Frequently Asked Questions - FAssistant
 
 
 
 
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A 01: This is a utility built for personal use to keep all your personal and finance related information at one place. This is very small application (about 2/3 MB) and can be kept in a jump drive or pen drive or on your personal desktop or laptop. So you can have only this utility instead of maintaining number of other utilities or means to store, retrieve, track and analyze the desired personal or finance related information like user id and passwords of your online accounts, personal address book for address, phone numbers or important dates like birth date, marriage anniversary date, your appointments, your bank/loan/policy account numbers or related info like transactions/payments, maturity date, interest rate, your expenses and incomes, your stock portfolio, number of shares currently you have for each stock you own. You can create templates for recurring transactions in most of the accounts, so that you can create or update any transaction based on the template. Also same template can be used to create multiple similar transactions with different dates you chose like once, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, between 2 specified dates.
 
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A 02: This utility is answer to most of your personal and finance information storage and analysis needs. You can store, retrieve, track and analyze following things with one single application instead of depending on number of applications or means to get the same info.
  1. Income from different sources, salary income, part-time job income, income from rent etc.
  2. Expenses you do, you can categorize them based on expense mode you use and expense types like travel, dining-out, books, rent etc.
  3. Money you owe to or from someone like your friend or partner/roommate
  4. Expense share with your room-mate/partner or friends for the common expenses which are shared in some ratio
  5. Your bank account information, transactions (deposit, withdrawal, interests earned), start date, maturity date, interest rate
  6. You investments on stocks/securities, sell/purchase of stocks, dividends, earnings (profit/loss), expected earning, complete stock analysis in % as well as actual numbers. You can also know your Smart Earnings by taking time-frame in consideration of your investment or reinvestment on stocks
  7. Your loan and policy account information, payments, start date, maturity date, interest rate
  8. Important information storage as secured or unsecured. Like your car details, passport details, utility accounts (electricity, water, phone) details, important numbers or info that you may need time to time and you want to keep it handy.
  9. Important Date Reminders like reminders about appointments, meetings. These can be categorized as once, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. You will see a notification on the main screen about today's appointments and meetings.
  10. Personal Address Book to store address, phone numbers, work related details, dependent details, birth date, marriage anniversary date. And yes you need not to store birth year, just date and month is sufficient.
  11. Store all your online user ids/passwords, ATM pin numbers or any other highly confidential info to retrieve it any time with out any hassle. No one else can view these confidential information. You just need to remember one user id/password to see confidential info using this utility.
  12. Reports to analyze your expenses and incomes in number of your own customized ways. Like daily, monthly, yearly, grouped by expense/income types, expense/income modes, between 2 specified dates and much more. You can combine various income and expense accounts in a way you want (add/subtract) to get the desired output i.e. (Saving = Income Account 1 + Income Account 2 - Expense Account 1 - Expense Account 2)
  13. Reports to analyze your financial status like total money in all your bank accounts and stocks, how much total cash you have on hand at any point of time, how much in total you have paid in all your loans and policies, how much total profit or loss you made in stocks, total interest earned in all your accounts. You can combine (add/subtract) all your accounts (Bank/Loan/Policy/Stocks) with each other to get the desired output.
  14. Any of the expense/income/information/transactions/payments/address can be searched using search screen provided for each type of account. You can customize your search in any way you want. You can also determine monthly or yearly averages for all your expenses/incomes/transactions/payments against each attribute (expense type, income type, payment type, transaction type, income mode, expense mode etc.) using search (*Group Average function) screen.
  15. You can first create a report in the desired format and then save it in a text file for taking printout or sending to someone as a formatted text file. Most of the report screens, search screens and account details screens have "Save To File" functionality to save data shown on screen in a formatted text file.
  16. There are about 185 countries/currencies that can be supported by this application. You can add/delete currencies to the application from a pre-defined list of currencies also you can add your own symbol/name to it.
  17. Add your own income types, expense types, income modes, expense modes to the application and use them in accounts you create.
  18. Export the complete data dump of the application in a text file for backup or migration purpose. The exported file can be imported in a newly installed or exiting application any time. Export and Import both are always password protected (admin user id/password). So no one else can export or import data to/from the application. Application can also automatically make a copy of exiting data file before importing any data file using import functionality. You can control the behavior of import data file functionality as you want.
  19. Data import (v4.00 or higher) has backward compatibility for earlier versions so do not worry if you want to upgrade to a newer version of the application. You can use smart import functionality to make the version specific changes automatically.
  20. You can customize the GUI of the screen through Options screen like main screen layout, foreground and background color of inactive records/accounts, include inactive records/accounts in display or not etc.
  21. In all money related accounts like expense account, income account, individual user account, bank account, stock account, loan/policy account you can create template of transactions which occurs periodically (weekly, monthly, yearly). Later you can use these templates from creating or updating a transaction. Also same templates can be used to create multiple similar transactions (Bulk Load) with different dates you chose like once, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, between 2 specified dates.
On the main screen of the application you can see
  • All your friends and loved ones who have birthday or marriage anniversary this month or today.
  • All your accounts/loans/policies which are maturing this month and today.
  • All your important reminders, appointments or meetings which are due this month or today.
Current month is shown by default with today�s things highlighted. You can always browse back and forth in months.

So in other words you can say this application can act as your personal assistant which can let you know all the important and confidential information which you need at times. And you need not to pay or invest a single penny to use it, it there for you for free 24 hours a day 7 ways a week.

Don't you think its worth to try it once?

 
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A 03: Yes this application is completely free. No * (star) or no strings attached to it. I mean It. This utility is outcome of my hobby of simplifying activities or tasks that you do again and again every day. I had a habit of keeping records of my expenses and incomes since my graduation. Earlier I used to do it on my personal diary. After starting my career in software field I started developing this application for my personal use. Later I realized that it can be very useful for others too, as every individual has similar requirements in his/her day to day life and need some tool, application or some way to satisfy those requirements.

So let's people use it and if they like it I will feel proud.

 
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A 04: You need Java (JDK/JRE 1.4 or above) to run this application. It is free from Sun Microsystems and can be downloaded and installed from Sun's Website. I have tested it on Microsoft Windows operating system hence should work properly on any Microsoft Windows system. It internally uses Microsoft Access drivers to read and write to data file. These drivers are there on your system if you have Microsoft Windows on your machine. Hence except java (JDK/JRE 1.4 or above) you don't need any thing else to use this application.
 
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A 05: No, you don�t need any of these software to use this application. All machines with Microsoft Windows on it have driver for Microsoft Access installed. This application just needs those drivers to communicate with the internal Microsoft Access data file. I am using it on one of my laptop (with Windows XP Home Edition) that does not have Microsoft Access or Microsoft Office installed on it and it works perfectly there.
 
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A 06: Initially oracle database was supported by this application but later on many changes made to the application which I didn�t test on oracle database, hence I can not guarantee that this application will work properly on oracle database. Few screens that I know for sure will not work with Oracle database are Portfolio and Price Watch screens under Stock Account. Although I have been coded it to make it work on oracle database but didn't test thoroughly on Oracle database. Also using oracle requires license hence I don�t think many users will be using this application with oracle database. I always prefer to use this application on windows with default database option (Microsoft Access) during installation.
 
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A 07: Currently application (v4.00 and above) supports 85 countries/currencies. By default there are about 4/5 currencies available to the application for use, but any time you can add/update/delete currencies to the application from a pre-defined list of country/currencies by going to Currency screen.
 
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A 08: This utility never messes up with your machine�s operating system or registries. There is no entry made in windows registry or any where else when you install it on your machine. It just copies the required files in a directory you specify during installation. There is a Run.bat file created during installation that you need to use to run the application. Some times you may need to do some changes in this Run.bat file to get it working (specially when your JDK path or classpath is not properly set in system environment variables). To uninstall the application, just delete the directory where this application is installed.
 
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A 09: Yes this is the thing I wanted to do but couldn't do because of time limits and tools required. It requires lot of time and tools to create help for this application. Also after adding help to the application its size will be too big to download it from the free Geocities account and will defeat the purpose of having it very small. Field level help is provided on many of the fields in application which are not self explanatory. Such fields are shown with Blue text. You need to click on the field name to see the help. You can also refer to ReadMe.txt file for further help on any screen or functionality or drop me a mail at [email protected]. I am also providing online help for all the screens very soon at Screen Shots
 
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A 10: All your information stored in the application is fully secure and stored on your local drive. All sensitive and confidential information (like passwords) is saved on data file in encrypted format. The Data file it self is password protected hence no one else can see the data stored in data file, unless they know the password. You can customize the application to ask you to login to use the application using application user id and password. Any update/delete/view of any sensitive or confidential information requires admin user id and password to proceed. So no one else can intentionally or accidentally harm your confidential data. It is also advisable to keep backup of your data file (using export functionality) for backup purpose, in case your system crashes or data file gets corrupted or deleted accidentally.
 
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A 11: You can export the complete user data dump in a flat text file using export functionality. This exported file can be used to import back the complete user data into the application. All sensitive and confidential data will be in encrypted form in the exported file.
 
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A 12: Since application version v4.00, import data file functionality will give you an option of using Smart Import functionality to make the importing file compatible with current version. This option will be given to you whenever you try to import an old version data file to a new version of application. Any major version like 4.0, 5.0 etc. will require some database change. Minor versions like 4.1, 4.2 etc. will not require any database change; they are mainly GUI changes and bug fixing.

To migrate to newer version please follow these steps
  1. Open the old version of application and export the complete user data file
    • Go to File -> Export screen
    • Go to Export Data tab, select the appropriate database (mostly Microsoft Access)
    • Make sure option Add System Tables in data Export? is unchecked
    • Make sure option Add Truncate Table Statement? is checked
    • Click on Export button to export to a safe location
    • Provide your admin user id/password to create and save the data file
  2. Close the old version of application
  3. Install the new version of application on existing or new (recommended) location.
  4. Run the new application from the installed location
  5. Import the exported file in new version of application
    • Go to File -> Import screen
    • Browse the data file you saved from old version of application
    • Make sure option Commit at the End of Script only is selected
    • Make sure option Stop execution if some error occurred is selected
    • Click on Import button
    • Provide the admin user id/password
    • If the newer version requires some database changes while importing data file, an option will be given to use Smart Import, Click on Yes button if such message is shown
    • If no error is occurred, it will display you the success message after completing import
    • Restart the application to use the new version
 
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A 13: Please send an email to me at [email protected] for any bugs you find in the application. I will try my best to resolve it in future releases. I keep it updating whenever I get time and have a new requirement or bug.
 
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A 14: Please drop an email to me at [email protected] for any suggestions or questions you have about this application. I will happy to help you in addressing your questions or suggestions. I also request you to spare 5-10 mints and send a review/feedback about the application on mentioned email id so that I can know if this application is really helpful to the people around the world.
 
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A 15: There are 2 plug-ins that you can add to the application. These 2 plug-ins are related to Stock Account. If you want to get the latest stock prices and other details like (open price, previous close price, total quantity traded, % change, net change, 52 week max, 52 week min) for the stocks you have in your Portfolio, you can use these plug-ins. As code for getting these values over internet or by some other means varies from place to place and country to country, I have not made it part of the application. It requires some java coding to get these things in to the application, these plug-ins can be easily added to the application once developed. Please drop an email to [email protected] if you need more information on these plug-ins.
 
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A 16: FAssistant utility has been uploaded to Geocities default free account which has some limits on downloads per hour. So if there are many downloads of the application within an hour and if it exceeds the predefined limit you see the error message about unavailability of the home page. You can try after an hour or so, that will pass the hourly download limit and you will be able to see the home page.
 
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