Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does Budget support different currency and date formats? Answer
2. Why does Budget for Mac OS X say I have an "Invalid date format"? Answer
3. I set up my pays and expenses, why don't I see the amounts on the envelopes? Answer
4. Why does Budget tie money to accounts? Answer
5. The Budget help files don't show up in Help Viewer. What should I do? Answer
6. When I try to delete an envelope, I get an error message saying "There are unbalanced transactions," and it won't let me delete the envelope. What does this mean, and how do I delete the envelope? Answer
7. Budget is giving me an "Integrity Error". What is that and how do I fix it? Answer
8. Does Budget come with any documentation? Answer
9. I use a Windows PC at work and a Mac at home. Is there any way that I can use one Budget file on both platforms? Answer
10. Is there a Palm or Linux version of Budget? Answer

Yes. Budget allows you to set the currency symbol to use for each document that you have. To set the currency symbol, use the Currency pane of the Budget preferences.

Budget supports any date format you can set using the System Preferences application. Use the International pane of System Preferences to set the language and date format you prefer.

Fresh installations of Mac OS X sometimes have a bad default short date format. This applies to new computers sold within the U.S., computers sold in other countries, and computers that have had Mac OS X recently installed. Our software detects this bad short date format and asks you to correct it. Apple Computer, Inc. is aware of the problem and is working on a fix for a future version of Mac OS X.

Follow these steps to fix your date format:

1. On 10.1 - 10.2.x: Open System Preferences, select the International pane, and switch to the Date tab.
   On 10.3 and later: Open System Preferences, select the International pane, switch to the Formats section, then click the "Customize..." date button.
2. On the Short Date section of the view, select a different format than you have now. Any different format will work.
3. Quit System Preferences to make sure that this change percolates through the system.
4. Open System Preferences, select the International pane, and set whatever date format you prefer to use.
5. Quit System Preferences; Budget and Budget Planner should launch with no warnings.

Setting your income (Pays) and your expenses just defines how much you want taking out of your pay to be distributed to each envelope when you get paid. When you actually receive the pay use the "Enter Pay" command to enter the pay into Budget. Budget will use the information you defined to determine how much of that pay to place in each envelope and create a pay transaction. This will change the balances of the envelopes and place a copy of the transaction in each effected envelopes history.

There are two basic paradigms in the envelope model, allowing money to be in envelopes regardless of the account or forcing money to be in specific accounts. Budget uses the later because it is first and foremost a budgeting program that uses envelopes. The main focus is to help you stay on a budget and manage your money wisely. Without tying money to an account you could have an envelope that shows a balance of $1000 and you would think you had that full amount to spend, writing a check for $800 would succeed. However, by tying money to an account you would be able to further see that the $1000 was made up of $200 in your "Checking" account and $800 in your "Savings" account. Writing a check for $500 would fail. In order to write the check you would first have to transfer $300 from the Savings account to the Checking account. You could then write the check for $500. This simple difference of an extra step allows you to "think twice" and better determine how much money you really have to spend.

This is caused by showing Budget's help at least once, then moving the Budget application to a different location on your hard drive. Help Viewer is not following the moved application, and needs to be told to update its list of application help.

You need to delete the Help Viewer cache files (which Help Viewer will rebuild as needed). Follow these steps to delete the cache files:

1. Make sure that Help Viewer is not running. If it is, quit Help Viewer.
2. In the Finder, open your ~/Library/Caches folder. The tilda (~) means your home folder.
3. Find and delete the folder named com.apple.helpui.
4. Run Budget and try the Budget Help command from the Help menu. The help files should display correctly.

Apple Computer, Inc. is aware of this problem on Mac OS X 10.3.x and earlier. You can read more about it on Apple's support web site:
Mac OS X: Can't access Help content, or content is blank or missing links

You can not delete an envelope until all the transactions in the envelope have cleared the bank, and you have marked them as "Balanced." When all the transactions have been balanced you can then delete the envelope.

You could also delete any unbalanced transactions in the envelope, and then delete the envelope.

This error was more common in the first versions of Budget, but it is very rare now. The program double checks everything it does and both answers must agree. If not, you get an "Integrity Error." Quit the program without saving and contact tech support. Please describe the situation in as much detail as possible.

Yes. There is extensive HTML documentation available from the Help menu. There is also documentation in PDF format available as a separate download from the products' Documentation page. For registered users, there is also a PDF format file that allows you to print the documentation as a booklet.

No. The Budget files are platform specific; a Budget document file created on the PC can not be read on the Mac and vice versa. Cross platform document files are on our wish list, and we'll try to have them available in the future.

No. We have versions of Budget for Apple's Mac OS X, iPhone, iPad, and for Microsoft's Windows. We do not have a Palm or Linux version, and have no plans to create them at this time.