Help & FAQ

A Simple Way to Keep Track of Your Expenses

Below you can find help and answers to some of the frequently asked questions.

Can’t find the answer you are looking for? Please contact us and let us know.

Q: Can I change the list of categories?

You sure can! Click on the ‘Edit Cat’ tab. In that tab screen, you can do the following:

• • Click on the ‘+’ button in the upper right corner to add a category.

  • To edit an existing category, click on the category you want to edit.

  • To delete or re-order the existing categories, click on the ‘Edit’ button in the upper left corner. This makes the edit controls appear in the list of existing categories. Use the red ‘-’ button on left to delete a category. To re-order a category, use the ‘three-dash’ button on the right to drag the category up or down to the desired position. Click on the ‘Done’ button in the upper left corner to exit from the edit/re-order mode.

Q: What are those categories with the ‘@@’ prefix?

The expenses associated with these @@ (“at-at”) categories are included in ‘@@ By Month’ and ‘@@ By Year’ reports but not in other reports.

Some examples of how you might want to use this feature:

• 1.You use Presto Expense to keep track of adhoc expenses. However, each month you know you have certain amount of fixed expenses (e.g., mortgage payment, rent, cable bill, etc). You can enter the total fixed amount each month under the category ‘@@ Monthly Fixed’. Then you can see them in ‘@@ By Month’ and ‘@@ By Year’ reports, but they don’t appear in other reports.

• 2.You can create your own ‘@@’ categories (e.g., @@Mortgage Payment, @@Cable, @@Gym membership) and enter fixed expenses under those categories if you want that level of details.

Q: What are those reports with the ‘@@’ prefix?

See above.

Q: How do I back up my expense data?

You can send existing expense data to an email address (or multiple email addresses) you specify. You can specify email addresses in the More tab under Preferences > Email Addresses.

One you have configured one or more email addresses, use the ‘Email’ tab to send the expense data via email. The expense data is stored in an email attachment named ‘expense.csv’. This file contains data in comma delimited format, which is suitable for import into Excel and other popular spreadsheet software on your personal computer. The file can also be edited in a text editor.

Q: I can’t send email because the ‘Send’ button is greyed out in the email screen

That means you have not specified any email address in the More tab under Preferences > Email Addresses.

Or, a bigger problem might be that your iPhone has not been configured to send emails. You must first make sure you can send and receive emails on your iPhone.

Q: How do I copy my expense data in Presto Expense on my iPhone to Excel on my desktop/laptop?

See ‘How do I back up my expense data’ above.

Q: How do I restore my expense data? How do I import expense data into Presto Expense on my iPhone?

Are you sure want to know? Just kidding :-) Well, this is the probably the most complicated part of Presto Expense -- but after you done it once, it’s not that bad.

IMPORTANT: If you already have some expense data in Presto Expense, It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you back it up by sending it to yourself via email. Importing a new set of expense data into Presto Expense will wipe out any existing data in Presto Expense on your iPhone. Don’t say you have not been warned...

First of all, you must use iTunes on your desktop or laptop in order to accomplish this. This is the only way to accomplish this task. At some point we might support doing this via iCloud -- but that’s in the future.

Attach your iPhone to your desktop/laptop running the iTunes program vis a USB port. Verify that iTunes detects your iPhone.

And it goes without saying that, in order to import the expense data, you’ve to prepare a file that contains the expense data on your desktop/laptop. Obvious, right? Here are some requirements associated with this file:

• The filename must be ‘ImportExpenseData.csv’. Not ‘importexpensedata.CSV’, not ‘Import Expense Data.csv’, not ‘ImportExpenseData.txt’, not... you get the idea.

• The data in ImportExpenseData.csv must be simple text and numeric data (a.k.a, ASCII format). No PDF, no MS doc, no MS xls, no rtf. On Mac, you can use TextEdit (but make sure you save the file in text format, not in the default Rich Text Format (rft)). On Windows, you can use NotePad. (For you true *nix geeks, on Mac you can use either vi or emacs -- my favorite :-)

• How should the contents of the file look like?

Each line should be in the format as follows:

m/d/yyyy,category,amount,notes

or

m/d/yyyy,category,amount

Following is an example:

1/3/2012,"Dining",6,"Jamba Juice"

1/3/2012,"Dining",15,"Pho in SF"

1/5/2012,"Dining",6.5,"Jamba “”drive-thru”” Juice"

1/6/2012,"Misc",16,"OSH - Fine tools etc"

1/2/2012,"Coffee",4.25,"Cafino “”drive-thru”” stop"

1/7/2012,"Dining Out",19,"Shanghai dumpling"

1/7/2012,"Entertainment",45,"Movie"

1/8/2012,"Gas/Fuel",14.73

1/8/2012,"Groceries",9,"Deans"

Note that double-quotes are optional -- unless the value enclosed in the double quotes also contain double quotes. In that case, use “” to represent a single double quote -- this is a common csv (Comma Separated Values) file format convention.

Wow, all that data importing business sounds complicated. When do I ever want to go through that pain?

There are a few scenarios where you might want to do that:

• You just installed Presto Expense on your iPhone. Initially, there is no expense data. However, you got a bunch of expense data you would like import into Presto Expense.

• You have been using Presto Expense on your iPhone for a while. One day, your iPhone was broken or lost. You got a new iPhone and reinstalled Presto Expense. Fortunately you did regular backup of Presto Expense data via email (we told you it’s a good idea, right?). You can then use the import feature to restore the last backup of your expense data into Presto Expense.

• Before you install a new version Presto Expense, it’s a good idea to back up your expense data first. While iPhone app update normally goes well without a hitch, it is not unheard of that it goes wrong and wipes out existing data. If that happens, with your backup you can restore your expense data into Presto Expense.

Q: How do I import category data into Presto Expense?

Pretty much in the same way as described above for importing expense data. The differences are below:

• The file containing the categories must be named ‘ImportCategoryData.csv’.

• The contents of the file must be in text format where each line represents a category. Below is an example:

Groceries

Gas/Fuel

Coffee

Dining

Entertainment

Misc.

Business

@@Auto loan payment

@@Mortgage payment