PC-GL
Version 3.3
Copyright 1988, Jerry Medlin


PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

PC-GL is a double entry accounting program which will allow
a small to medium size business to rapidly and accurately
produce financial reports. The program runs on a IBM PC or
compatible computer with at least one disk drive and requires at
least 256k memory.

PC-GL is a ShareWare program. You are encouraged to give
copies to anyone who might use it. If you use the program
please send $35 to:

Jerry Medlin
P.O. Box 357
Napa, Ca. 94559

You will receive the latest version of the program and a
telephone number for limited telephone assistance should you
require it. You will also receive a program which will allow
you to customize some features of PC-GL. A complete description
of this customizing program is contained at the end of the
manual.

The system consist of two files.

PC-GL.EXE - The compiled program written in Turbo
Pascal.

PC-GL.COA - A standard chart of accounts to use or
modify for your purposes.

To run the program, simply type "PC-GL". If you want to
specify a drive designation and path for your data just add the
drive and path description after the program name. i.e. type
"PC-GL B:" to use the B drive for data files. If you are going
to use the standard chart of accounts, be sure the file PC-
GL.COA is on the specified drive and subdirectory.

Each time you run the program, a menu is displayed for
operator selection:

Enter or Change Chart of Accounts
Enter or Change Transactions
Print Chart of Accounts Listing
Print Transaction Listing
Print General Ledger
Print Income Statement
Print Balance Sheet
Print Account Summary Report
Year End Update
End of Processing

Selection is made by using the up or down arrows to
highlight the desired function, then pressing .

PC-GL allows a maximum of 800 items in the chart of
accounts and 6000 transactions per accounting period. With 256k
of memory the number of transactions is reduced to about 500 per
accounting period. The number of additional transactions you
can enter is printed at the bottom of the menu screen. That
number may be limited by either disk space or memory available
and is subject to an absolute maximum of 6000 transactions.

The program makes liberal use of the PC's ten key pad for
both numbers and commands, so PC-GL will turn your Num Lock on
at the beginning of the program. You should leave the Num Lock
on all the time even when using the arrow keys for commands.

When inputting information, the plus <+> key has the same
effect as the return or enter key. The minus <-> key enters a
negative number. This makes using the numeric key pad even
easier.


THE PROCESSING CYCLE

Usually, accounting is done on a monthly cycle, but the PC-
GL program will allow you to use any length of accounting
period. Each time you run the program, you will be asked "Do
you want to start a new accounting period? (Y/N)". If you
answer with a "N" the latest transactions will be loaded and you
may add additional entries. If you answer "Y" the current
period balances will be set to zero and the transactions for the
previous period will be saved for later review. You may then
begin entering a new batch of transactions for the new period.

Checks and journal entries for the accounting period are
entered using the second menu selection. (Enter or Change
Transactions) Debits are entered as positive <+> numbers and
credits are entered as negative <-> numbers.

When the transactions have been entered and checked you may
begin printing reports. Reports may be printed in any order and
as often as you desire. Reports may be printed to the screen
first to check their accuracy. Should you discover a posting
error after examining the reports, you can correct the error and
rerun the reports.

The only report that must be printed to the printer each
period is the General Ledger Report. If the General Ledger
Report has not been printed to the printer (not just the
screen), you will not be allowed to end an accounting period and
start another. The General Ledger Report shows the opening
balance for each account, all of the transactions posted to the
account for the accounting period followed by the closing
balance for each account. Once you start a new accounting
period, the printed General Ledger Report will be your only
audit trail. To start a new accounting period without printing
the general ledger would leave no trace of how an account
arrived at its present balance. Since organizations like the
IRS want to know how you arrived at those numbers on your tax
return, the General Ledger Report is required. If it hasn't
been printed the program will never ask "Do you want to start a
new accounting period?".


DOUBLE ENTRY ACCOUNTING

Double entry accounting requires that the total of all
debit <+> entries must be the same as the total of all credit <-
> entries. It does not mean that there must be a credit for
every debit, only that all of the entries must add up to zero.
Each accounting period consist of a series of balanced entries
with equal pluses and minuses.

All of the checks written during a month are posted to the
various expense accounts as debit <+> amounts. The total of all
of those checks is then posted to the CASH IN BANK account as a
single credit <-> amount. The net of all the transactions
posted is therefore zero, making a balanced series of entries.
All income amounts are entered as credit <-> amounts and a
corresponding debit <+> entry is made to the Cash in Bank
account or to Accounts Receivable. The PC-GL program helps you
when posting transactions by displaying the balance of all
transactions posted at the upper right of the screen. When all
of the transactions for the accounting period have been posted,
the balance displayed should be zero.

If you are unfamiliar with double entry accounting, it is
beyond the scope of this manual to completely cover the subject.
However, all is not lost. The PC-GL system can also be used as
a simple single entry system. Just enter all your expenses and
income to the proper account and run the system normally.
Expenses are entered as positive <+> amounts and (this is
important!) income amounts are entered as negative <-> amounts.
To enter a negative amount, first enter then number then press
the minus<-> sign.


SETTING UP THE CHART OF ACCOUNTS

A standard chart of accounts is provided with the program.
Although any sequential numbering scheme will work with the
general ledger program, the one provided is in common usage by
accountants. To use the standard chart of accounts, simply run
the program with the file PC-GL.COA on the data disk drive.

The chart of accounts can be added to at any time during
the processing period. All chart of accounts setup and
modification is done using the Accounts> selection on the menu. This section allows you add
new COA items, delete or change existing ones, or examine the
COA by scrolling up and down the screen. All commands are
listed at the bottom of the screen and are selected by a single
keystroke. Upon entering this section you may immediately begin
adding items to the chart of accounts or, by pressing the Escape
key, you may go to the command mode and insert, delete or change
items in the chart of accounts.

You will not be allowed to delete an account with a balance
or change balance amounts. Changing amounts is done by posting
transactions to the account. That way you have that all
important audit trail. Upon exiting the chart of accounts
section, the chart of accounts is automatically sorted in
account number order.

Each chart of accounts item contains the following
information:

1) ACCOUNT NUMBER - A three digit number between 000 and
999 that will be used for posting transactions.

2) ACCOUNT CODE - A two digit number which determines
how, and on which reports, the item will be printed. (See
the section on COA coding for details.)

3) PRIOR YEAR % - The number will be printed on the
income statement and is for informational purposes only.
If no prior year % is desired just press return for this
entry and none will be printed on the income statement.
The prior year % is updated automatically at the end of the
year by the Year End Update procedure.

4) ACCOUNT DESCRIPTION - Up to 27 characters are allowed
for the account description.

5) CURRENT AMOUNT - The balance of all transactions
entered to this account for the current accounting period.
If an asterisk <*> is entered during setup this chart of
accounts entry will be treated as a title account on
reports. Title accounts are used to provide headings and
totals on reports. Transactions cannot be posted to a
title account. Press any other key during setup to enter a
zero beginning balance for current and year to date.

6) YTD AMOUNT - The balance of all transactions entered
to this account for the current year. Opening account
balances cannot be entered when the chart of accounts is
set up, they must be posted as transactions.

Just remember to look at the bottom of the screen when in
doubt. Your options will usually be printed there.

The first item in the chart of accounts should contain the
name to be printed on all reports. If you are using the
standard chart of accounts, just change the description of the
first account from STANDARD CHART OF ACCOUNTS to the name you
want printed on your financial statements.

Once the chart of accounts has been setup, you won't be
using this section except to occasionally add new items to the
chart of accounts or delete items with zero balances no longer
in use.


ENTERING TRANSACTIONS

All checks and journal entries for the accounting period
are entered using the selection
of the menu. This selection also allows you to examine entries
by scrolling up and down the screen and to insert, delete or
change entries. You may also obtain a total for a particular
account and you can search all of the transactions for any
string of characters. All commands are listed at the bottom of
the screen.

Each transaction contains the following information:

1) DESCRIPTION - Up to 21 characters are allowed to
describe the entry. Just pressing or <+> will
cause the previous entry to be repeated. To enter a blank
description, press the space bar then .

2) CHECK NO. - A five digit check or reference number.
Numbers or letters may be used. Pressing will
cause the previous number to be repeated. Pressing <+>
will enter a number equal to the previous number plus one.
(This is useful when entering a series of checks with
sequential check numbers.)

3) DATE - The date must be entered in MODA form. i.e.
0108 for January eighth. Pressing or <+> will
repeat the previous date. Any day of the month higher than
31 will cause the transactions to be posted to the year to
date balance only. (In other words, a transaction with a
date of 0185 would not affect current balances when posted,
only year to date balances.)

4) ACCOUNT NUMBER - A three digit account number must be
entered. Once the account number has been entered, the
program will check to see if the number is a valid account
number. If not, you will be asked to reenter the account
number. Once a valid account number has been entered, the
corresponding account description from the chart of
accounts will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. If
you don't remember the account number, enter the number
999. You will then be able to use the up and down arrow
keys to search the chart of accounts for the correct
account number.

5) AMOUNT - The amount is entered calculator style
without using the decimal point. Debit entries are
entered as positive numbers and credit entries are entered
as negative numbers. To enter a negative number, enter the
number in the regular manner followed by the minus <-> sign
instead of the enter or plus <+> sign.

The net amount of the current check and the net of all the
transactions posted for the period are constantly displayed at
the upper right of the screen. The check balance is useful when
posting a single check to multiple accounts. For double entry
accounting the net amount of all transactions should be zero
when you are finished with posting for the period.

When using the Change selection to change a chart of
account item or a transaction, you don't have to reenter each
field. Just press the return key to skip to the next field.

The Total selection for transaction entries is useful
for checking balances. It can, for instance, be used to add up
all the purchases so you can make an ending inventory
calculation based on a desired cost of sales.

If you are using the PC-AP Accounts Payable program and
have ended a PC-AP accounting period, you will have an
additional menu item available at the bottom of the screen.
Read PC-AP Transactions will allow you to read all of the checks
written by PC-AP into the PC-GL program. Transactions from PC-
AP will not be posted to PC-GL until you select Read PC-AP
Transactions.


PRINTING REPORTS

To print any of the available reports just select the
report from the main menu. First you will be asked to input a
report date to be printed on the report. Alphabetic and numeric
dates are acceptable. i.e. January 31, 1987. Pressing return
will enter the system date for the report date. After a date is
entered you will be able to choose printing to the printer, the
screen or to a file.

If you choose to print to a file you will be prompted for a
file name. The program will print the report to that file
exactly as it would have been printed to the printer. These
files are regular ASCII files and can be read by most word
processors. Specifying a file name of LPT2: will allow you to
print to a second printer. You may optionally leave off the
report headings when you print to a file so that the data can be
easily imported into a spread sheet or data base.


ACCOUNT SUMMARY REPORT

Each time you start a new accounting period by answering
"Y" to the question "Do you want to start a new accounting
period?" at the beginning of the program, the transactions for
the prior period are saved. Eventually, up to 12 accounting
periods (months) are saved. The most recent transactions are in
a file named GL1.TRN and the oldest transactions are in a file
named GL12.TRN. The account summary report allows you to print
a summary of transactions for a single account. You can also
sort the transactions before they are printed by description,
date, check number or account number.

You will be asked for an account number and the number of
months to go back. Inputting zero for the number of months will
look at only the current period. If you enter ALL for the
account number, you may also print a General Ledger Report going
back up to 12 months. This is a useful report to print at the
end of the year so that you can review the year's activity with
one General Ledger Report instead of having to look at 12
individual reports.


YEAR END CLOSEOUT

At the beginning of a new accounting year all profit and
loss account balances are set to zero using this selection. In
addition, the prior year percentages are updated to reflect the
year just ended. The program will ask for the account number of
your capital account, then the profit or loss for the year just
ended will be posted to that account. If you are using the
Standard Chart of Accounts, the capital account would be account
number 465. This section should be used only once a year and
cannot be done unless the General Ledger has been printed.


END OF PROCESSING

When processing is completed you must exit the program
using this selection. You will be asked if you want to end
processing. A yes "Y" answer will save the chart of accounts
and all of the current transactions. Any answer other than "Y"
will return you to the main menu.


CHART OF ACCOUNTS CODING

If you use the standard chart of accounts or a modified
version of the standard chart of accounts, it is not necessary
to be familiar with chart of account coding. Just delete the
unwanted chart of account items. This information is provided
for those who want to use their own chart of accounts or produce
special reports.

The first number of the two digit code is a number from 1
to 9 which determines the account type.

1. ASSETS
2. LIABILITIES
3. INCOME (OR SALES)
4. COST OF SALES
5. GROSS PROFIT
6. OPERATING EXPENSES
7. OTHER INCOME
8. OTHER EXPENSES
9. NET PROFIT

The GROSS PROFIT (#5) and PROFIT OR LOSS (#9) are generally
used only once in each chart of accounts for totaling purposes.
The COST OF SALES (#4), GROSS PROFIT (#5), OTHER INCOME (#7) and
OTHER EXPENSES (#8) can be omitted if your applications doesn't
require those categories.

When printing the income statement, the sign for the
balances of accounts with odd numbered account codes is
reversed. So, income amounts (#3) which normally have credit
balances and are carried as minus numbers in the general ledger
are printed on the income statement as positive numbers.

The second number of the two digit code determines the
totaling level for an account on the income statement and
balance sheet. The total level is used to determine what totals
and subtotals appear on reports. Each higher total level totals
all previous lower account numbers. The best way to understand
how the totaling level works is to experiment. Just change the
number and reprint the report to see how it looks. Chart of
account coding can be changed at any time without causing
problems.

Total Level:

0 The balance and description will print only on the general
ledger report. When printing the balance sheet or income
statement, the balance (if any) will be totaled and printed
into the next higher number. i.e. The total for a series
of 0 coded accounts will print into the next account
numbered 1 or higher.

1 Used for most accounts. On the balance sheet the account
balance will be printed in the first column.

2 Prints total of all previous 0 and 1 accounts. Prints in
the middle column of the balance sheet.

3 Prints total of all previous 0, 1, and 2 accounts. Prints
in the right hand column of the balance sheet.

4 Used for subtotal accounts such as TOTAL ASSETS, OPERATING
PROFIT etc.

5 Used for the NET PROFIT account on both the balance sheet
and income statement. If the balance sheet does not
contain a level 5 account, the balance sheet will not
balance.

On the income statement any number higher than 1 will be
preceded by a blank line. The number 9 will cause the printer
to start a new page. The use of a 9 should be restricted to
title accounts with no balances.

Accounts used only for totaling the balances of previous
accounts or for printing titles on a statement are title
accounts. A title account is created by entering an asterisk in
the current balance column of an account. You cannot post any
transactions to a title account. Most accounts with a totaling
level higher than 1 will be title accounts.

You can print an extra blank line on the income statement
or balance sheet by entering a title account with a blank
description.


USING OTHER PROGRAMS FROM JERRY MEDLIN

There are three other programs available from Jerry Medlin:
PC-AR - a balance forward Accounts receivable program.
PC-PR - a payroll writing program.
PC-AP - an accounts payable and check writing program.

The only program that integrates directly with PC-GL is the
accounts payable program, PC-AP. You must have PC-GL in order
to use the accounts payable program. All of the checks or
invoices entered in PC-AP can be automatically posted to PC-GL
(this program).

The other two programs are "stand alone" programs and do
not automatically post to PC-GL. To do so would require all of
the payroll checks and all of the sales entries to be added to
the transactions in PC-GL. Rather than burden the PC-GL program
with all of this detail, you must post the totals from the
accounts receivable program and the payroll program with a short
series of journal entries each month. This usually takes no
more than a few minutes each month and provides greater control
and flexibility to the whole accounting process.

The details of the journal entries from PC-PR and PC-AR to
PC-GL depend on your particular situation, but might look
something like this:

Check Account Check
Description Number Date Number Amount
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Cash Received on Acct GJN01 0131 103 22345.67
January Sales GJN01 0131 511 22345.67-
January Gross Pay GJN01 0131 708 2045.43
January Fed W/H GJN01 0131 331 190.00-
January FICA GJN01 0131 332 146.26-
January SDI W/H GJN01 0131 333 24.53-
January State W/H GJN01 0131 334 14.70-
January Net Pr GJN01 0131 103 1669.94-


The first two entries are from the accounts receivable
program and the last 6 entries are from the payroll program.
The entries would vary depending on cash or accrual basis and,
of course, the amounts and accounts involved.


PRIOR PERIOD CORRECTIONS

You cannot change prior period transactions with PC-GL,
even though prior period transactions are saved on the disk in a
series of files. Changing prior period transactions would
create a number of accounting problems relating to the audit
trail and is simply not possible. If you find an error in the
previous period and you have not yet started a new accounting
period, you can answer "N" to the new accounting period question
at the beginning of the program and rerun the period. If the
error is from an earlier period you must make the correction to
the current period.

You can enter the correction without affecting current
period balances by using a day of the month higher than 31. A
date such as 0187, for instance, would tell the program to enter
the transaction only in the year to date column and not post as
a current transactions.


HANDLING BEGINNING AND ENDING INVENTORY

If your application doesn't require that beginning and
ending inventory show on the income statement, you should skip
this section. It discusses a commonly used but somewhat
confusing technique to properly display beginning and ending
inventory on a computerized income statement.

Any transaction with a date that contains a day of the
month higher than 31 will be posted as a year to date
transaction only. It will not affect the current period
balance. This is moderately useful for making adjustments to
the year to date balances, but it's principal value lies in
making the beginning and ending inventory work properly on the
income statement.

If we assume that the inventory at the beginning April was
$25000.00 and the inventory at the end of April was $29000.00,
the following series of entries would be required:

Description Ref # Date Acct # Amount
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Inventory GJN04 0430 151 29000.00
Inventory GJN04 0430 151 25000.00-
Beginning Inv. GJN04 0430 610 25000.00
Ending Inv. GJN04 0430 696 29000.00-
Ending Inv. GJN04 0484 696 25000.00
Beginning Inv. GJN04 0484 610 25000.00-


Notice that the last two entries are year-to-date entries
because the day of the month is higher than 31. If the
beginning and ending inventory accounts start at zero (as would
be the case at the beginning of the year), the last two year-to-
date entries should be omitted.


USING THE CONFIGURATION PROGRAM

The configuration program (GLCONFIG.EXE) is provided to all
registered users. It allows you to change certain features of
PC-GL. The GLCONFIG.EXE program and the main program (PC-
GL.EXE) should both be on the same disk drive and sub directory
when you configure your copy of PC-GL. Just run the program by
typing GLCONFIG at the Dos prompt. The previous configuration
of PC-GL will be displayed. Use the up and down arrows to move
the pointer and then press to change an item. You will be
allowed to change the following information:

Display Colors - If you have a color adapter and monitor,
you can change the colors for screen borders, program
prompts, data, and background. Allowable colors are from 0
to 15 except for background color which can only be from 0
to 7.

Laser Printer? - You will also be able to change the way
PC-GL starts a new page. Usually, PC-GL starts a new page
by counting lines until the page total equals 66 lines. If
you enter a "Y" for the laser printer question, PC-GL will
start a new page by issuing a form feed command. This
would work just fine on most other printers too, but
requires that you set the top of form before you start
printing.

Months to Save - The program normally saves the past 12
months of transactions so that they can be reviewed with
the Account Summary selection. You can change that time
period to any number from 1 to 30. A smaller number would
require less disk space and speed the new period processing
up a bit.

Disk Drive and Path - Enter a drive and path designation
for PC-GL data. If you want the program to read data from
the B drive just enter B:.

Income Statement Heading - You can change the default
heading printed on the income statement report. You will
probably need to start with some blank spaces to line up
the heading correctly. Sometimes trial and error is the
best way.

Balance Sheet Heading - You can also change the balance
sheet headings.

Income Statement and Balance Sheet Footers - A "footer" is
a short comment inserted at the end of a report. An
example of a footer would be a statement like "Prepared
without benefit of audit", or any other meaningless comment
your attorney tells you to put on your financial
statements.

When you have finished making your changes, press the
escape key to exit the program. You will then be asked if you
want to save the changes. If you answer with a Y, PC-GL will be
changed until you run the configuration program again.


HELPFUL HINTS

Opening balances should be entered as transactions, using
the Enter or Change Transactions selection. If you enter the
opening balances using a day of the month higher than 31 (for
example 0189), the opening balances will not affect the current
period totals.

It is helpful to remember that PC-GL uses data that has
been loaded into random access memory. New data is not saved to
the disk until you end processing or select the Save option
from the Enter or Change Transactions section of the program.
This also means that if you make a mistake on the opening
question (Do you want to start a new accounting period?) you can
just boot the computer and start over. Your previous data is
still on the disk.

If you do not get the question "Do you want to start a new
accounting period?" when starting PC-GL, it is because you
didn't print the General Ledger report to the printer. Changing
even a single transaction will convince PC-GL that you have not
printed the General Ledger report and prevent the new period
question from appearing.

The first 12 times you start a new accounting period more
disk space is required for historical files. If you have a
large business and you are using floppy disks for data storage,
you could run out of disk space.

You can use the Account Summary Report each January to help
in summarizing payments for 1099 forms. The 1099 is that form
the government wants every year reporting payments to
individuals of over $600.

The "Zero Balances" selection in the chart of account
command mode will set ALL chart of account balances to zero and
delete any transactions entered for the period. There are only
two reasons to ever use this command.

1) When you first start using PC-GL you might want to practice
a few times before you really get started. You would then use
"Zero Balances" to get a fresh start. If you have run a number
of test months and wish to delete all of the Account Summary
data, exit to the disk operating system and type: ERASE
GL*.TRN.

2) If you want to use an existing chart of accounts setup on a
new application, you could zero the existing balances after
copying the chart of accounts file PC-GL.COA to the disk for the
new business.

ADDING COLORS

The configuration program available to registered users
will allow you to specify a data path and colors for PC-GL. You
may also specify the desired data path and colors by adding them
to the command line separated by blank spaces. The commands
should be in the following order: DATA PATH, BORDER COLOR, DATA
COLOR, PROMPT COLOR AND BACKGROUND COLOR. For example, if you
run PC-GL by typing:

PC-GL B: 3 14 10 1

That will tell the program to look for data on the B: drive and
use Cyan borders, Yellow data, Light Green prompts with a Blue
background.

THE KEYBOARD

The programs make liberal use of the PC's ten key pad for
both numbers and commands, so your Num Lock will be turned on
automatically at the beginning of each program. You should
leave the Num Lock on all the time even when using the arrow
keys for commands. If you should turn the Num Lock off for some
reason, the 5 key on the 10 key pad will not work on some
computers. Just turn the Num Lock back on to correct this
problem. Your Num Lock will be turned off when exiting the
program.

ORDERING INFORMATION

To order PC-GL please send $35 to:

Jerry Medlin
P.O. Box 357
Napa, Ca. 94559

Or, to charge using Master Card or Visa, call (707) 255-
4475 between the hours of 8AM to 6PM, Pacific time.

You will receive the latest version of the program, the
GLCONFIG program and a telephone number for limited telephone
assistance.