Read Me File GST RECORDKEEPER SOFTWARE v1.0 This software is designed especially to help barristers manage GST tax recording in their practices. The software assumes you have a vague idea of taxation mechanisms and the meaning of terms such as "tax deduction", "profit" and "loss"! The software can be adapted for use in any service industry that operates on a cash accounting system. PROGRAM BENEFITS/LIMITATIONS Features: - records your income and expenditure. - records practice income and any other income - calculates your GST liability to the government, - calculates your PAYG instalment, - records all expenditure incurred by you, including expenditure through your Clerk, - calculates the GST you have paid to suppliers (your Input Tax Credit); - calculates the total amount payable to the ATO each quarter; - compiles the majority of data required to complete you BAS each quarter, - calculates your net taxable income; - maintains a database of all your suppliers details, - produces reports of expenses with breakdown by category, by payment method, by supplier etc. - produces reports of income; - automatically calculates GST componant of income; - you can manually adjust the GST componant amount; - specify percentage of non-business use of expenditure; - allocate income and expenditure to different categories; - password protect your financial information; - integrates a calendar and address book, - soon will have ability to record capital gains and losses. GST RecordKeeper is not designed to manage complicated transactions such as losses (or credits) incurred in speculative investment, depreciation on capital expenditure, capital gains or fringe benefits. (Capital gains recording will be available in the Spring.) The program does not manage those esoteric taxes that don't apply to barristers. It does not manage or reconcile bank accounts, nor manage debtors or creditors. It does not track invoices. Unlike other GST accounting products, GST RecordKeeper is not a double entry accounting system. It does not require balancing of sales and debit journals, thus making it simple to use. Please note: The data generated by the program is only as reliable as the information entered into the program, and if you have income or deductions that are not recorded by the program you must make adjustments to the final figures accordingly. You should not rely on this program alone to determine your tax liability. You should check your tax liability with your accountant. This program assists you to record your finances. It does not give accounting advice. INSTALLATION The archive called "GSTR_10.EXE" (or similar) is a compressed WinZip file for Windows. (Mac users should download the file called "GST_1.0.sea" (or similar name) from the Mac directory). Download the archive to your computer, and double click it to expand the archive. Archives that end in the letters ".sea" or ".exe" should decompress automatically after you double click on it. The expanded folder contains about 30 files (Windows version, some of which may be hidden). All of these files need to be kept in the one place and you should avoid renaming them for fear of breaking the links. Mac users have about 10 files which need to be located in the same folder and it is best if their names are not changed. Open the file called "GST RecordKeeper" (or "GST RecordKeeper.exe"). Do not try to open the program by launching any of the auxiliary files. The program does not install any system files. All componants are contained in the GST RecordKeeper Folder. To uninstall simply delete the whole folder. This will remove the program and data from your computer. Windows users require certain system files to be present on their PC for GST RecordKeeper to work. These files are installed with MS Internet Explorer for Windows 4.0 and later. If you do not have IE 4.0 or later installed, you will probably have trouble starting GST RecordKeeper. (This is Bill Gate's design, not mine). USING GST RECORDKEEPER The first wqindow to open is a disclaimer and licence agreement. If you agree to the conditions of useyou can proceed to use the software, alternatively ask for a refund of your purchase price. The next screen will show you how many days of use the demo version of the software has left, and has an option to let you register the program. If this is your first time using the program, do not try to register the software at this point. Click the "Continue" button to go to the set-up page. Set-up your personal information, then continue to the Main Menu. Click on the Settings button. In settings you can give a name to a second or third source of income. For example, if you have a regular income from dog breeding, you might make a new business called "Dog Breeding" so that you can create separate reports for your bar practice and your other areas of income. Even if your other income is from shares or bank interest, you can make a new business called "Other income" and use this category to record your other areas of income. The other business must have the same tax file number and ABN number as the first entity. This program does not allow you to record finances for more than one tax payer. If you want to track two businesses, you need two copies of the program. GST RecordKeeper comes pre-configured with about 30 expense categories. You should open the Expense Categories window (from the Settings window) and edit the categories in your first weeks of using the program because changing category names afterwards can lead to problems when searching for data under amended categories at a later date. You can edit the list of categories and add and delete categories at any time. However, if in March you decide to change the category of "Facsimiles" to "Faxes", this will mean a search for "Faxes" or a Report based on "Faxes" will not find any entries where the category was recorded as "Facsimiles". Add you PAYG instalment deduction rate in the settings window. This figure is provided to you by the ATO. MAIN MENU The Main Menu window contains links to the various parts of the program. Click on the appropriate button for the area you want to go to. The Main Menu has a help button for more info. The Main Menu contains a link to the ATO web site. There is also a hotlink to the isaacschambers.com.au web site where more information, support and upgrades will soon be available. There is a "Desktop Calendar" and "Address Book" linked from the Main Menu. All parts of the Program are linked to Buttons on the Main Menu screen, and if you can't locate a feature from within the program, returning to the Main Menu will help you locate what you want. The income summary on the main menu screen calculates date for the current financial year. The figures are automatically updated each time you close the program. Use the refresh button to re-calculate the figures while the program is open. SUPPLIERS Before you can start using the program to record expenditure, you need to record details of each supplier who you have purchased from. Click on the "Suppliers" button and add information regarding the Supplier. The essential information is the Supplier's name and ABN. The other fields are mainly for your own information. When typing the address, if the town name is placed in the "City" field, and a State is selected, the postcode will be inserted automatically. (This feature was requested by me because I hate looking up postcodes). Click the "Postcode" lable and a window will allow you to browse and search all of Australia's postcodes. If you type an email address or web page address, that address immediately becomes a hotlink which launches your email or browser application when you click on the link. You can edit the link by clicking the pen icon next to the address field. The text that you enter for "Main Product" will become the default text that appears each time you record a purchase from this Supplier. (The purchase description can later be edited in the Expenses window). You can select a default Expense Category for each Supplier, so that when you record a purchase the default expense category will appear. This saves you from having to re-enter the same details for the same supplier. You should also add the Suppliers ABN, enter a capital or consumable nature of the supplies from each Supplier as these will also be automatically inserted by default when recording a purchase. Note that all default values can be deleted or edited in the Expenses window. Clicking the purple arrow next to the Supplier's name in List or Form view will list all expenses recorded for this supplier. Nearly all screens in allow you to view single files, or lists of entries. The "View List"/"Show Form" button toggles between "list" and "form" views. All List views allow you to sort lists by clicking on the titles of most of the columns. Alternatively, you can select "View as Table" from the "View" menu and this will provide a different view of your data which is easily manipulated by clicking and dragging the headings and can be printed by clicking the Print button in the toolbar. You can designate your employees as being subject to PAYG withholding tax by checking the box for this purpose. This will allow you to record the amount of tax withheld from their wages when recording expenses. EXPENSES After entering a Supplier, you can record an expense by clicking on the "Expenses" button. Here you can use the pop-up list to select a supplier from the list of suppliers you have entered into the database. If the supplier you want is not in the list, you will need to click the "Add" button to add a supplier to the list. Once you have selected a supplier, you can record all the details of the purchase you made. You can view all of your expenses in a list by clicking the "View List" button. Expenses incurred through your Clerk are not recorded in the Expenses window. Use the Expenses Window to record only those expenses that you incur on your own. There is a pop-up menu from which you can select the business category for which each expense was incurred e.g. Bar Practice or Dog Breeding etc. I am interested to know how barristers are now dealing with group expenses such as sharing photocopiers, faxes, libraries and secretaries so that I might allow for this in the program if required. Hints for the expenses window: - click the "Expense Categories" lable (in blue) to go to the Expenses Categories window where all expense categories can be added and edited. - Selecting a Business Category allows you to attribute this expense to one or another of your income earning areas, - in the corner of screen is displayed the number of records in the database. "Record:5" means record number 5 is currently selected, "Found:7" means 7 records are in the current found set, probably as a subset of the whole database. "Total:16" means the total number of records in the database is 16, - you can record whether an expense is a capital or consumable expenditure, and later print reports for each category, - source of funds (cash, credit card etc) appear in a pop-up menu that can be edited to suit your own arrangements; - click the "Help" button on the bottom corner for on-screen assistance, -click the "Search" button to locate records, -click the delete button to delete all of the information that you can see on a single screen (form view) or a single line (List view). Control-click the delete button to delete all records in the current found set. Shift-click the delete button to delete blank records from the list. - when in list view, click on a column heading to sort the data according to that heading, and control-clicking on some headings will reverse the sort order; - a red tick appears on the record to indicate the record has valid Expense information, being a Supplier's name and a purchase price. - record expenses incurred to or through your clerk in the "Income" screen. - click the purple arrow near the Supplier's name to show a list of all expenses recorded for this supplier. - your clerk's expense records are created via the income screen. Click on the "Price" or "Product" lable to cross to the Income screen record that contains the source data for a Clerk's expense record. - If the Expense Category is pre-set as a PAYG withholding category, you can record the amount of withholding tax you have taken from employees wages. INCOME The Income button lets you record your income from any source. You probably get a weekly statement from your Clerk, and you should transpose the information from this statement into the Income Window. You should also record in this window each deduction that the Clerk has made against your income, including Clerk's commissions. All deductions automatically have GST ITCs (Input Tax Credits) calculated for them, but if an item is GST free, there are 3 fields for recording GST free deductions. Do not record deductions if they are not tax deductible, i.e. "Wife's Myer Account" paid by the Clerk from your fees probably should not be included as it is unlikely to be tax deductible. Note that Clerk's deductions are recorded in the "Income" window. This may seem counter-intuitive, but you will find that it actually works easier than trying to change windows to record the disbursements. After entering the clerk's deductions, you need to click the "Record" button to create an Expense record for these disbursements. If you make any amendment, click the "Record" button again and the Expense record will be updated. Control click the Record button to view the Expense record that has been created for these disbursments. The program has no function for refunds or adjustments. This may change soon. Sometimes your Clerk may record a refund in your weekly statement. Until someone has a better idea (or until I find time to make a special refund function), you can record refunds as negative deductions or negative income. This will have the same effect, except that the BAS statement will not have the refund/adjustment allocated separately. This may be addressed in a future release of the program. On the right-hand side of the Income window you can record income derived from areas outside your Clerk's control e.g. share income, race horses, lecture tours or software writing. Select a business you want to attribute the income to, type in the amount and the rest is easy. Click the "GST Exempt" if the supply you made is exempt from GST. This might be applicable to residential rents, mortgage brokering, or selling bottled still water. To make a new entry click the "New Record" button. You can make "Other Income" entries without any Bar income being recorded and vice versa. So if you have 5 income receipts in a week, you can make 5 "Other Income" entries and you could make a single entry for your Bar income at the same time as any one of those other entries. SETTINGS The Settings are where you can change your personal information about your practice details, your Clerk's details and your other business settings. At present the program allows only 2 other business categories. If you are submitting your tax returns electronically, you can customise the ATO web address (which is hotlinked in the Main Menu) by editing the ATO's web address field in the Settings window. The Back-up button takes you to a screen where you can learn about how to back up your data, and you can set the program to do automatic back-ups each time you quit. You can also set up password security for the program. You must make sure you give the program your current PAYG deduction rate in this screen. REPORTS You can print any screen by clicking the "Print" icon on the tool bar, or from the File menu. However, no finance program will ever get anywhere unless it can produce numerous reports containing both important and trivial information. The Reports screen allows you to select a report type and a date range. This can be selected from the pop-up menu, or you can create a custom date. A print preview window will show you the report. The printed report will generally contain a better break-down of information than is displayed on the screen. The break-down of data can usually be seen in Preview mode. Click the "Print Preview" button to see the data in Preview Mode (which defaults back to browse mode after 20 seconds). CATEGORIES Expense Categories are found in pop-up lists in the Expense Window. The categories can be edited by clicking on the blue "Categories" label in the following screens: Expenses, Suppliers and Settings. You should set-up your categories early, as deleting or re-naming categories will adversely affect your ability to search for categories which have changed, or Print reports based on categories. Deleting a category will not remove references to that category in past records. The changes are only prospective. You can still search for records by categories that no longer exist. The search window has a field for you to select a category from a pop-up list, or you can type in the name of a category, (including a deleted category). The Categories editing window shows a purple arrow beside each category. Clicking this arrow will present a list of all expenses recorded under that category. The Prices next to the categories are the sum of expenses recorded in respect of each category. It is recalculated every time the Categories are opened or sorted. A red tick next to a category indicates that expenses recorded in respect of this category are wages and will be used to calculate the total amount of wages paid for the purpose of the BAS. A ticked category is also able to have withholding tax recorded against it in the Expenses window. ADDRESS BOOK On the Main Menu is a link to the Address Book. This is a cool database that makes it easy for you to store phone numbers and addresses (and other info) for everyone you communicate with. It has similar features to the Supplier's database window. The Address Book is included purely for your convenience and it plays no part in the accounting side of the program. When in list view you can click on the Name, Category or Date headings to sort the data. Hints for Address Book: - after typing a email or web address, you edit the address by clicking the small pencil icon next to the hotlink. - you can allocate a category to each entry. The category list is a pop-up menu. To add a category to the pop-up menu, selct "Other" from the list (it is the last item in the pop-up menu list). Type the name of the new category and it will appear in all future pop-up lists. If you want to delete a category, do a search for the category, locate all records with the category you want to delete, and delete (using the keyboard) the category reference, or the entire record. If you use the "Delete" button; this will delete the entire record for the person. Of course, if you want to delete all family members from your Address Book, perform a find on the "Family" category, then select "Delete Found Records" from the Records menu. Voila - it is irreversible! - click the small purple arrow next to the birthday field to get a list of all birthdays recorded which fall within the current calendar month; - the QuickFind feature allows you to list all entries that fall within the category you select from the pop-up list. INVOICES The program does not yet print invoices. Your Clerk should be doing that for you. But because some of us make money doing things our Clerk doesn't necessarily know about, it is intended that an invoice printing function will be incorporated in a future release. It will print the mandatory tax invoice for you and all your customers/clients details will be contained in a database similar to the Suppliers database. (The problem with creating an invoice function is that most programmers can not resist the temptation to link income with invoices sent and then compel users to undergo the huge bill tracking routine. You should buy QuickBooks if you want that. Invoices is not included in GST RecordKeeper 1.0. UPGRADES From time to time the program will be upgraded. The data files contain the upgrade and it is a simple matter of downloading a new data file from the ftp server, and importing the data into the new file using the built in scripts found in the Import menu. See the Read_Me file in the upgrades area of the ftp server for more information. BACK-UPS Back-ups of your data are essential and you should try to do a back-up at least every week, or after you spend more than 15 minutes entering data. Be aware that in the event that your computer crashes while GST RecordKeeper is open, files may be corrupted. If corruption occurs, there is a recovery function selectable from the File menu which will do its best to recover your data. In the worst instances, your data may be lost. For these reasons you should have a back-up of your data. You should back up at the least each of these main files: "Suppliers", "Income", "Expenses", "Address Book" and "Categories" (and in the next release "Invoices") which is where 99% of the data is stored. All of these files will probably fit on a single floppy disk. Don't bother doing regular back-ups of "Main Menu", "Reports", "Calendar" or "Postcode", as these files almost never have any significant change. The GST RecordKeeper executable contains no data and does not need to be regularly backed up. All other files are system files, not data files, and don't need regular back-up. Click the Back-ups button in the Settings screen for more info. PRICE GST RecordKeeper is only $89.00 inc GST. The price will increase on 11 December 2000 to $99.00 as a result of the extra features that have been added since it was first released. GST RecordKeeper is distributed as a functioning limited time demonstration. It will expire within 30 days of initial use if no registration code is entered. Click the "Register" button on the start-up screen for instructions on how to obtain a registration code. PAYMENT Upon receipt by me of a cheque for the correct price, I will email or send a registration code to you. Please make cheques payable to Sean Hardy and send them to me care of Clerk Howells, 205 William Street Melbourne, 3000. UPGRADES Upgrades will be released several times per year and will be available from ftp://ftp.isaacschambers.com.au Since 20 October 2000 the registration codes have changed and your old registration code will not work with the current version. If you have upgraded and lost your registration, please email the author for a replacement code. Upgrades can be downloaded from the FTP site and used in Demo mode for 30 days. If you don't want to keep the demo, you don't need to pay for a registration number. When trying a new Demo, you should import your data into the new data files, but do not throw away your old data files. It is best to keep them as a back-up for at least a few months. SUPPORT Help is available within the program by clicking on the buttons with the question marks, or the buttons marked "Help". Support can be found on the Internet at www.isaacschambers.com.au/gst/. Otherwise questions/comments/suggestions can be sent to gst@isaacschambers.com.au. Lastly, you can call me on 9608 8661 for help. DISCLAIMER AND CONDITIONS OF USE Any person using GST RecordKeeper (Òthe ProgramÓ) does so subject to the conditions set out herein and by using the Program you agree to be bound by this licensing agreement. You are licensed to use the Program during any free trial period granted to you by Sean Hardy (Òthe LicensorÓ) and thereafter on the condition you have paid the proper fee. You agree not to reverse engineer or decompile the Program in whole or in part. You may modify the Program only in the manner provided for by the Program itself. You must not remove or attempt to remove any password protection contained in the Program except as directed by the Licensor. You may not distribute the Program to any person without the express written permission of the Licensor. You acknowledge that the Program is a complex software item and may have inherent or undiscovered defects. You agree that in the event of any defect in quality or workmanship being discovered in the Program which affects the utility of the Program, your remedy and the LicensorÕs liability is limited to the provision of his services (at his option) to correct the defect in the Program (but not including the correction of any data that you may have stored in the Program) and the Licensor may instead choose to refund to you the whole of the money that you paid for the Program or replace the Program (within a reasonable time) with a copy without the alleged defects. Save for the above remedies you expressly acknowledge and accept that the Licensor and publishers and distributors of the Program shall not be liable for any loss or damage, whether direct or indirect suffered by you as a result of using the Program. The Licensor makes no warranties in respect of the Program save for those contained herein or those that are necessarily imposed upon this transaction by legislation. The Program makes assumptions about the effect of taxation law which may not be correct or which may change from time to time. You agree that you will have your tax returns verified by an accountant before lodging them with the ATO. You acknowledge and agree that: - you are responsible for the content of the tax return that you lodge with the ATO - you will satisfy yourself before lodging any tax return that the figures contained in the return are correct and complete, - the calculations made by the Program are provided to you as a guide only, - no representation is made to you that the figures produced by the Program contain a correct assessment of your tax liability, - the Program is designed to record a large part of your finances but does not purport to record or to consider all financial details which are relevant to arriving at your taxable income. You may not distribute the Program in any form to any person without the Licensor's written permission. All person's wishing to use the Program must download it from the GST RecordKeeper ftp site at ftp://ftp.isaacschambers.com.au, or ask to be sent the Program on floppy disk. You agree that you shall be liable to the Licensor for any loss of profits suffered by the Licensor in the event that you assist in the distribution of the program to any person without the Licensor's written permission or otherwise act in breach of this agreement. Copyright in the Program remains with the Licensor. The Program is designed and licensed for use by one legal entity at any one time. If you wish to have a modified version of this software for use by a company or person who is not a barrister, please contact the Licensor. Sean Hardy gst@isaacschambers.com.au 2 November 2000