Easy Schedule D 2001 User Manual
==============================================

Introduction 
--------------
EasySchD is a software designed to assist investors to automatically
import stock trading data without the need to type in line by line and
also calculate short-term, long-term capital gain/loss and wash sales 
for Schedule D. Currently it uses FIFO(first in first out) method. 
Accurate input data is critical to get the correct result.

If you have hundreds of transactions, you know filing Schedule D and getting
it correct is a nightmare each year even if you have good bookkeeping of your
transaction records. This software is designed to free you from the chores and
could save you days or weeks of time to do data entry and calculations.

Features
---------
1) support common transaction types: 
   buy, sell, short sell and forward split
2) act directly on downloaded data without manual editing
3) auto detect short-term and long-term transactions
4) automatically figure out wash sales for you
5) support TXF export, so that you can quickly import to other tax software
6) support Excel export
7) summary statistics for total gain/loss, both short term and long term which
   you can verify against other calculations
8) automatically generate and save data for your next year's tax return purpose
9) support both wash sale and non-wash sale modes

How you would use it 
--------------------
The following shows how to download transaction history data from Datek
Online account and then use EasySchD to process and after that, how to export
results to Excel or TurboTax.

1) Run the shipped samples to get a feeling of what the software can do
   and what kind of data you'll need:

   a) start EasySchD by running EasySchD.exe in your installation 
      directory
   
   b) File->Open Transaction File to open a sample data file:
      EasySchD2001\Samples\demo_TaxYear2000\demoTaxYear2000_with_Jan2001.txt
      When the Tax Year dialog comes up, type 2000.
   
   c) The main window will show the results
      Reports->Capital Gains Summary will bring up a dialog showing
      summary information. Clicking "Output To File" button on the summary
      dialog will save this information to a text file.
      Exporting data needs valid registration. The demo directory comes with
      pre-generated files. Here's a description of the files:

      demoTaxYear2000_with_Jan2001.txt --- the stock trading data file, the other
         files are generated by EasySchD from the input file
      demoTaxYear2000_summary.txt --- output from summary dialog, showing summary
         statistics and useful info for next year's tax return
      demoTaxYear2000_patch_forNextYear.txt --- copied from demoTaxYear2000_summary.txt,
         intended to be used next year
      demoTaxYear2000_export.csv --- exported file for Excel, you can open it in Excel,
         the "W", "L" codes will assist you when you import .txf into TurboTax
      demoTaxYear2000_export.txf --- TXF export file, can be imported into TurboTax

    d) Open EasySchD2001\Samples\demo_TaxYear2001\demoTaxYear2001_with_Jan2002.txt  
       and you'll see the beginning of demoTaxYear2001_with_Jan2002.txt is copied
       from demoTaxYear2000_patch_forNextYear.txt.

2) Prepare your transaction data:
   a) login in your Datek account, Account Services->History
      Select current tax year(say 2001) and a month(say Jan), click Go
      Now with your transaction history shown for that month, use
      your mouse to select from "Account History ..." to the end of 
      transactions(or you can use Ctrl+A to select all contents on the
      page), type Ctrl+C to copy the selected contents.

      Open an editor, say Notepad window, type Ctrl+V to paste your 
      data into notepad.

      Repeat the above for all the months and paste each month's data
      after last month's in the Notepad window.

      Please also paste the following year's January data to the end.
      Save your data to a file, say taxyear2001_with_Jan2002.txt.

   b) Go through the data file and make sure you've got all your 
      transactions for each month, take special attention to the beginning 
      and endding of each month to see if it looks right. Also make sure
      the transactions are in the correct order.

   c) If you have any wash sales left over from last year, add them to
      the beginning of your data file, they should follow this format:

************ Previous Unused WashSales from tax year 2000 *****************
  12/03/2000 PrevWash MSFT $1,417.11 235
  12/26/2000 PrevWash CSCO $1,468.85 300 LONGTERM
************ End of Previous Unused WashSales from tax year 2000 *****************

      where LONGTERM means the wash sale was from a long-term capital loss.

      If you had any stock holdings on Jan 1st, then you would have some unused
      boughts before that, please add them right after the Previous Unused WashSales
      block, like this:

************ Previous Unused Boughts from tax year 2000 *****************
  10/14/2000 Bought  TXN 245 39.44 $9,672.80 $15,502.43    
  12/07/2000 Bought  IBM 100 90.36 $9045.99 $11,867.39    
************ End of Previous Unused Boughts from tax year 2000 *****************

     You can easily figure this out from the positions you held on Jan 1st.

     Once you use EasySchD, it will automatically calculate this year's 
     Unused WashSales and Unused Boughts so that you can use them for your next 
     year's tax return. The "Output To File" button on the summary
     dialog will save this information to a text file.

    d) Start EasySchD and open your transaction file.

     By default, Wash Sale mode is on and you'll see wash sales in report if there's
     any. If you don't want to calculate wash sales, you can turn it off through
     View->Calculate Wash Sale menu option.

     Use Reports->Capital Gains Summary menu to see a summary report. You can also
     save this information by clicking "Output To File" button on the dialog.

    e) Export results to other softwares:
     You can export the calculated transactions to Excel by using 
     File->Export to Excel menu. EasySchD will generate a .csv file which
     you can open in Excel for viewing and printing.

     You can also export the calculated transactions to TurboTax or any 
     other tax software that supports TXF format by using 
     File->Export to TurboTax menu. EasySchD will generate a .txf file which
     you can import to TurboTax. 

     To import .txf in TurboTax, run TurboTax, File->Import->From Accounting Software, 
     select "Other Financial Software(TXF file) as source and continue to select your
     .txf file. However, you need to edit Schedule D a little
     bit to specify transactions that are wash sales or long-terms. For 
     any wash sale transaction, select "W" and the corresponding wash 
     sale will show up in TurboTax. For any long term capital gain or loss
     (holding period > 1 year), select "L" and it will be put in the long
     term category. You may open the excel export file in Excel to assist you. 
     The wash sales are marked "W" and long-terms are marked "L" at line end. 
     For example, for this line in spreadsheet(W at the end),
        250 CSCO 6/10/2001 7/11/2001 $14,176.33 $14,965.27 ($788.94) W
     find the corresponding line on Schedule D Capital Gains and Loss Worksheet
     and choose "W" in the "LS" column for this transaction and TurboTax will
     automatically add a Wash Sale entry for it. Similarly a long-term sale would
    look like this in spreadsheet(L at the end),
        265 TXN 2/26/1999 3/24/2000 $28,976.91 $15,154.74 $13,822.17 L

     Once you are done with editing, the "Net short-term capital gain or(loss)" on 
     line 7, "Net long-term capital gain or (loss)" on line 16 and the combined
     result on line 17 should match the EasySchD calculated results on the summary
     dialog.

Things to check 
---------------
Here are a few things you can check to make sure you are not missing anything:

1) In the Summary Report dialog, the Total Sales Price should be the same as
   Total Proceeds from your broker's 1099-B form. If they don't agree, something
   is wrong with your input data.

2) Total Gain/Loss should equal to total sum of Gain/Loss column in excel.

3) If you have used Schedule D in previous years, try running EasySchD for those
   years and see if the results agree.

4) In TurboTax, the "Net short-term capital gain or(loss)" on line 7, 
   "Net long-term capital gain or (loss)" on line 16 and the combined
   result on line 17 should match the EasySchD calculated results on 
   the summary dialog.

