BAM is a complete Windows phone application to manage in simple gestures and in nice pivot views your registered bank accounts, entering very quickly your payments or incomes, checking your pending transactions, calculate you current or forecasted balances at a specific date, define budgets, apply any type of filters on your transactions, export your transactions to your PC, and even import OFX file from your bank web site.

Presentation and principles

The main three purposes of BAM are to:

- Enter in few second your expenses or incomes

- Reconcile your pending transactions into their respective account (in debit or credit of the account) once their checking is made

- Forecast the balances of all your registered accounts at a given date.

Each new transaction entered will stay so in the list of pending expenses or pending incomes until you "check" it (i.e. reconciliation).

Once you have the confirmation that the transaction was really debited or credited from its account( by consulting for example you bank web site or bank receipts) , you can check the transaction and then it will be moved to the Debit or Credit lists of the corresponding account accessible via the account view.

The third main objective of BAM is indeed to enter your periodic (recurrent) transactions and allow you estimating the balances of your different accounts at a specific date in the future (or a delay after the current date).

Calculation of the future balances will take so in account all the periodic transactions you registered and the deferred transactions.

BAM main notions

Pivot View

BAM allows navigating easily between two pivot views composed each one of different lists.

List

Each Pivot view is composed of a set of lists that you can display by scrolling horizontally.
Each list has a set of settings that you can change (see below for further details)

Group

Each list contains items ordered by groups which can be expanded or collapsed

Account

A Bank or Cash account that you will register in BAM.
Each account will have pending or periodic transactions which be imputed to it.
You can enter any number of accounts in the full BAM version.
You can specify different settings for an account like the bank name, the account name, ref number, comment, payment types, reconciled balance, web site url ,etc..

Note: BAM implies to have a least one Cash account created.

Transaction

A transaction is either an expense or an income that you will enter in BAM.

BAM manage 3 types of transactions:

- Pending transactions (that you did not yet reconciled)

- Periodic transactions (recurrent transactions like the Salary)

- Reconciled transactions (transactions that you reconciled after verifying via your bank receipts or via your bank web site that the transaction was effectively imputed into its account).

Creation date and Processing date

- The Creation date is the date when the transaction was entered in BAM database.
It is by default the current date at the time of a new transaction but it can be modified by editing an existing transaction.

- The Processing date is used by BAM in its calculation of balances.

All calculations of BAM for the different type of balances and the upcoming transactions are based on the processing date.

The Processing date is automatically calculated by BAM when entering a new transaction – based on the selected payment type and its possible configured delay- but it can be changed at that time or by editing an existing transaction.

Payee or Payer

You can select or add a new Payee or a Payer when you create a new transaction.
Each payer/payer can have a default targeted category which will be automatically selected when an existing payer/payee is itself selected in a transaction.

A Payee/Payer is created by default and named “Not defined” to represent all transactions not targeting a specific budget; this default Payee/Payer cannot be edited or deleted.

Category

It allows classifying your transaction and then making some filters on it.
You can select or add a new category when you create a new transaction.
Each category can have a default targeted budget which will be automatically selected when an existing category is itself selected in a transaction.

A category is created by default and named “Not defined” to represent all transactions not targeting a specific category; this default category cannot be edited or deleted.

Each transaction is linked to a category which can be so the default “not defined” one or an existing custom category.

Budget

You can create budgets and specify for each one an allocated amount and a validity period: per year, per month or in a specific dates range.

A budget is created by default and named “Not defined” to represent all transactions not targeting a specific budget; this default budget cannot be edited or deleted.

Each transaction is linked to a budget which can be so the default “not defined” one or an existing custom budget.

Filter

A filter is a powerful feature in BAM; it allows you to create a set of conditions to produce a list of transactions respecting these conditions. It is a sort of query.
You can so create for example a filter to display only pending transactions created in a specific range of date, or to display only the transactions having a Credit Card payment.
You can so define your own filters and pin the favorite ones in the main pivot view.

Tiles

A lot of lists in BAM can be pinned on your Windows phone startup screen.
Just press the Pin button at the bottom of the list if present to pin the list, and a corresponding tile will be immediately created.

Some important information are present on the front and the back of a tile

A tap on the tile will then launch BAM and will display directly the targeted list.

Theme

BAM offers you – via the BAM Settings page - to choose between two available display themes, a WP7 Metro theme, and a more advanced theme; each theme can be displayed in different colors.
Depending of your preferences, BAM can so display in a more “Metro” theme your lists or use an advanced theme and with the set of colors you want.

Navigating in BAM

Views

BAM allow navigating easily between two pivot views composed each one of different lists:

- The Main view composed of lists showing the welcome screen, details on your pending, periodic, or upcoming transactions - independently of the accounts - , and also your Payees/Payers, Categories, budgets, and filters.

- An Account's view composed of different list showing details on transactions specific to a selected account.

Main Pivot view

In this view you have a quick access to the Welcome screen and also to different lists.

- The Welcome screen gives you a quick access, in a nice tiles based view, to these lists.
Each tap on a tile redirect you to the corresponding list and the back key will bring you back to the Welcome screen.

- List of bank Accounts with their different calculated balances (based on a delay you can configure in the Global options menu). The bottom of that list shows the total of all balances of all accounts.

- List of Pending transactions (not yet imputed into your accounts)

- List of Periodic transactions (ex: Electricity, water, rents, Home credits, salary, other periodic incomes, etc...)

- List of Upcoming transactions to display the list of periodic transactions which will be soon preceded in a given period of time. This period of time can be configured in the settings of that list.

- List of Payee or Payers

- List of Categories you define (clothes, house, transport, food, etc...)

- List of Budgets with a specific maximum amount and period configurable

- The list of filters to display your own view and total of transactions types you want

- The Dashboard list consisting of your "favorite" list where you can pin anything you want

Account Pivot view

In this view you have a quick access to important information of a specific bank account via some list showing each a list of transactions and a balance:

- Reconciled transactions of the account

- Pending account transactions with immediate payment

- Pending account transactions with differed payment

- Upcoming transactions for the account and its next balance (based on a delay you can configure in the Global options menu)

List groups and items

Each List is composed of groups of items and each group can be expanded or collapsed by just tapping on it.

Each item let you execute some actions on it via a Context Menu than you can display by keeping pressed the item.

When you expand a group the first 3 items will be displayed in “detailed view” and the first 6 items will be displayed in “Simple view”; a set of “…” will invite you to continue listing the items.

List settings

Each list in BAM can be ordered by specific criteria that you can choose among a list of available criteria; to access to these criteria, click on the Settings button in the application bar of the list and a settings panel will be visible.

For the list of transactions, you can choose among the available criteria to group the transactions by their creation day, creation week, or creation month; in that case the settings panel allows also selecting the order mode (ascending or descending) of the groups and their transactions.

If you group so the transactions by week for example, you can choose to display the groups and their items in ascending order mode so the group corresponding to the oldest week will appear at the top of the list and the oldest transaction in a week will appear at the top of the group. In the opposite, by selecting the descending order mode the oldest week (group) will appear at the bottom of the list and the oldest transaction in each group will appear at the bottom of the group.

Still specific to the list of transactions, the settings panel allows choosing to filter transactions on their type (expense, income, or both)

BAM main tasks

This section covers some main "how to" tasks:

Add or edit an account

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Accounts list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh new account or keep pressed press an existing account transaction to display the context menu and edit it.

A page will be then displayed with these settings:

Bank name

specify here the name of your bank hosting this account

Account name

specify here the name of your account. Enter a name which well describes the purpose of your account.

Account Number

specify here the account number. This field is optional

Comment

specify here any comment you want. This comment will not appear in accounts list.
This field is optional.

Bank web site Url

specify here the Url of your bank web site. If you specify an address, it will be used to navigate directly to your web site inside BAM to consult your bank account (via the context menu of this account).
This field is optional.

Change Payment types

this button gives you access to the list of payments that the account manages.
You can modify or delete an existing payment or create a new one and you can specify for each one a delay for the processing date of a transaction (see “processing date” notion above).

Currency

represents the currency of the account; it means that all new pending transactions targeting this account will use that currency by default.

You can select any currency you want and BAM will try to automatically retrieve the corresponding rate against the currency of your local settings, calling a web service.
You can also enter manually the rate if BAM cannot access to the Web Service.

Note that this rate will be used in the calculation of the total of all accounts balances to generate correctly total amounts in the currency of tour local settings.

Reconciled Balance

it corresponds to the real current balance of the account that you can see at this time in your bank receipt or web site.

Add or edit a pending transaction

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Pending transactions list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh transaction or keep pressed press an existing transaction to display the context menu and edit it.

A page will be then displayed with these settings:

Transaction type

Specify if the operation is an expense or an income

Capture Photo

check that option if you want to capture a photo of a bill for example at the validation stage of the new transaction.

Detect location

check that option if you want to detect the current location example at the validation stage of the new transaction.

Amount

you can enter any amount including zero amounts.

Currency

you can select any currency other than the currency of the account linked to the new transaction (via its payment).

When you select another currency, BAM will try to automatically retrieve the rate calling a Web Service. If the rate cannot be retrieved, you can specify manually a rate.

Payee or Payer

you can select here an existing Payee/Payer or create a new one.
If the selected Payee or Payer has a default targeted category, this category will be displayed in the category selector button.

Category

you can select here an existing category or create a new one.
If the selected category has a default targeted budget, this budget will be automatically displayed in the budget selector button.

Budget

you can select here an existing budget or create a new one.

Description

if you specify a description, BAM will display it in the list as the name of the transaction instead to display the category or the Payee/Payer.

Comment

you can type here any comment you want for the transaction

Account to debit

Select here the account which will is targeted by the new transaction

Payment type

Select here the account’s payment type used for the new transaction

Transfer to a registered account

this option will be visible only of the selected payment type is a transfer to or from an account. If you check the option you have the possibility to enter the destination account of the transfer.

Processing date

enter here the date when you want this transaction to be used by BAM in its calculation of balances.

All calculations of BAM for the balances and the upcoming transactions are indeed based on the processing date.

If the payment type used for the new transaction is an immediate payment, the processing date will be the current date.
If the payment type used for the new transaction is a deferred payment, the processing date will be automatically calculated by BAM based on the current date and the delay configured for the selected payment type, but you can modify the processing date if needed.

Reminder

if the processing date of the transaction is later the current date, then this option will be automatically visible and if checked will allow you to be alerted when the processing date minus the reminder delay (see this parameter in the BAM Settings) is greater or equal than the current date; in that case you will be alerted at BAM startup and a message box will be displayed inviting you to display these transactions in a specific page.

Reminders of transactions will be cancelled only if you validate this remind page.

Notice that the main tile of BAM will also show either the details of the first transaction to remind, or a list of the next 5 transactions to remind, depending of the configuration you selected in the BAM Settings page.

Add ore edit a periodic transaction

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Periodic transactions list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh periodic transaction or keep pressed press an existing periodic transaction to display the context menu and edit it.

A page will be then displayed with some settings:

Like for pending transactions, you can then enter an amount, a currency, payment type, the Payee/Payer, category, budget, a description, a comment, etc...

You cannot capture a photo a detect location for periodic operation

You must enter, for periodic operation, some periodicity settings like the frequency and the periodicity type.

You can either create a periodic transaction which will be created automatically into your pending transactions list at each specific processing date, or you can create an estimated transaction with a processing date which will be always calculated based on the current date; this estimated transaction will never be created automatically in the list of pending
transactions and allows to forecast transactions without to really include them in your pending transactions.

Just click on the Apply button to validate the changes or on the Cancel button to cancel it.

How to create or edit a Payee / Payer

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Payees or Payers list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh Payee/Payer or keep pressed press an existing Payee/Payer to display the context menu and edit it.

A settings page will be visible to enter all the settings of the Payee or Payer:

Name

Tag

you can specify any tag you want; tag can be used then to group by this tag your payees/payers in the list.

Reference

Discover location

if you check this option then your current location will be retrieved at the validation of the page.

Reference

you can specify any tag you want; the tag can be used then to group by your payees/payers in the list

Address, Tel, email, relationship, comment

Targeted category

you can specify here a default category attached to this payee/payer.
This default category will be automatically retrieved when this payee/payer will be selected for a new transaction.

Click on the apply button to validate the Payee/Payer and then it will be immediately visible in the list with its total of attached transactions.

How to create or edit a Category

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Categories list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh category or keep pressed press an existing category to display the context menu and edit it.

A settings page will be visible to enter all the settings of the Category

Name

Tag

you can specify any tag you want; tag can be used then to group by this tag your categories in the list.

Comment

Targeted budget

you can specify here a default budget attached to this category.
This default budget will be automatically retrieved when this category will be selected for a new transaction.

Click on the apply button to validate the category and then it will be immediately visible in the list with its total of attached transactions.

How to create or edit a Budget

Scroll horizontally in the main view to the Budgets list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh budget or keep pressed an existing budget to display the context menu and edit it.

A settings page will be visible to enter all the settings of the budget

Name

Tag

you can specify any tag you want; tag can be used then to group by this tag your budgets in the list.

Comment

Expenses Budget

Incomes Budget

Periodicity

you can specify if your budget is calculated or the current year, the current month, or for a specific period.

Click on the apply button to validate the budget and it will be immediately visible in the list with its total of attached transactions.

How to create or edit a filter

Scroll horizontally in the main Pivot view to the filters list and click on the “+” button to create a fresh budget or keep pressed an existing filter to display the context menu and edit it.

A settings page will be visible to enter all the options you want to filter your transactions.
You must enter a filter name, a currency, a comment, and then some filter conditions.

Check the existing filters for samples of filter to create.

Click on the apply button to validate the report and then the filter will be visible in the view with its total of filtered transactions on the right.

How to list the transactions belonging to a Payee/Payer, category, budget, or custom filter

Payee/Payers, categories, budgets and filters have all some transactions attached to them.
To list these operations, just scroll horizontally in the main Pivot view to the corresponding list and click on the item list you want: filtered transactions for the selected item will be then listed in a specific page with the total of amounts at the end of the page.

Delete an account, Payee/Payer, category, a budget, or filter

Just scroll horizontally in the main view to the corresponding list; keep pressed an item list to display its context menu and select the "Delete" menu item.

How to “check” pending transactions and reconcile them into their corresponding account

Scroll horizontally in the pending transactions list and select the Check button (represented by several checks in the image button).

A check box will appear in front of all transactions and you can check the ones you want to impute into their respective account.

Once it is done, click on the apply button to validate the transfer into their account of the checked transactions. You will have then a page showing you the current balance for each imputed account and their future balance.

The transactions will then disappear from the payments and deposits views and you
can find them in the credit or debit of their account using the account view.

How to navigate to your bank web site

BAM does not allow retrieving the account transactions from your bank web site but you can access to your bank web site quickly if you enter its HTTP address into the account properties.

Scroll to the Account page in the main view, click on the menu Access account web site. An explorer view will be then visible and will redirect to your bank web site.

How to display the detailed transactions of an account

BAM offers you the possibility to display several list of transactions specific to an account by just taping an account in the list of Accounts.

A new Pivot view will be then displayed with different lists showing transactions targeted the selected account, like the list of reconciled transactions.

To come back to the Main pivot view, just press the back button.

How to archive or purge account transactions

You have the possibility to archive - in archived data files - your list of reconciled transactions created in a given period of time, or to purge them:

In the Account Pivot view for a selected account, click on the menu Purge.

A page will be then displayed to archive or purge transactions based on a range of
dates.

Just click in the Apply button to validate the archive or purge.

How to add items in the dashboard page

You have the possibility to add in the dashboard some favorite accounts, Payees/Payers, categories, budgets, custom filters or the list of upcoming transactions.

To add such item in the dashboard, keep pressed the item to add and select the menu item Add in the dashboard.

To add the list of upcoming transactions, just display the settings of that list and check the corresponding option.

How to backup and restore your data files

BAM allow saving either locally - on the phone itself - or on a PC all your registered accounts, transactions, Payees/Payers, categories, budgets, payees, and filters to restore them later.

For a remote backup/restore statement, you can so restore all your BAM data in case of a phone reset or phone change and in total security because of its encryption of data.

Indeed all BAM data exchanged between BAM and a PC are encrypted in both directions using a password you have to specify on both BAM and the PC.

Select the Backup and restore menu item and a page will be displayed to start a backup or a restore statement:

Before to start a remote Backup or Restore statement, retrieved first the PC tool BAMSYNC.EXE at the address http://bamwp7.wordpress.com/BAMPCTool.

Run then BAMSYNC tool on your PC and specify the different target folders for the data
files and a communication Port.

Connect then you Windows Phone to your PC and be sure that Zune application see well your phone connected!

Specify on the Windows Phone the name (or the IP address of the PC if you receive errors connecting to the PC tool) and the communication port visible in BAMSYNC

Select in the list the type of data you want to save or restore (prefer to select all for a first backup).

Start the Backup or Restore statement.

A message will be displayed on the phone confirming the good transfer or
reception; BAM data files should be present in the targeted folder for a backup, and you should see all your saved data on the phone for a Restore.

How to export BAM data

Since V 4.30, you can export all your BAM data to your PC into .CSV files.

To export BAM data, select the Import & Export menu item to display a specific page:

Before to start an export statement, retrieved first the PC tool BAMSYNC.EXE at the address http://bamwp7.wordpress.com/BAMPCTool.

Run then BAMSYNC tool on your PC and specify the export target folder for the data
files and a communication Port.

Connect then you Windows Phone to your PC and be sure that Zune application see well your phone connected!

Specify on the Windows Phone the name (or the IP address of the PC if you receive errors connecting to the PC tool) and the communication port visible in BAMSYNC

5) Select in the list the type of data you want to export

6) Starts the Export statement.

Once the Export statement is finished, a message is displayed to confirm the end of the Export.

How to Import OFX File

BAM allow now to import easily OFX files.

A file in OFX format is a file containing all transactions of one or more accounts in a range of date that any bank web site allows to download.

To import an OFX file, select the Import & Export menu item to display the Import/Export page.

Before to start an import statement, retrieved first the PC tool BAMSYNC.EXE at the address http://bamwp7.wordpress.com/BAMPCTool.

Run then BAMSYNC tool on your PC and specify the Import folder containing the OFX file and a communication Port.

Connect then you Windows Phone to your PC and be sure that Zune application see well your phone connected!

Specify on the Windows Phone the name (or the IP address of the PC if you receive errors connecting to the PC tool) and the communication port visible in BAMSYNC.

Starts the import statement.

For each imported bank account found in the OFX file, BAM will ask you to either choose the BAM account to export to if there is no existing link between the two, or ignores the imported bank account file.

BAM will remember then the link between an imported bank account and its targeted BAM account, so the next time you will import the same bank account you will not be prompted to specify the target account.

Once the import statement is finished, a message is displayed to confirm the import result.

The imported transactions will be then visible in the list of reconciled transactions of each targeted accounts.

How to change the default BAM settings

You can change lot of settings in BAM via the item menu BAM Settings available in both the main Pivot view and the account Pivot view. This menu item displays the BAM Settings page

This page is composed of 4 sections:

General settings

Startup list

you can specify the list to display at BAM startup time among the 3 main lists

Password

you can specify a password to prevent someone using your phone to see your data

Use transaction’s payee or category as operation title

choose if you prefer to display the category or the Payee/Payer as the caption of a transaction in the lists of transactions.
Note: if a description is entered in a transaction, it will be used instead of the category or the Payee/Payer.

Used date in transactions for budgets calculation

choose if you prefer to have the amounts of budgets calculated using the creation date transactions or their processing date (See above in the BAM main notions section the differences between creation date and processing date).

Backup reminder

you can suggest BAM to remain you a backup every 15 days

Include deferred transactions in the upcoming transactions list

checking that option guaranty that you will see also in the List of Upcoming transactions the deferred transactions which will be processed in the configured period of time.

Use Background image

you can decide rot use or not to have a background image in the two Pivot views

Theme

you can decide to use either the “classic” WP7 display theme or an “advanced” one.
You can also select the color of your theme among several colors.

New transaction

Capture a photo for each transaction

you can configure BAM to enable photo capture for each new transaction

Detect location for each transaction

you can configure BAM to detect the current location for each new transaction

Default Currency

default currency that will be selected for each new pending transaction.

Default Payee/Payer

default Payee/or Payer who will be selected for each new pending transaction.

Default Comment

default comment that will be used for each new pending transaction.

Default account debit or credit

default account that will be targeted for each new pending transaction.

Forecasted Balance

Forecasted balance date

you can specify here the date, or the delay from the current date, of the forecasted balances of all BAM accounts; this setting allows so to forecast the accounts balance at a specific date in the future.
This date will be used so to calculate all the upcoming periodic operations before that date and will be used also in the list of Upcoming transactions of an account in the account’s Pivot view.

Tiles

This section allows to specific the content of some BAM tiles corresponding to the upcoming transactions list and the reminders list.

For both tile types, you have the choice to display either the details of the next upcoming operation and the next operation to remind, or just the title of the next 5 ones.

For the tile of the upcoming transactions of a specific account, you can also specify to display the forecasted balance

Click on the Apply button to validate the new BAM parameters.