transactions
Memorized Transactions are a feature of QHacc aimed at reducing the
number of times you must enter the same transaction. If you have a
transaction that you enter into an account regularly (or just often),
you can memorize it. From the transaction popup, select "memorize."
Then, you can re-enter the same transaction as often as you like by
selecting it from the "memorized" part of the popup. Everytime you enter
a memorized transaction, the new one will be identical to the old one,
except that the date will be that day. This feature works for normal,
market, double-entry, and split transactions, so use it 'til your
heart's content.
Scheduled Transactions
Scheduled transactions are the only type of transaction that QHacc
cannot insert from the GUI. In fact, QHacc has no native scheduling
facility at all, so scheduled transactions are not really scheduled by
QHacc. Instead, scheduled transactions can be inserted into QHacc's
database by creating a file in a particular format (see
schedule format), and running QHacc from
cron with the --cron argument and filename. The --cron mode starts a
command line version of QHacc and enters a single transaction before
saving everything and exiting. In this mode, errors are written to
standard error, but nothing else is written to the screen. The necessary
transaction file can be written by hand, or created for you by QHacc
from a transaction already entered. To have QHacc generate the file,
just highlight the file in the account viewer, and select "write to
transfile" from the pulldown or press CTRL-W on the keyboard.
Reconciling
Reconciling is one of the most important functions of any accounting
program. It is the way to compare your balance to your bank's
balance. In QHacc, you can open a reconcile window by right-clicking
"reconcile" from either the Account Chooser popup or the Account
pulldown. The reconcile window allows you to enter the starting and
ending balances for reconciling, as well as the cut-off date for
transactions. When opening the window, the current date and current
balance of the account are pre-entered in their respective
fields. Changing the date will recalculate the expected balance, but
this can also be user-specified. The reconcile window has a Account
Viewer as well, but selecting a transaction will simply mark it as
reconciled, and not open it for editing.
Archiving
QHacc provides a method for clearing out old transactions from
accounts. The mode is similar to the --cron mode
(above). This mode can be entered from by specifying
--archive on the command line. The --archive argument must be followed
by the date of the last transaction to prune. The date string must
conform to the format specified in the Prefs Dialog. That is, if you
normally use the European format and '-' as the separator, and you are
currently in the QHACC_HOME directory, the command:
"qhacc --archive 29-02-2000" would archive all transactions before
1 March, 2000. All pruned transactions are kept in the QHACC_HOME
directory, and suffixed with ".archived." It may be beneficial to move
or rename these files since they are not time-stamped. The next
archiving will erase the previous archives. In this mode, just like
--cron mode, errors are written to standard error, but nothing else is
written to the screen.
Reporting
QHacc supports limited reporting from the GUI and the command line. The
reports are available through the Graphs menu, or in the popup of the
Account Chooser. The Report Dialog allows for reports from any date
range and for any account or account type. From the command line, the
reports are slightly more restricted. Date ranges are not supported from
the command line, though a dedicated user can create similar
functionalty by creatively using the archive and restore functionailty
in combination with the reports. In any event, the reports can be
accessed from the command line using the --breport, --dreport, and
--preport options followed by the account identifier, or one of the
following: Assets, Liabilities, Equities, Expenses, Revenues, Markets.
Preferences
The preferences object is perhaps the most widely used object in
QHacc. It defines how dates are displayed, how currencies are marked,
which colors and fonts are used, and which type of bookkeeping you
prefer. Any character can be used for a currency symbol, or for the
date element separator but I wouldn't recommend using a numerical value
for either one (the default of "/" should be good for most dates). The
preferences dialog also allows a user to choose the name to display in
the titlebar of the program. This is extremely useful when using
different personalities, since using different
titles for different personalities minimizes confusion.