The quickest way to learn how to use WinAmort Professional is to quickly work through a simple example, from problem to solution. Then to create a report, print out the report, and finally exporting the data to Excel or Word.

 EXAMPLE

icon means you can either use the scroll wheel to carry out a function or use the right click button.

This solve icon will be followed by the problem or variable to be computed or solved.

This action icon will be followed by steps needed to solve the Example question.

Any Tips and Shortcuts to working with WinAmort Pro will be preceded by this light bulb icon.

The smiley face is followed by the solution or answer to the question, when solved.

Getting Started - Simple Example

Mr. and Mrs. Smith would like to purchased a business for $500,000. They can make a  down payment of $100,000 and will need to finance the rest with a business loan of $400,000 at 5.25%. If they can get the loan, they can close on May 1, 2011 and they will begin to make payments 1 month later on June 1, 2011. The loan Interest will be compounded monthly. They would like to have 6 years to pay off the loan.  Calculate what their monthly payments will be and generate a schedule to present to them and ultimately the bank.

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Mr. and Mrs. Smith's Business Loan in the Title field. This title will appear at the top of the screen when the amortization table is generated.

You can use the TAB key or Shift Tab key to jump from one field to the next, or use the mouse to move to the next field.

If you do not understand some of the settings, at the end of the example, you can always go to the specific areas in this Help Guide. But for now by the end of this example, you will have a good understanding of most of the features of WinAmort Professional.
 

For Loan TYPE: the default setting REGULAR.

For Compounded: the default setting MONTHLY.

For Basis Year: the default setting 365 Days.

For Exact day: the default setting No.

5-1-2011 for the Origination Date. This is the date on which the deal closes and the loan is taken out.

To enter the date in faster, click on the Calendar icon beside the field and then select the year, month and date.

You can click on the Month/Year icon to zoom out and click on the zoomed out months to zoom back in. Try it!

You can also use your mouse scroll wheel to scroll any selected date field. Choose the month and the scroll wheel will increase or decrease the digits up to 12. When it reaches 12, it will go back to 1. This is the same for the days (1-31) and naturally the years will be continuous.

The scroll wheel will change the 2011 up or down quickly!

 
Set the First Payment Date. You can enter it using the calendar button or to quicken the input, if it is one month from the Origination date, then just click the COMPUTE button beside the date field.

400,000 in the Principal field.

You can also enter in any field value by clicking the "+" button beside the field. This will bring up a calculator interface that can be used to enter in any value or carry out a calculation and have the end result entered in to the field.

The field area becomes the display area of the calculator. So you can enter in 400,000 or you can enter in 500,000 then subtract 100,000 and then click the equal sign to the the value of 400,000. (The memory portion will hold the value as long as the calculator interface is visible.)

5.25 in the Interest Rate field. The interest rate that you enter should always be the annual interest rate.
 
Note: The Effective Rate will automatically be calculated and displayed (see Glossary for definition).

In this case the Effective Rate is calculated to be: 5.3782%

The Payment field since this is what we need to compute.

6 in the Period field. (Based on our example they would like to finance for 6 years)

Move the highlight to the field beside the Period field and

the Down Arrow button to select the Period frequency.

Your current options will be ‘YEARS’ or ‘MONTHS’. Select “Years” for this example. If you typed in 300 as the period,

you could select ‘Months’ since 72 months is equivalent to 6 years.

The Balloon Payment amount at zero since we don’t need to use this field for this this example.

Here is how your form should look at this point:

the COMPUTE beside the Payment Amount field.

 
The Monthly payment amount is $6,488.46!

As soon as you click the compute button and the Monthly Payment amount was computed, WinAmort also generated a table below the data entry fields. As illustrated below.

Normally with the form window at its smallest size, 11 lines of the table are viewable. This can easily be expanded by moving your mouse to the bottom of the window and when the icon changes from a pointer to a double sided arrow, click the mouse button and drag it down to increase or decrease the size of the window and ultimately the size of the table.
 

Depending on the size and resolution of your monitor, you can stretch it to as long as 44 lines or more. However this is not always necessary, you can just as easily scroll down the table, using the scroll bar on the right hand side of the window or using your Mouse's scroll button.

You can again use your mouse scroll wheel to scroll up and down the table.

Table features
 

You will notice that the table has 7 columns representing various fields. From the number of the line to the balance. These 7 columns are the default ones shown. You can add or remove some of these columns by selecting:

the column button on the button ribbon at the top of the window.

When you click the column button you will be able to Toggle four variable columns.

These include:

Numbers column (which is already shown),

Days column (which is not shown),

Interest Rate Column (which is already shown),

Loan Amount column (which is not shown).

If you Toggle On the two missing columns Days and Loan amount, the table will look like the one illustrated below.

There are 9 maximum columns on this table.

Other TOP RIBBON buttons.

The first Make button, generates a new table anytime there is enough data available and you click on it. The other three

vertical buttons next to Make are explained below.

When you click on the Balance button a small window will pop-up.
 

You can access this same three Balance adjustment options as well as the Currency Toggle by right clicking any line in the table. This will pop up a window with similar options as well as the option to clear the table.

Columns button - we already showed, toggles on and off 4 of the columns out of a possible 9.

Create Report button - allow you to customize output variables of your table and then once generated,

you can view it, save it, print it out or export the the entire schedules or any part of it in various formats.

Lets output our Simple Example Table.

Create Report button. The following window will appear.

All of the 12 rows of options are explained below.

 
Printing out the schedule

Once you select all of the options you would like to include or exclude from the Report, you can choose the style of your report.

The first page of the Winter theme report is as follows:

This concludes the simple example. Try a few example calculations, once you understand how WinAmort Pro is designed

to work, move to the Form Types and work through a few of the examples in the Fixed Rate and Irregular Payment and

Investment forms and you will have mastered using WinAmort Professional.

This ends the Simple Example Question. All of the forms can be used in a similar way. The tips and scrolling capabilities also

are the same. Also, try the other examples under the appropriate headings.

The report viewer enables you to see a soft copy of the entire schedule without printing it out. This saves paper, costs and protects the environment.

The report viewer has many options and can even export or email the generated schedule in different formats, including Excel and Word.