ReadMe.txt File Contents:

	Version History

	Copyright

	Why Use wBuck

	How to Install or Uninstall wBuck

	How to Use wBuck

	Bugs and Contact Information


Version History
---------------

Initial distribution: wBuck version 0.90, July 2000. 
Current distribution: wBuck version 0.91, September 2000.

Major additions to version 0.91: charts and help system.


Copyright
---------

wBuck version 0.91, its extensions and documentation
Copyright (c) 2000 Judith Bai

Permission to use, copy, and distribute this software and its
documentation for any purpose (except as detailed hereunder) is granted
without fee, provided that the above copyright notice and this permission
notice appear in all copies of the software and related documentation. You
may not disassemble, decompose, reverse engineer, or alter any of the files
in the package.

This software cannot be sold or bundled with any commercial package without
express written permission from Judith Bai, its author.

THIS IS FREEWARE. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF 
ANY KIND. THERE IS NO LIABILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND ARISING OUT OF 
OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.


Why Use wBuck
-------------

wBuck helps keeping track of financial activities.
  
* It generates reports of period totals for income, expenses, savings and
  taxes. Reports can be as detailed as the user wish. A total income
  report, for example, can show both total income, and how this sum is
  distributed between sub-categories such as wages, interest, dividends
  etc. Each sub-category can be further divided. e.g. total interest from a
  certain kind of security. An obvious use is in tax return preparation.

* It illustrates the above information with charts.

* wBuck reports balances for accounts such as bank, cash, saving and credit
  card. Comparing this balance with financial institutions statements, may
  catch mistakes. (You may even realize that some of your cash was stolen.)

* Individual transaction details can be found and reported. An easier
  alternative to digging in paper files.

* Report of total, balance or individual transactions can be in terms of
  one to three types of units. The main currency unit and two optional
  units. This feature may be used in many ways. For instance, in a
  transfer from a bond fund to a stock fund. Three amounts can be recorded:
  the main unit amount (e.g. dollar amount), the number of bond shares and
  the number of stock shares. Total amount of shares in a saving account
  along the total dollar amount gives the cost basis (total and per share)
  for capital gain calculation.

* wBuck stores financial records in a compact way. It helps getting control
  of mountains of paper records.


How to Install or Uninstall wBuck
---------------------------------

To install, run setup.exe and follow the instructions of this program.

wBuck depends on some widely available *.dll and *.ocx files that are
likely to exist on your system. If they don't, you will get an error
message telling you about a missing file, when you try to run wBuck. In
that case, download the missing file, put it in the system directory (on
Windows NT WinNT\system32, on Windows 95 windows\system) and restart the
system.

If you have an old version installed, you may install the new one in the
directory of the old version. If you install in a different directory, copy
your data files from the old to the new directory. Data files are the files
whose name starts with the database name.
 
To uninstall, use the Add/Remove Programs application of the Control Panel.
 

How to Use wBuck
----------------

Here is a short guide. You can read more about using wBuck by pressing the
"Help" button of the first dialog, or by choosing the "Help Topics" item
from the "Help" menu. Context help is also available.

To try wBuck, enter "sample" in the first wBuck dialog, leave the other
choices as they are and press the "OK" button. 

The "Open Report File" dialog appears next. In this dialog, change the
directory (written at the top edit box) to wBuck's directory, if it is not
already that. Press "Open". The report file - sample.buc - that is
displayed, was generated during a previous session with wBuck.

Try items from the Main menu: "Charts", "Reports", "Accounts" and
"Transactions". Look also at the File menu. There are print preview and
printing services for the report.

If you want to start building a new database, enter your choice of database
name in the welcome dialog. The next step is to open accounts. wBuck has one
built-in account. Its name is "Previous Balance". All the other accounts
must be opened by you. To illustrate how to do this, let's open a
"Groceries" account. From the Main menu choose "Accounts" then "Open new
account". In the dialog the follows, choose "Expense" then "New Group" as
the account type, and "Groceries" as the account name. Click OK. Sometimes
that's all that is needed to open a new account.

Some accounts also need an additional unit (e.g. a foreign bank account,
securities account). In that case, enter the name of the unit in the combo
box and set the scale (number of digits right to the point, which may be
zero). Give different units different names. For a securities account you
may choose the trading symbol of the security as the unit name.

Before any transactions are made, the main currency unit can be set. This
is also done during the account dialog.

After opening accounts, transactions can be inserted. Starting from Main
menu again, choose "Transactions" then "Insert" to get the transaction
dialog. It's quite self-evident how to enter a transaction. Try it. After
your click on OK, if the "report changes" check box is checked, you will
see in the report area a confirmation of what was done.

A transaction amount is always positive. Instead of making a negative
transaction, change its direction. For example: Capital gain is a
transaction from "Long Term Capital Gain" account of type "Income" to "XYZ
Company Stocks" account of type "Saving". Capital loss is a transaction
between the same accounts in the opposite direction - from the saving type
to the income type. Another example: If at the time you open a credit card
account there is a credit balance, make a transaction of the credit amount
from the "Previous Balance" account of type income to the credit card
account. If the balance is a debit, the transaction source it the credit
card and its target is the "Previous Balance" account.

If there are transactions, then you can see a report of them. Main menu's
"Reports" displays a period dialog, to set the report starting and ending
dates and to select the type of search. The first type - "by account" -
lets you choose an individual account or a group of related accounts or
get a summary report of all accounts, a total for each type. The other type
of search lets you find transactions from all the accounts according to a
variety of clues. If no clue is given, all the transactions will be found.

Before exiting save the report. In the "Save As" dialog give it a name
composed of the database name and the extension ".buc".

Once in a while back up the data files to a removable media to protect it.


Bugs and Contact Information
----------------------------

This version of wBuck is considered as beta testing version. It was
developed and tested on Windows NT version 4.0 for workstation, service
pack 3. It also runs on other Win32 platforms.

Comments, suggestions, bug reports and satisfaction notes will be greatly
appreciated.

Author: Judith Bai

Contact: jbai@juno.com
