"Kelsey G" <KelseyG[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:F25A5441-EC0E-4376-AC7D-B708DD8B0DC9[at]microsoft.com...

- quote -

Consider the nuke the bills option. It deletes all bills, including
hidden historical bills unintentionally affecting your budget.

http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q...=2008&safe=off

Short version of that URL: http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xxawq. Click
the 'proceed to this site' prompt when the tinyurl page opens.

As you seem to be just starting out, you don't have a lot to lose, I
don't think. If you go that route and use online bill pay, cancel all
outstanding epays and apays, disable online banking, nuke bills, then
reverse the online banking stuff.

Print the scheduled bills list before nuking.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

Thanks for your reply, Chris. It sounds like that is what happened.

My Money file was started Jan 1, 2008, with transactions entered back to
that date. As I am still getting used to the program, I have not yet set up
any scheduled bills.

What do you think of this idea: Enter zero for each of the bill amounts in
the scheduled Bills Summary, until the bill is actually entered in the
register. At that time, I could adjust the amount to reflect what was
actually paid.

If I correctly understand how things work, then I think the benefit would be
that I wouldn't have to be concerned with keeping the items in Budget and
Bills mutually exclusive in order to keep them from being double counted. In
addition, I would be able to see the scheduled payment on the calendar, and
be able to execute the bill from the Bills Summary page. Also, as the
initial value for the scheduled bill is zero, it should not mess up the
budget if I needed to delete it.

Your feedback would be appreciated!
--
Kelsey


"Chris Cowles" wrote:

- quote -

Since you're apparently new to this, beware that deleting a recurring
bill may mess up your budget. If, for example, your cable bill goes
up, you can't edit the existing bill in place. It applies that
retroactively to your budget. If you simply delete the bill, it
retains the budget effect of the past transactions (unchanged) and may
retain future instances in the budget. When you add a new modified
bill for the same category, the amounts of the two scheduled bills
(current and vestigial) are additive.

The way to avoid that is to put a stop date on future instances. If
the change is effective immediately, leave two future instances, edit
each individual remaining transactions and change it to $0, then
process them both to post the $0 amount. You can delete those or void
them. When the bill is off the schedule, create the new revised amount
as of the next actual event.

If the revised bill takes effect after the next scheduled event, just
change the current bill to one (or more) remaining transactions.
Schedule the new bill to start at an appropriate future date.

Should you find that deleted bills already affect your budget, there
are workarounds. They may be ugly. Post back with questions.
--
Chris Cowles
Gainesville, FL

Hello,

I'm using Plus 08, Advanced Budget. I set up an empty data set in a file
called "Test", and use this to test various program senarios. In this file,
I have 1 checking account, and 3 expense catagories; Groceries, Utilities,
and Misc Expenses, and entered a monthly budget amount for Groceries and Misc
Expense. I then scheduled a bill for Utilities. All seemed to be fine in
Budget and Cash flow. Then, I changed the budget amounts for Groceries and
Misc Expense catagories to zero, but left the Utilities catagory scheduled
with an amount in Bills. Cash Flow chart was fine, but the Groceries and
Misc Expense amounts still showed up on the Budget Summary and the total in
the Budget Summary screen.

I checked the individual budgets for those two catagories, but they showed
zero amounts budgeted! I tried both a quick, and standard repair of date,
but the log said no errors were found, and the erroneous numbers remain in my
budget summary. Help please!
--
Kelsey