LUCID DATA Tax Recordkeeper page 1 MAKE YOUR OWN LUCID DATA 1987 TAX RECORDKEEPER Mark Lutton, 3/28/87 The best way to handle tax time is by preparing for it all year long. This is not as dismal as it sounds. The most important things you will have to remember in April are all your income and all your deductible expenses. If you can keep all of those in one place you will save a great deal of time filling out your tax forms. SUPER ROM's Lucid Data is a handy, easy-to-use database system, and you can very easily set up a tax expense recordkeeper. (You can also make a separate income recordkeeper; it is very similar.) Here is how to set one up for 1987. The data will be held in a Lucid spreadsheet with 6 fields: Date, Payee, Amount, Tax Category, and two Memo fields. These fields will be identified as columns A through F. We will use a View file to do data entry. Our Lucid spreadsheet is TAXREC.CA and our view file is TAXREC.DO. The first "viewpoint" is for data entry; the second (separated from the first by , which looks like a "paragraph sign" on the Model 100 screen) is for printing. Hold the Code key and hit the zero key to get a . File TAXREC.DO: LUCID 1987 Tax Record-Keeper #[# ] Date:[A# ]/87 Pay to:[B# ] Amt:[C# ] Tax Category:[D# ] Memo:[E# ] Memo:[F# ] PRINT TAX REPORT Sort on D1 (Key), A1 (Key 2). Put cursor here:[DR1 ] and press PRINT In the Lucid spreadsheet, format Column C as dollars-and-cents. To do this, go to C250, enter 0, hit F7 (Sel), Enter, F1 (Disp), F5 LUCID DATA Tax Recordkeeper page 2 ($###), F8 (Exit). This will make all amounts display with a dollar sign. Here are a few sample records as they appear on the screen. When putting in the date, put in two digits for month and day, separated by a slash. Note that year is already in the format. This way, when you sort the records, they will come out in chronological order. For "Tax Category", always spell each category the same way so that they will come out grouped together when you sort the records. Date:01/27/87 Pay to:BCS Amt: $75.00 Tax Category:Contrib Memo:For the Laptop Group Memo:because they saved me taxes Date:02/15/87 Pay to:Doctor Payne Amt: $150.00 Tax Category:Med Memo:Year's supply of Valium Memo:(enough for two months) Date:03/20/87 Pay to:Doctor Payne Amt: $25.00 Tax Category:Med Memo:Hangover treatments Memo: REPORTS The main report you want from this is a report for the year of all your expenditures, sorted by tax category and by date within category, and with subtotals for tax category and a grand total of all expenditures. You need to add two blocks of information into the spreadsheet TAXREC.CA. One of them, at AA1 and AA2, is for subtotals and totals: AA 001 +TL1(C#) 002 +TLG(C#) Format these two cells for dollars and cents. The other is a "Report Specifier Block" at DR1 through DR10. Notice how I put little labels in column DQ to help me remember what's what. LUCID DATA Tax Recordkeeper page 3 DQ DR 001 rpt fil TAXRPT.DO 002 sel crit +NOT(NUL(C#)) 003 brk1 +CHG(D#) 004 brk2 005 cols +1 006 bk1 ct 007 bk2 ct 008 pg ct 009 lpp +9999 010 lm +1 You will also need to have the report template file TAXRPT.DO in memory. Here it is: FILE TAXRPT.DO [A# ]/87 [D# ] [B# ] [C# ] [E# ] Grand Total of payments: [AA2 ] TAX CATEGORY REPORT Date Category Paid to Amount Memo Total for category [D# ] [AA1 ] The templates in the file, separated by , are: Line item, grand total, page header, page footer (empty in this case), break 1 header, break 1 footer, break 2 header (empty), and break 2 footer (empty). To print the report you must first sort the data. Go into the spreadsheet and select the entire block from columns A through F, rows 1 to the last row with data. Press F7 (Sort). Use F5 (Key) to set D1 as the major key, and use F7 (Ky2) to set A1 as the minor key. (You need to do this only the first time you sort. Lucid remembers from then on.) LUCID DATA Tax Recordkeeper page 4 Press F6 (Go). Now go back to the data view and hit F5 (Vwpt) to see the other viewpoint, the one labeled "PRINT TAX REPORT". Press PRINT to start printing. Here is what I got when I printed the report: TAX CATEGORY REPORT Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 02/15/87 Alimony Mrs. Kramer $250.00 @#$%!! Total for category Alimony $250.00 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 03/19/87 Business Pussy Cat Cafe $125.00 Entertaining a client Total for category Business $125.00 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 01/27/87 Contrib Computer Museum $750.00 02/18/87 Contrib BCS $75.00 For the Laptop Group 03/07/87 Contrib WGBH $75.00 Public Radio Contribution Total for category Contrib $900.00 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 02/15/87 Med Doctor Payne $150.00 Valium 03/20/87 Med Doctor Payne $25.00 Hangover treatment Total for category Med $175.00 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 01/28/87 Misc Ded MECA $35.00 Tax software update 01/31/87 Misc Ded E.F. Hutton $45.00 IRA Management Fee 03/01/87 Misc Ded J.K. Lasser $7.95 Tax book Total for category Misc Ded $87.95 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 01/15/87 Mortgage Friendly Mortgage $357.22 Interest portion of mortg 02/15/87 Mortgage Friendly Mortgage $348.27 Interest portion of mortg Total for category Mortgage $705.49 Date Category Paid to Amount Memo 01/15/87 RE Tax Friendly Mortgage $120.00 Real Estate Tax LUCID DATA Tax Recordkeeper page 5 portion 02/15/87 RE Tax Friendly Mortgage $120.00 Real Estate Tax portion Total for category RE Tax $240.00 Grand Total of payments: $2,483.44 THE END