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From diary for 10/13/80, shredded in May '88

showed each expenditure in its category, and essentially was the new accounting book in an evolutionary stage. To ascertain its accuracy, each entry was color coded or somehow made to associate with one of the four periods. Then for each period, a balance was arrived at showing income minus all expenditures, and this had to tie into the checkbook balance for that period.

Then this master file was fixed up into the present version. The hardest part was making the income make sense as a statement of salary minus taxes plus unearned incomes minus their taxes rather than just a list of checks deposited to build up an account. It finally worked, but there were complications such as moving expenses were reimbursed and not taxable in 1978, but they were taxable in 1979. Getting this figured out was quite an exercise.

Also there were things such as a reimbursement for several trips to econoprint, only one of which had been paid for by check, which I didn't realize. That was the major finding of saturday, as I struggled toward midnight.

The way I finally found the errors was to do a statement of changes showing (one for income and one for expenses) what had changed between those four accounting sheets plus the one I created for the second half of the summer, and the communicatable version I was trying to develop. As mentioned,