Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does Budget Planner support different currency and date formats? Answer
2. Why does Budget Planner for Mac OS X say I have an "Invalid date format"? Answer
3. The Budget Planner help files don't show up in Help Viewer. What should I do? Answer
4. I use a Windows PC at work and a Mac at home. Is there any way that I can use one Budget Planner file on both platforms? Answer
5. Is there a Palm, or Linux version of Budget Planner? Answer

Yes. Budget Planner supports any date and currency formats you can set using the System Preferences application. Use the International pane of System Preferences to set the language, date format, and currency 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.

This seems to be caused by showing Budget Planner'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 it's list of application help.

You need to delete your Help Viewer preferences file, then the Budget help should show up correctly. Follow these steps to delete the preferences file:

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

Yes. The Budget Planner files are formatted using XML which is cross platform capable.

No. Budget Planner only runs on Mac OS X or Windows. We do not have Palm or versions.