GETTING STARTED:

The Philosophy help topic explains the
basic principles of this budget system.
That is a good place to begin.

The next thing you will want to do is enter
some funds and accounts. There is a list
of suggestions under FUNDS AND
ACCOUNTS. Also, there are several
sample budgets which you can modify-- 
use 'Open' from the 'File' menu and
select one of the SAMPLE?.BGT files. You
can change the names of Funds and
Accounts, plus add new ones or delete
unwanted ones using the items under the
'Budget' menu. Since deleted Funds and
Accounts aren't removed from the budget
until the following month, it is best to
change names rather than add some and
delete others. When you have made your
modifications, select 'SaveAs' from the
'File' menu and name the file
"CURRENT.BGT". Then the next time you
run BUDGET MANAGER that file will load
automatically.

The next step is to initialize the various
balances. If you are transferring from
another system, it may be easiest to use
the 'Adjust Fund' and 'Adjust Account'
transactions. This is likely the only time
you will ever use these options, since
these do not preserve the budget system,
which has all money in both a Fund and
an Account. If you ever use these
transactions, you will want to make sure
that the totals for all Funds and all
Accounts match when you are finished. If
you are starting from scratch, it will
probably be easiest to do a deposit
transaction into your INCOME fund for
each of your accounts (checking accounts,
cash on hand, etc.) for the amount that
each has. When your next credit card bills
come in, use a debit transaction from the
INCOME Fund and the credit card Account
for any charges which are not entered in
your budget. For each of these
transactions, you can use a description
such as "Beginning". As you later
discover additional Funds you need, you
can always add them then.

When you are beginning, you may not
know how much to budget for each Fund.
You can use BUDGET MANAGER to record
spending for a few months, and at the
end of each month, set the Budget amount
for each Fund equal to the amount the
Fund changed during that month. Change
the budget amount of the Income fund to
balance the budget. After your spending
patterns are fairly clear, you can use the
information to set budget goals, and then
use the goals to help make decisions
about spending. It is not necessary for the
amount spent every month to equal the
amount budgeted. Normally some Funds
will have positive balances and others
negative balances each month. The
important thing is that no Fund becomes
too negative and that the total of the
non-Income Funds stays positive.
