The latest version of this document can be found at: http://www.qmate.com/qmate/userguide.html.
QMate, as stated in the about box, is "A Quicken Companion for PalmPilot." It is not a replacement for Quicken, but rather designed for Quicken users who have a PalmPilot and want to enter very Quicken-specific data with a facile means of synchronizing that data with their Quicken data file(s). To that end, the only data you enter in QMate is that which you would enter in your Quicken register. Also, QMate emphasizes transaction functionality over account functionality as explained below in "Using QMate."
QSync is the name of the conduit which runs on your Wintel PC or Mac and generates .QIF files which you can import into Quicken. The Windows version of QSync requires that you use version 2.0 or 3.0 of the HotSync Manager. See "Installing QMate and QSync."
QMate supports three kinds of Quicken accounts: Bank, Cash and Credit Card. These are, not coincidentally, the most common account types and those for which the transaction register is very similar. Investment and other accounts would require an entirely separate UI altogether (a potential product idea for someone else, perhaps).
Account balances and transaction amounts are limited to roughly $99 million. Anyone needing to enter values larger than that probably doesn't need the assistance of an app like QMate but are encouraged to send me the excess so they can use QMate :-). Entering values greater than 99 million results in undefined behavior (i.e., I'm not considering it a bug).
The Windows version of QSync only runs on Windows 95 or NT.
To install QMate onto your PalmPilot, please follow these instructions:
As stated above, QSync requires you to use HotSync Manager version 2.0 or 3.0. The download page has everything you need to install in order to use QMate and its conduit. To install QSync on your Windows machine, please follow these instructions carefully:
Output Directory - instructs QSync where to save .QIF files. Use the "Browse..." button to navigate to where you want QSync to save the .QIF files it generates. If you leave this blank, QSync will save the .QIF files in a directory called "QMate" inside your PalmPilot user directory (for me this is "C:\pilot\DakinS\QMate\") which it will create if necessary.
Input Directory - instructs QSync where to look for files to import into QMate during a HotSync. The types of files QSync can import into QMate are: 1) your list of categories; and 2) a selected range of transactions from your Quicken data file. Both of these types of files are generated via Quicken's export command.
QIF File Mode - controls how QSync treats existing .QIF files. Append will preserve any contents of the .QIF file prior to writing any new synced transactions; overwrite will not. If you plan to import your QIF files into Quicken after each HotSync then you should use overwrite mode. If you plan to do more than one HotSync in between Quicken imports then you should use append mode. Users who select append mode should be careful to delete the QIF files after they are imported to avoid duplicate transactions in Quicken. Similarly, users who select overwrite mode must be careful to import the QIF files after each HotSync so they don't lose any data. Users of Quicken 98 can select the "Quicken 98 QIF File Format" checkbox and have all of their transactions saved in a single file, called QMate.qif. This greatly simplifies the Quicken import process.
Sort Category List Before Import - QMate supports QuickFill(tm) in the category field and in order for this to work correctly, your category list must be sorted alphabetically. Most users will want to leave this option selected. If you know your version of Quicken sorts the categories alphabetically (my Mac version does) then you can save a little bit of time during HotSync by deselecting this option.
The advanced settings are:
Date Format - format used for dates when writing transactions to a .QIF file. You should set this to MM/DD/YY. NOTE: even if you use a different format for your dates in Quicken (e.g., most European users) you should still use the MM/DD/YY date format. This is a requirement imposed by the current versions of Quicken (both US and international users have all confirmed that every known version of Quicken wants QIF files formatted this way). I have left the remaining date formats in QSetup in anticipation of future versions of Quicken that might support non-US formatted dates.
Restore Saved Accounts - this feature only applies to the registered version of QSync. Both the trial and registered versions of QSync will create a backup of your QMate accounts in a text file called "Accounts.txt" which is stored in your QMate output directory. If you select this option in the registered version, then QSync will check to make sure all of the accounts stored in your Accounts.txt file exist in QMate. Any that do not will be created for you. This makes restoring your QMate setup after a hard reset much easier. Users of older versions of QMate which did not include this feature (all prior to 1.3) will likely appreciate this.
Match Categories to CatList.qif file - this is a legacy feature left over from the days when category QuickFill wasn't supported, indeed before category list importing was supported (very few users will remember those days). For virtually all users, this preference will be best left disabled. If it is enabled, QSync will match the text you have entered in the category field to the closest entry in your CatList.qif file. This would allow you to enter "gr:w" and have QSync expand it to "Groceries:Wine" at HotSync time. Since QMate supports category field QuickFill, this feature is of dubious merit to most users. One advantage to leaving this option disabled is that QSync will no longer truncate subcategories beyond the first level (e.g., "Discretionary:CDs:Opera" would be truncated to "Discretionary:CDs" if no second level subcategories existed in your CatList.qif file and the match categories option was enabled).
And that's all there is to it. To use QSync, run HotSync Manager and perform a HotSync. But before you do that, you might want to enter some account and transaction information into QMate so QSync will have something to work with. See the "Using QMate" section for details on how to do this.
Installing QSync for the Mac is about as simple a process as one can find: after unstuffing the download archive, double-click the QSync application icon and you're ready to go. The Using QSync for Mac section below describes the settings panels available to you.
The first thing you will see when you run QMate for the first time is the Accounts form. There are two primary forms in QMate: one for accounts and the other for transactions. Once you enter your account information, you will spend most of your time in the Transactions form. Before you can enter any transactions, you must create one or more accounts.
To create a new account, tap the "New" button on the Accounts form. You will be presented with a dialog which allows you to specify the account name (up to 15 characters), account type (Bank, Cash or Credit Card), and balance.
QMate supports up to 15 accounts. You can change information for an account by selecting the account on the Accounts form and tapping the "Details..." button. This is how you can keep your QMate account balances current with your Quicken ones.
Once you've entered your account information, navigate to the Transactions form. This can be accomplished in one of two ways: select an account and tap the "Transactions" button, or double-tap on the desired account.
The Transactions form is very similar to the Accounts form with only a couple of differences: 1) at the top is an account pop-up which controls which transactions are displayed; 2) selecting (single tapping) a transaction brings up the Transactions Details dialog; and 3) there is a "Show" button which allows you to change how transactions are displayed.
To enter a new transaction, tap the "New" button on the transaction form. This brings up the New Transaction dialog. There is help associated with the New Transaction dialog which can be accessed by tapping the "i" icon in the dialog's title bar. This help dialog explains the basics. Some advanced topics not covered in the online help are discussed here.
To move a transaction from one account to another, select a transaction on the Transactions form. This will display the Edit Transaction dialog for that transaction. Change the selection in the account pop-up and tap "OK." The account balance for the two affected accounts will be updated according to the transaction amount.
QMate supports QuickFill(tm) for fast category entry. To take advantage of this feature, you must import your list of Quicken categories into QMate. To do this place a file called "CatList.qif" (or "CatList.txt") in the user-configurable QMate input directory (for legacy reasons this file can also be placed in your QMate output directory). If you have questions about creating the CatList.qif file, please refer to your Quicken manual. The process for importing categories is different for Windows and Mac users and is thus covered in the respective Using QSync sections below.
To make entering often repeated transactions easier QMate supports memorized transactions. Once a transaction is memorized QMate will use QuickFill(tm) in the payee field to quickly match the desired transaction. Once you exit the payee field after a match is found, QMate will fill in the rest of the transaction fields with the values used in the previous entry of that memorized transaction. There is one difference between the way QMate and Quicken fill out fields after a memorized transaction has been "matched." In QMate, if your memorized transaction contains a number field value (non-special value) and the account into which you are entering the new transaction is a bank account type, QMate will automatically enter the next number in sequence for that account. To see the list of transactions which are presently memorized, press the "Payee" button on the New/Edit Transaction dialog. This will display the Select Payee dialog which allows you to view, delete and use items from your memorized transactions list.
To memorize a transaction simply select the Memorized checkbox in the New/Edit Transaction dialog box prior to pressing "OK". That transaction will then be memorized. To delete a memorized transaction, use the Delete button on the Payee Selection dialog or deselect the Memorized checkbox prior to pressing "OK" in the Edit Transaction dialog.
Split transactions are a way of breaking down a transaction into parts, each part of which can have a separate amount, category and memo. The main category (what is used as the category in a non-split transaction) is not used in the split case (since each split has its own category) but the main memo field may be used (in addition to any memos used for the splits).
To enter a split transaction in QMate, tap the Split... button on the New/Edit Transaction dialog. This will display the Split Transaction dialog. If you enter an amount on the New/Edit Transaction dialog before tapping on the Split... button then the amount for the entire transaction will remain fixed as you enter splits. If you do not enter an amount before tapping the Split... button then the amount will tabulate as you enter splits.
Any payee and amount information you entered on the New/Edit Transaction dialog is displayed at the top of the Split Transaction dialog. When you enter the Split Transaction dialog for any non-split transaction, the first split line will read "<new split>" with the amount matching what you entered for the transaction (or 0.00 otherwise). Adjust the amount and enter a category and memo (the latter only if desired) and tap the Save button. The "<new split>" line will be updated and a new one created for you. Any remaining transaction amount is entered as the amount for the next split. You may enter up to 6 splits for a transaction (this is a QMate limitation).
To delete a split, select it in the splits list and tap the Delete button.QMate will prompt you to confirm the deletion. To delete all of the splits and convert the transaction to a non-split transaction, tap the Clear button. Again, QMate will prompt you for confirmation.
When you are finished entering splits for a transaction tap the OK button. This will automatically save any modified split information and return you to the New/Edit Transaction dialog. The category for a split transaction will read "<split>" and cannot be modified.
QMate also supports account transfer transactions. Just like in Quicken, you use the "[account-name]" category entry to specify a transaction. Also like Quicken, QMate offers a QuickFill(tm) feature for matching account names. For example, if you have accounts called Checking and Savings, you only need to enter "[s" into the category field of a transaction (without the quotes, of course), and QMate will fill in the rest. QMate makes no attempt to prevent you from specifying the same account as the transfer source and destination. Another very important note about transfer categories is that in QMate only one of the accounts will contain a entry for the transaction, but both balances will be updated as per the rules of transfers. The reason only one account contains an entry for each transaction is that some versions Quicken will automatically add a corresponding entry for the account which does not contain the actual transfer transaction. To support the largest number of Quicken users possible I have opted for the present design.
You can change the currency symbol QMate uses. The three currency symbols supported by PalmPilot are the dollar sign, the British pound sign and Japanese yen. The German version of QMate substitutes DM for the Japanese yen symbol.
You may not want to store transactions on your PalmPilot indefinitely. Once you've synced your QMate transactions, you can quickly delete them by selecting the "Options:Purge..." menu item. In the purge dialog you can specify what criteria QMate should use to determine the transactions that should be purged. The criteria include cleared and synced status and number of days old. Use the purge feature carefully as it cannot be undone.
If you want to resync transactions for any reason, you can quickly clear the synced status of all transactions by selecting the "Options:Sync/Unsync..." menu item and selecting the "Unsynced" option in the Sync/Unsync dialog. Similarly, if you want to prevent all transactions from being synced, set the synced status by selecting the "Synced" option in the Sync/Unsync dialog.The synced status can also be set or cleared for individual transations via the Transactions Details dialog.
QSync saves the .QIF files it generates in the QMate output directory you specify in the QSetup program. If you're using Quicken 98 and have selected the Quicken 98 QIF File Format setting then QSync will save all transactions to a single file called "QMate.QIF". To ensure that this feature operates correctly, your QMate and Quicken account names must match exactly. If you're not using the Quicken 98 QIF File Format setting, then the file names QSync uses for the .QIF files match your QMate account names. For example, if you have accounts called "Checking" and "VISA" entered in QMate then you will end up with two .QIF files after a HotSync: "Checking.QIF" and "VISA.QIF". Depending on the setting you specify in QSetup, QSync will either append transaction information to any existing .QIF file or overwrite the .QIF file with any new information. To import the transactions in these QIF files into Quicken, use Quicken's import command (File->File Operations->Import menu command) and select the QIF file(s) that QSync generated.
To import transactions from Quicken into QMate, use Quicken's export command to create a QIF file containing the transactions you wish to import into QMate (your Quicken manual and online help will have more information on how to perform this step). Important: the filenames you use for the data exported from Quicken must match your QMate account names exactly (not including the ".qif" extension). For example, if you have a QMate account called "Checking" then the QIF file to import into that account must be called "checking.qif" (case doesn't matter). Also, the import files must be located in the input directory you specified in QSetup when you installed QSync (rerun QSetup as often as you like to change this or any other setting). Unlike the output directory, there is no concept of a "default" input directory. You must specify a valid path for the input directory and it cannot be the same as your output directory. Lastly, after each QIF file is imported it is moved to a subdirectory of your input directory called "Imported" (QSync will create it automatically, if necessary). This prevents the files from being imported more than once and alleviates the need for you to move or delete them manually. Files already stored in the Imported directory (e.g., those which have already been imported) will be overwritten with newer imported files. If you experience any problems importing files, first check your HotSync log for any helpful messages and feel free to send me an email if the problem persists.
Importing Memorized Transactions
To import memorized transactions, follow the instructions in the previous section for creating a transaction export file from Quicken. Call the file "memorized.qif" and place it in your QMate input directory. Perform a HotSync and the transactions in that file will be available in QMate as memorized transactions.
QSync looks for a file called CatList.qif in your QMate input directory during a HotSync. It understands the file format that Quicken uses for importing and exporting categories. To create a CatList.qif file please follow the following steps:
After following the above steps, you will have a properly formatted file that QSync will use to import categories into QMate during the next HotSync. If you have problems importing that categories after you have created the CatList.qif file, please check your HotSync log for messages and see the synchronization tips I have posted online.
Note: QSync will only import category information into QMate if the category list on your PalmPilot is empty. This is the case after you install QMate and run it for the first time or when you select the "Delete Categories..." command from the Options menu in QMate.
Due to a limitation in the Mac version of HotSync, generating QIF files on your Mac from data entered in QMate on your Pilot requires one additional step (compared to the process on the PC). I have tried to make this additional step as quick and easy to perform as possible.
The are two settings panels in QSync Mac. The first pertains mostly to QMate. The second, accessible from the "Expense..." button pertains to the PalmPilot Expense application. The main QSync Settings panel allows you to configure the following options:
QMate database folder
The Mac version of HotSync doesn't support third party conduits but it will create a backup file of Pilot databases on your Mac. QSync takes advantage of this by reading the QMate accounts and transactions contained in the QMate databases that are generated by the HotSync program. The two files that QSync needs are "QMateAccountsDB.pdb" and "QMateTransactionsDB.pdb" ("QMateCategoriesDB.pdb" may be present on your system but is not used at this time). HotSync saves these files in the backup folder contained in your Pilot user folder. Use the finder's find file command to locate the files if necessary.
Output folder
This instructs QSync where to save the QIF files it generates. Choose a location that is convenient for you when importing these files into Quicken. If you leave this field blank then QSync will output the QIF files in the folder from which you ran it.
Date format
For most users, MM/DD/YYYY will be the correct format.
QIF File Mode
If you intend to import your QIF files to Quicken after each HotSync, choose Overwrite. If you intend to perform more than one HotSync in between importing your QIF files to Quicken then you should use Append. In the latter case, make sure you delete the QIF files after importing them to avoid duplicate transactions in Quicken. If you're using Quicken 98, select the Quicken 98 QIF File Format checkbox to have QSync save all of your transactions to a single file called "QMate.qif" that you can import into Quicken. When you import this QIF file into Quicken, all of the transactions will be entered in the appropriate account (provided the account names match exactly).
Quit when finished generating QIF files
This instructs QSync to automatically quit after it has finished generating QIF files for the unsynced transactions. If this feature is turned off, QSync will display a dialog that tells you how many accounts were processed and how many transactions were transferred. You can find a more detailed report in the QSyncLog file (see below).
Auto-run
If you check this option then QSync will not display its settings dialog when you run it. Instead it will automatically generate QIF files and quit. This is a time-saving measure to help make QSync as quick and easy to use as possible. If you want to display the settings panel after turning this option on, simply hold down the command key as you run QSync and the auto-run feature will be bypassed for that run.
The Expense Settings panel allows you to specify which fields of the Expense records should be included in the comma separated values (CSV) file that QSync generates. You can also indicate whether you want the field names to be included as the first line in the CSV file.
Synchronizing QMate data
Synchronizing Expense data
Importing categories using QSync Mac
Using Quicken 98 for Mac you can create a CatList.qif file using these steps:
In Quicken 6 for Mac, you can use these steps to create a CatList.qif file:
After creating the CatList.qif file use the following steps to import the categories into QMate:
Note: QSync will translate the CatList.qif file to a QMateCategoriesDB.pdb file each time you tell it to process the files in your input folder. Your QMate categories will only be installed or updated, however, when you use Install App and HotSync to install the QMateCategoriesDB.pdb file onto your PalmPilot. To accelerate the running time of QSync, you can move your CatList.qif to a location other than your QMate database folder after you successfully import your categories.
Each time you run QSync it outputs to a file how many accounts were processed and how many transactions were transferred (and skipped) for each of those accounts. The output file is called "QSyncLog" and can be found in the folder you specified as your Output folder.
This information has been moved to a separate web page.