Home Budgets

[rmanh]

Not sure best topic for this problem, but I would like to modify one of the pre-built starter solutions in FM10: Home Budgets. I am adding dates and sub-categories fields to the different categories. Current problem is changing the name of the "LivingExpenses" to "MaterialExpenses" in the related tables that is listed in the "Portal Setup". The drop down list shows more tables than their is when I go to manage database, 2 verses 5 tables. Where do I find the these related tables? I think for all the pre-built in functions to work every occurrence of "LivingExpenses" must be renamed.

[LaRetta]

Hi rmanh,

The drop down list shows more tables than their is when I go to manage database, 2 verses 5 tables.

In File > Manage Database, go to your tables tab and read the column headers. Living Expenses is not a table but rather an occurrence of the Expenses table (just like Fixed Expenses, Income, Other Expenses etc).

Then go to your graph. You will notice that Living Expenses is joined to Home Budgets based upon K_3_Living key. So now double-click the Living Expenses occurrence and notice that it says it is actually Expenses. Go ahead and rename this occurrence to whatever you wish. Rename the key in Home Budgets to K_3_newname also. And then rename the tab label on the layout. The portal will rename itself when you rename the occurrence and any scripts will rename themselves automatically. :smile2:

[rmanh]

Ok, figured that part out now, thanks very much.

Now how do I "And then rename the tab label on the layout"?

I have been able to rename this "living expensives" tab directly in edit layout only when that tab is selected. But when that Tab is not selected it reverts back to the original name. If I go to Tab Control Setup their is no way to edit the tab names their, as the tab names are not displayed.

[LaRetta]

They have text labels placed over each tab label (which is actually blank). This is because FileMaker does not allow calculations or merge fields as tab labels.

First, lock your budget info tab by selecting it and then Arrange > Lock. Now you can place your cursor on the panel (above the Expenses line/tab panel) and drag to select the specific text blocks. You will see that the text label is actually placed on the first tab's second tab and same with third tab. Make sense?

If you click directly onto Tab 1 and 3 to attempt to select the text block, it will switch tabs on you instead, so select Tab 1 then drag around the text on tab 2 and use arrows to move it up out of the tab. Correct it then move it back. I would suggest View > Object Info on px setting and make a note of the top two numbers after you select the text panel. This will tell you exactly where to replace it. :wink2:

[rmanh]

Thanks very much for your help LaRetta, your explanations are very clear and easy to understand. Now that we have been able to change the name of all this tab/occurrences, Im thinking now is not to add sub-categories to the "home budgets" current layouts but to add additional tables for each expense type. Then create new layouts for this.

The end results is something like Quicken does with its Categories and sub-categories. So I can have reports based upon different item expenditures. Does this makes sense? Please any advice/direction would be greatly appreciated for doing this.

[LaRetta]

One of the problems with this type of design is that, when you want to add a category, you must 1) add a table occurrence of Expenses, 2) add a fk (foreign key), 3) add two calculations for each added category and 4) add tabs.

Instead, you should have the following tables (minimum):

ChartOfAccounts

AccountNumber, Description, Group with data similar to:

101 - Car - Assets

310 - Electicity - Expenses

Activities

ActivityID, ActivityDate, Amount, Account, summary of amount

1 - 12/4/2009 - 210.65 - 314 (food)

Anyway, this is very weak example and accounting is second only in complexity to inventory management systems. Why not simply use Quicken? I do (and I have strong accounting background). It has everything you would need. But if you wish to follow up on this, I can provide a VERY BASIC demo of structure possibly later today (or someone else can). With good structure, you then simply produce a sub-summary report in Activities, grouped by Account Number.

[rmanh]

My thoughts along the same lines, creating additional tables. But need to dig deeper into your idea here to understand, accounting I understand some just because of having businesses before. Yes I have also used Quicken for many years. Now I am in a different country with currency and accounting method that's not supported in Quicken and even after reviewing the latest Quickbooks 10 multi-currency, im not sure its the answer. My experience in this country is the government prefers accounting reports based upon their forms and their methods. I think Filemaker could give me much more flexibility in this direction. I look forward to anyones help is much appreciated.