To help you make sure the information in Z-FINANCE is always accurate and easy to read, three powerful verification tools have been built in to the program. Reconcile allows you to compare the statement you get from your financial institution with the data in Z-FINANCE to make sure your account is properly balanced. If the two statements do not match, Auto Balance helps you find the source of the discrepancy. Once your account is balanced, you can consolidate all the cleared transactions into one space-saving entry with Summarize.

How to reconcile your account

1. From the Account Ledger screen, use Show: to open the account you wish to reconcile.

2. Touch Utils and select Reconcile.

3. In the Reconcile window, type in the Start Balance and End Balance that appear on your bank statement. Then touch Done.

4. A list of your transactions appears on the screen. Compare these transactions with the entries on your bank statement. When you see a match, touch the box in the Clr column next to the matching transaction. This indicates that the transaction has cleared. Repeat this step for all the entries on the screen that match up with your bank statement.

The original software displays Comments in the Reconcile list. Since the addition of the Payee field, it is surely better for me to replace Comments with Payee. This is only of consequence to the manual if a screen shot is to be used for this function.

5. When you have marked all the matching entries, touch Done. Z-FINANCE will take into consideration the entries that have not yet posted at your bank, then check to see if the two account balances match up. If they do, you will see a message telling you that your account is balanced. If there is a difference in the two accounts, Z-FINANCE will give you the option to insert a transaction to balance the account. You may wish to touch No, and run Auto Balance (below) to find the source of the error.

Touching NO gives the user the option to change the details in the reconcile screen by return there. To continue and run Auto Balance, the user must first CANCEL reconcile to return to the Account Ledger.

How to use Auto Balance

1. Touch {Utils Icon} and select Auto Balance. The Auto Balance window will appear.

3. In the 'Back from' box, type in the date you wish to search back from. Z-FINANCE searches up to 12 entries back from this date. If you are unsuccessful with the auto balance you may need to retry from an earlier date.

4. In the Amount box, type in the amount of the difference that occurred when you reconciled your account. Press "-" on your keyboard if you need to make the value negative.

Not any more. New improved Z-Finance allows you to simply enter the balance, removing the need to work out the difference.

Additional: As Z-Finance uses tags to denote found entries, maybe it should prompt the user to clear all tagged entries before this function is performed, otherwise previously tagged entries may get mixed up with those tagged by Auto Balance.

5. Touch Done.

6. The Auto Balance will be performed. 'Amount not found' will be displayed if Auto Balance does not find a transaction or combination of transactions that match the amount you are seeking. If Auto Balance finds the entries, it will tell you.

... and those entries will be tagged. Be sure to check over the last 12 entries from the Back From date, as the tagged items may not be on screen. Better still, press UTILS and then choose DISPLAY FOUND to show a summary of the entries Auto Balance found.

7. There may be other combinations of entries that match the specified amount. To continue searching, select Re-Balance from the Utils menu. Then repeat steps 2-5.

8. To view the 'auto balanced' entries, select Display Found from the Utils menu.

Example: "I think my Z-FINANCE account balance is over by 20.00."

change this example to follow entering the actual balance and NOT the difference

1. Type in 20.00 as the amount to search.

2. Z-FINANCE will search back from the specified date for credits AND debits equal to 20.00. Credits are treated as positive values and debits as negative. Therefore Z-FINANCE could tag the following combinations of amounts:

_ 20.00 credit

_ 10.00 credit, 10 credit

_ 10.00 credit, 5.00 credit, 5.00 credit

_ 10.00 credit, 25.00 credit, 15.00 debit

Note about search date: Auto Balance tests up to 4 thousand combinations to find the amount you seek. This large amount of calculations means that the scope of the search is limited to 12 entries. If you create a large number of entries each month, you may need to try an earlier search date to find the combination you need.

Note about Re-Balance: The Re-balance function can only be done immediately after an auto balance.

How to summarize cleared transactions

You can reduce the clutter of your account ledger by consolidating all of the transactions that have cleared at your bank into one entry called a summary. To summarize your cleared transactions, touch Edit and select Summarize Cleared. The net balance of your cleared transactions will now appear as a single entry.