Splasm Software Discussions

First off, new to CBP and love it so far. Downloaded last month's checking and savings transactions last night, and everything seems to work fine in the program. I have a couple questions that maybe I'll eventually figure out, but figured I'd ask for those who have more experience with the app.

1. What is the to/from used for? When I downloaded my checking file, all the descriptions populated in desc, and the to/from was blank. I manually edited the newly downloaded transactions and used the to/from as a payee field of sorts, but in seeing some screen prints in the manual it seems to/from is used not as a payee, but more as a type, like 'direct deposit' or 'transfer'.

My rationale was that the descriptions are cryptic because they come over as 'debit check 0001 vrzwrlsss' instead of Verizon Wireless... so I put the latter in the to/from field to make the Payee more readable, but don't want to do unnecessary editing if I don't have to.

2. When I download the next months transactions, am I going to have to recategorize and re label them? the descriptions from the bank seem to change each month because they prepend a debit check sequential number if it was an online debit. Example "Debit check 001 - Verizon" "Debit check 002 - Shaws" or something to that effect. I used money before and it could search the whole description field and figure out that if "shaws" was in there somewhere, it probably matched up with my "Shaw's" payee.

3. related to both the above, is there a formal "Payee" list like there is in Money. Or does it just build a list from previous 'descriptions'

Sorry if these are confusing questions. I'm just trying to get the most out of the app.

Thanks!

Okay, so I think I have the answer to #1... I was confused on the use of To/From fields because there is a screen shot in the help manual on the import page that seems to show "type" data in the "To/From" fields, but now i see that most of the other screen shots show what I would consider normal 'payees' in the "To/From" fields, which is what I thought in the first place. I also see where in the import dialog I can map "Names" to whatever and "Payees" to whatever.

Apparently Bank of America, MA, does not populate the Payee field, but does populate the "Name" field. So, if I map the Name field to To/From, I should basically be good to go, except that many of the names are still not too readable and are prefixed with labels, etc.

So -- anyone have any suggestions for my other two questions?

I also had a question about how to edit categories, but I found that answer in these forums. I'm not sure it's intuitive to 'edit all' accounts to find it, but I found it

Thanks!

As to Question 3:
goto Account>>Edit Account

You can then predefine Descriptions, To/From, and Types

Hope that was the Question

I am also interested in the answer to Q2 (or similar). I am also brand new to the product having come from MS Money.

To re-state the question:

Can Checkbook be set up with the ability to search the description field on import, and set the category based on the rule defined. eg if the description field has "COLES" in it, then set the category to "Household:Groceries".

If this isn't possible - does anyone have suggestions how I might do this prior to import (in excel or similar?). I cant work out how to set up a macro / function to do this in excel.
Also - if it isn't - how do we get it onto a list for future development of the import function of the product?

I am new to the product, and also new to this forum. Can I expect a response from the Admin (not being pushy - just wondering). Doesn't seem to have been an answer regarding this question since the original post was entered above - wasnt sure if I should bother coming back to check for updates or not.

See "glens67" post for your answer concerning the admin.

I thought you guys were doing just fine without me

We do not currently have auto fill linked to multiple fields. It is something we are looking at for a possibility in a future release.

_________________
Randy Knoble
Splasm Software
www.Splasm.com