Monechron User Manual

III. Accounts---Web Scout™

Click on the Accounts icon and then on Web Scout™; the screen should look like this

The area on the left is the same as in the transaction register; it is where your various accounts are listed, with cleared and outstanding transactions and respective current balances. The area on the right is where you activate Web Scout™ so it will update your accounts automatically. To use Web Scout™, you must have a User ID and password for your bank's website.

1. What is Web Scout?

Web Scout™ is a financial browser that functions as your "agent" to do everything for you: It scouts your bank's website, downloads your transactions, brings to you instant up-to-date "bank statements", compares them with your Monechron register, and reconciles your accounts to give you your realtime balances.

2. A first-time user

The first time you use Web Scout™ you need to connect your bank's website to Monechron. Enter your  address after URL, for example, www.anybank.com, and click on Scout. A dialog box will pop up for you to log on to your bank's website

Enter your User ID and PIN for your bank's website and click on OK. (For your peace of mind, please note: Your User ID and password are stored only on your computer and are protected by strong encryption. You are the only one who has access to it.)

Web Scout™ will download and display your accounts in your Monechron, as shown in the dialog box below

To save each account in Monechron, select from the dropdown list the appropriate action: Add it if it's a new account; Match with: if the account is already listed in Monechron, and click on OK.

Next, click on any of the accounts you've just saved and the reconcile screen will show

A list of the transactions that have recently cleared your bank should be displayed here. Each transaction should be marked as Matched, Mismatched, or No Match.

Matched

a transaction in the "bank statement" matches exactly the same one in your Monechron register.

 

Mismatched

a transaction in the "bank statement" disagrees in amount with your record. Check for errors.

 

No Match

a transaction in the "bank statement" is not found in your Monechron register. 

Click on a Mismatched transaction if it's an error you've made. A dialog box will pop up for you to modify the transaction in your register to correct the error. Once you've fixed the mismatches, simply click on Accept All and your account is automatically reconciled.

3. Balancing adjustment

In the screenshot above you may have noticed that a balance adjustment of $106.14 is listed, categorized as Other and labeled as No Match. Also you're told that "A balance adjustment is added to the list." What does it mean? 

As you know, banks' websites usually maintain a record of only the last two or three months of transactions. If you're a first-time user of Web Scout™, you'll have a bank balance that reflects a transactions history going way back to when you first opened the account. But it's very unlikely that your bank has a record of all the earlier transactions online. So, when Web Scout™ brings your current bank balance and a list of recent transactions from your bank's website to your Monechron, it calculates the difference between the balance and the total amount of the listed transactions and gives you the balance adjustment figure.

Thus, a balance adjustment=total amount of the transactions missing from your bank's online history and from your Monechron register.  With the adjustment, your Monechron balance will match the bank's balance.

If you haven't used Web Scout™ or entered your transactions manually for several months, some of your earlier transactions most likely will have dropped out of your bank's online record. In this case, you will see a balance adjustment like the above, which you can either accept or not accept. If you accept, your Monechron register will be updated, showing the adjustment as Other. If you don't accept, you can enter the missing transactions manually and mark them "cleared" in Pay & Record, relying on your hard-copy bank statements for that period.

If you use Web Scout™ monthly, there won't be any adjustment.    

4. Credit card and other uncategorized transactions

Your credit card transactions scraped by Web Scout™ are categorized by default as Miscellaneous. For your credit card payment shown on the list, select from the dropdown list Transfer, so the credit won't be read as income. Also, when you write a check to pay your credit card bill, you should categorize it as Transfer. 

For other transactions, click on the dropdown list after each transaction to categorize it. Then click on Accept All. Once you've categorized a payee, for example, categorizing Bob's Fried Chicken as Dining, all subsequent charges at Bob's will be automatically labeled as Dining.

To make tracking/budgeting more accurate, you should categorize all uncategorized transactions.

5. A frequent user

After you've saved the accounts you wish to operate in Monechron, all you need to do later is select any of the accounts you want to update and click on Scout. Web Scout™ will bring back a new list of transactions that have cleared your bank, with each marked as Matched, Mismatched, or No Match. Click on Accept All after you verify the information and make necessary modifications. And your "checkbook" is balanced. 

6. Converting an offline account to an online account

If you wish to convert an offline account on Monechron to an online account, enter the URL of the bank's website and click on Scout. The rest is the same as described in Section 3.2.1 above: A first-time user of Web Scout™.

For step-by-step instructions on how to use Web Scout™ for the first time, go to Tutorial Lesson 3 or FAQ.

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