THE ULTIMATE FINANCE MANAGER HAS ARRIVED! ======================================== Contents of this document: ------------------------- What is MEGA-Check 2? (find "two") Using the demo (find "demo") Planned for a future version (find "future") Changes in version 2.05 (find "2.05") Changes in version 2.04 (find "2.04") Changes in version 2.03 (find "2.03") Changes in version 2.02 (find "2.02") Changes in version 2.01 (find "2.01") WHAT IS MEGA-CHECK 2? After two and a half years of development, Muller Automation is proud to bring you the Juggernaut of account and finance managers, MEGA-Check 2. This state-of-the-art program will provide enough power to track any of your personal, investment or business enterprises for years to come. How will it do this? Just look at these outstanding features: - Full GEM interface, easy to use. - MEGA-Check 2 is an "interactive expert system." It asks you questions in PLAIN ENGLISH about what you want and provides exactly what you tell it. This is state-of-the-art technology. - The built-in Alarm/Scheduler won't let you forget anything. Important transfers, paying regular bills or generating important financial reports automatically on a regular basis is no sweat for MEGA-Check 2. You can even tell it to prompt you ahead of time. - Fully automated checkbook balancing. - Prints checks on any printer. - Support for any number of checking, savings, investment, credit or expense accounts. And MEGA-Check 2 doesn't require you to enter archaic "codes" to identify your accounts. Accounts can be added or changed at any time, even after you've entered hundreds of transactions, which is made easier using MEGA-Check 2's unique Account Selector that works much like the GEM fileselector you're used to. - Accounts can be grouped into categories and sub-categories (just like files and folders on your disk drives). The total of the balances of any group of accounts in a category can be seen immediately by clicking on the main account for that group. - If you wish, MEGA-Check 2 will even warn you if the balance of an account gets too low or too high. Never incur another bank service charge, or, for investors, set automatic "stop loss" points for your speculative investments. - Track "hypothetical" investments to see "what would have happened if..." Easily generate reports that run side-by-side comparisons of these investments with real or low-risk investments. - Automatically tracks appreciation or depreciation of investments or assets. - Extended notes (up to eight lines) can be entered to describe any transaction. - Keeps track of names, addresses, phone and other info on all clients, suppliers, customers, creditors and other associates. Associates can be added, changed or deleted at any time. An Associate Selector, similar to the GEM fileselector you're used to, is available at any time to select the Associate you want from a list. - MEGA-Check 2 gives you the most powerful report generator of any finance manager available for the Atari (probably for other computers too!). You can specify every aspect of your reports. What they look like, what appears on them, where they print, what fields to total... everything, all with an easy to use point and click interface! Any report definition can be saved to be printed later, and any report can be made interactive, allowing it to be customized on the fly by simply answering one or more plain English questions. - And don't worry about having your computer tied up while MEGA-Check 2 generates a complex report because we've also included MULTITASKING! That's right, all MEGA-Check 2 reports are generated in the background, allowing you to continue to enter transactions, view other reports, balance your checkbook, or use any of your desk accessories. When the report is finished you can view it right away or wait until later. - Built-in file compression conserves memory and keeps your files small with no noticable performance degradation. - On-line context sensitive help is available at all times by pressing the Help key. Almost the entire manual has been put on-line with a full help index to take you quickly to any topic you need help on. Of course, we're always here to answer your questions too. - A 150 page manual complete with a How Do I...? section that talks you through, step by step, exactly how to perform various real life operations. - MEGA-Check 2 will run in color or monochrome on any ST or TT with at least 1 MB of RAM. A hard disk is recommended, but not required. Only $99.95 (plus $5 s/h). The original MEGA-Check won rave reviews by the Atari magazines. MEGA-Check 2 is sure to do the same. "If you get the feeling that I liked MEGA-Check, you're right! I have found a finance program that I can USE!" - ST Informer, July 1992 "MEGA-Check seems to position itself in the mid- to upper range of personal accounting programs. It easily surpasses the program Microcheck and seems to have few, if any, of the technical limitations of Personal Finance Manager." - Atari Advantage, June/July 1992 Using the demo: -------------- Before running MC20.PRG, create a folder called HELPLIB in the same directory as MC20.PRG. Then MOVE all files with the extension .HLP to that directory. Then double-click on MC20.PRG. MEGA-Check 2 is completely resolution independent. It runs best in monochrome or higher resolution. In medium res, some of the panels have buttons that are scrunched up, which is nothing more than a cosmetic disadvantage to running in high-resolution. No functionality is missing. One megabyte of memory or more is REQUIRED (and you need about 800K of free memory). The SAMPLE.MC2 file contains a sample 3-month file that can show you the way the report generator works and how the automatic bill paying works, as well as a few of MEGA-Check 2's other powerful features. Just select "Open" from the "File" menu and then double-click on SAMPLE.MC2. MEGA-Check 2 DOES create temporary files, so don't run it from a write protected disk. Don't panic if you see it writing to your hard drive. This is normal. All help and report files are accessed RANDOMLY, also, so you may see the disk access as you scroll down through a help file or report. Much of the manual is included in this demo in the online help files. A lot of the capabilities of MEGA-Check 2 can be gathered by reading through some of these files. Just press the HELP key to access the scrollable context sensitive help window panel. Clicking on the INDEX button on this panel will bring up an alphabetical index of all available help topics. When in a help topic, clicking on any gray text will jump to help on that topic. The manual contains more tutorial information as well as lots of screen shots but the help files are direct excerpts from the manual. As always, we're here to answer any questions you might have. Call us at 816-322-4919 or leave a message to C.MULLER3 on GEnie. We hope you like the progam. - Muller Automation PLANNED FOR A FUTURE VERSION ---------------------------- A "Print Queue" will allow multiple reports to be activated without needing to wait for the current report to finish (talk about taxing your Atari to the limit!). "Graph Models" will allow graphical representations of your financial data. Ability to delete a model from within MEGA-Check 2. CHANGES IN VERSION 2.05 ----------------------- The DATE field can now be defaulted to the LAST entered date. This is done on the "Set Entry Panel Defaults..." panel. It is handy if you are entering a series of transactions with the same date. It is also more consistent with the way the Check # field is defaulted. You can no longer default the Date to the "Highest" entered date. Auto-complete for the To field now prompts you when you have entered enough (and only enough) characters to make it unique from all other entries in the Associate table. The result effect is that it will never complete automatically when you don't want it to. The program now sets up the model table much more quickly when you open your financial file since it now stores it in a file and doesn't need to completely re-build it. It kept in a file called "modeltbl.dat" in the same directory as your models. This makes getting into your MEGA-Check 2 data significantly quicker. The "Quick Find" feature has been improved. MEGA-Check 2 can do a quick find under more conditions (including using the valuable "MO " search field!) causing monthly reports to execute MUCH faster even after you have accumulated hundreds of transactions. A new option has been added to the Models menu called "Rebuild Model Table" that will force a rebuild of the model table from the models in the model directory and recreate the MODELTBL.DAT file for quick loading next time. The Check # field can be incremented or decremented by 1 by using the "+" and "-" keys, just as you can with the DATE field. A new feature called the "Debit/Credit Equalizer" has been implemented. This allows you to place an equal sign ("=") on ONE of the Ledger Amount fields in place of an amount. MEGA-Check 2 will then compute the correct amount to make your debits and credits equal. This feature can be extrememly useful on a Transaction Model that asks for the ledger amount. "Update Transactions" will now replace all selected transactions before re-sorting. Previously, each changed transaction would be re-inserted into the transaction table in the proper place. If the change made to the transaction caused it to be re-inserted at a DIFFERENT position (like if the DATE field was changed) then it could cause it to come up for change again. This would sometimes make balancing a checkbook a pain if some transactions were entered without a check #. Fixed a bug that would cause reports to be sorted according to the previous reports sort criteria when selected from a model. Fixed bug that was causing an extra "blank record" line to be inserted into a report currently printing in the background whenever you would go back and forth between the Print Status panel and the Entry Panel. This same bug would also sometimes cause a crash when going back and forth between the Print Status panel during a background print. Fixed bug that would mess up selecting an Associate from a custom question panel. CHANGES IN VERSION 2.04 ----------------------- Fixed a couple of bugs, including the duplicate account # bug. Fixed the ACCT search field (before it worked just like DBAC). ANALYZ20.PRG can be used to determine if you have been affected by this bug. Added more keyboard support. You can now use the Control+Up arrow and Control+Down arrow to scroll one line at a time through windows. You can use Shift+Up arrow and Shift + Down arrow to scroll a page at a time through windows. You can also use Control+Return to exit from windows that just have a standard close box (in the upper left corner). CHANGES IN VERSION 2.03 ----------------------- Fixed lock up problem on TOS 1.0 and 1.2. CHANGES IN VERSION 2.02 ----------------------- To upgrade to version 2.02, you only need replace MC20.PRG, DIALOG.DAT. The built-in FILE COMPRESSION has been optimized in version 2.02. MEGA-Check 2's file compression feature compresses certain portions of your data files, saving both memory and disk space. The de-compression is done on the fly and is almost unnoticable, even on a stock ST. CHANGES IN VERSION 2.01 ----------------------- To upgrade to version 2.01, you only need replace MC20.PRG, DIALOG.DAT. FIX20.MMU should be copied to your models directory if you have been affected by the version 2.0 bug described below. ANALYZ20.PRG can be used to determine if you have been affected by this bug. Several new report components have been added. Most notably, MAX1 thru MAX8 have been added to keep track of the highest memo value used in the transactions selected for that report. Compatibility has been improved with older versions of TOS. MEGA-Check version 2.0 had a SMALL bug which has caused us a BIG headache. But we tracked it down and got it fixed (had to change one byte of program code!). The bug would only occur on those files that were originally converted with the 1 to 2 converter (CONVERT.PRG) included on the 2.0 master disk and only if you have added an account since the conversion. Every transaction that uses that account has been using the Assets account instead. ANALYZ20.PRG was written to find out if your data has been affected by this bug. If it has, it tells you which account and FIX20.MMU (a.k.a. "Fix 2.0 data") can be used to fix it. It is an update model that will appear in the Model list if you copy it to your model directory. More details are included when you run ANALYZ20.PRG. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us.