Chapter 19

Personal: Journal & Expenses

Source-CRM equivalent: Personal / Journal and Income & Expenses. Your Journal can be written, edited and deleted on the desktop, pictures included (October 2026 update); Expenses are listed and recorded.

In this chapter - Journal - Writing in your Journal - Pictures in your Journal - The same Journal on the web and the desktop - Expenses - Not yet available

Icon bar ▸ Personal. Two tabs; the window title shows "N Journal Entries Displayed" / "N Expenses Displayed". The Journal tab shows your own journal only.

Journal

The Journal tab is your own journal: the entries you keep for yourself, not notes about a client. It belongs to your TechieCRM ID, so it is the same journal whichever computer you sign in on, and nobody else's entries are ever listed here.

The list (October 2026 update). Each entry shows its Date, its Subject, the start of the Entry (its first line, as plain words; pause on it to see more) and when it was Last changed. The newest entry date is at the top; click a column heading to sort by it instead. The window title counts the entries being shown ("N Journal Entries Displayed").

Toolbar controls:

  • New (the page with a plus sign, at the left) writes a new entry (see "Writing in your Journal", below);
  • the filter shows List All, or only the entries dated Today, Yesterday, This Week (Monday to Sunday) or This Month;
  • Search hides every entry whose Subject or Entry (the whole entry, not only its first line) does not contain what you typed; Show all in the Search window or a change of filter brings the whole list back, and Refresh keeps your search;
  • Column Setup chooses which of Date, Subject, Entry and Last changed are shown and in what order (tick, Move up / Move down, OK), remembered for this list. A layout you saved before this update still opens: its Time and Type columns are gone, Text became Entry, and Subject and Last changed are added;
  • Refresh reads the list again.

When the list is empty, the tab says why, in place of the list:

  • "You have no journal entries yet. Press New to write one." Your journal is there and has nothing in it. With a filter chosen it reads "You have no journal entries in this period." instead, and when Search hides everything it reads "No journal entries match your search."
  • "Your Journal belongs to your TechieCRM ID. Sign in with it, or ask your administrator to link it to your CRM user ID, to use your Journal." You signed in with a CRM user ID that is not linked to a TechieCRM ID, so there is no journal to show. Sign in with your TechieCRM ID, or ask your administrator to link the two.
  • "Your Journal is kept in TechieCRM's own database on this computer, which is not answering right now." Your entries are kept in TechieCRM's own database on this computer (never in the office CRM database), and it did not answer. Press Refresh to try again. If no TechieCRM database is set up on this computer at all, the sentence says that instead.
  • "Failed to load journal entries." with the reason underneath: something else went wrong while reading. Press Refresh to try again. A failure is never shown as an empty journal.

Kept on this computer only. Without a TechieCRM cloud subscription, your journal stays on the computer you wrote it on, and the line "Kept on this computer only." shows under the list. With a subscription the line is not shown and your journal is the same on the web and on every computer you sign in on (see "The same Journal on the web and the desktop", below). If a subscription starts later, the entries already on this computer go up to the web at the next sync.

On a shared computer each person sees only their own journal. Everyone's entries stay on the computer, and signing in as somebody else never removes yours; they are simply not shown, counted, searched or printed for anyone but you. Your journal is shown only to you, but it is not encrypted on the computer, so anyone with access to the computer's files could read it.

Opening an entry

Double-click an entry, select it and press Enter, right-click it and choose Open, or use Edit ▸ Open on the ribbon. The entry opens in its own window, read-only:

  • at the top, its Subject, its date written out in full ("Thursday, October 22, 2026") and when it was last changed;
  • below, the entry itself with its formatting: bold, italic, underline, colours, bulleted and numbered lists, alignment, links and the pictures kept in it. The text scrolls when it is longer than the window.

Links are underlined in your theme's colour. Clicking a web link opens it in your web browser, a mail link in your mail program and a phone link in your phone app; nothing opens until you click, and the journal window itself never turns into a web page. A link that could run a program instead of opening a page is made harmless and does nothing.

Pictures. Pictures kept inside the entry (PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, at most 1 MB and 2,000 pixels on a side each, 10 in an entry and 5 MB in all) are shown. Anything else is left out, and a line under the entry says how many pictures are not shown and why: an SVG picture, one over a limit, a damaged one, one that points to a file on some computer instead of being kept in the entry, or (rarely) one in a format this computer cannot display. A picture from a web address is never loaded: fetching it would tell that website when you read your journal, so it is left out and the line says so.

Anything in an entry that could run (a script, a hidden style, an embedded page or form) is removed before the entry is shown, every time it is opened, whichever computer or the web wrote it.

While the entry is being read the window says "Opening the entry."; this takes a moment only for a long entry with pictures. If it cannot be opened the window says why: the entry could not be found (it was deleted, or it is not yours), you are not signed in with your TechieCRM ID, or TechieCRM's own database on this computer is not answering; anything else shows "The journal entry could not be opened." with the reason.

The window can be made larger or smaller (drag its edge or corner); the entry grows with it, and the Subject and the other lines never get cut off, even at the largest font size. It follows your Theme, Primary colour and font as soon as you change them in Settings. Press Close (or Esc) when you are done, or Edit to change the entry (see "Writing in your Journal", next).

Writing in your Journal

To write a new entry, press New on the Journal toolbar, right-click the list and choose New, or use Home ▸ Create ▸ Journal Note on the ribbon. All three open the same window, ready to write in:

  • Subject (required): what the entry is about, up to 200 characters. The counter beside it ("12 / 200") shows how many you have used and turns red past 200. A subject that is blank or too long is not saved; the window says why under the entry, and nothing is lost.
  • Date: the day the entry is about. It starts at today; type a date or press the arrow to pick one from a calendar.
  • The entry itself, with a formatting bar above it: font and size; bold, italic, underline and strikethrough; text and background colours; alignment; bulleted and numbered lists and indents; superscript and subscript; links, pictures, tables and horizontal lines; Clear Formatting; Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy and Paste; and Find and Replace. Text you paste keeps its formatting.

Press Save. The window says "Saving the entry." for a moment, then shows the entry, read only and formatted, as it is now kept; the new entry is in the Journal list straight away. Cancel closes a new entry without saving it.

To change an entry, open it and press Edit, or right-click it in the list and choose Edit. The Subject, Date and entry can all be changed, formatting included; Save keeps the changes and the entry's Last changed moves to now. Cancel goes back to the entry as it was.

To delete an entry, press Delete while you are editing it, or right-click it in the list and choose Delete. TechieCRM asks first (No is the default); Yes removes it from your Journal for good. There is no undo.

Changes you have not saved. If you press Cancel, Esc or the window's close box after changing anything, TechieCRM asks whether to Save the changes, Discard them, or Cancel and keep writing.

If an entry cannot be saved, the reason is shown in red under the entry and your words stay in the window: for example TechieCRM's own database on this computer is not answering (try again in a moment), or something in the entry could not be kept safely. Anything in pasted text that could run (a script, a script link, a hidden handler) is removed when the entry is saved.

Pictures. The formatting bar's Insert Image button adds pictures to the entry, and you can paste or drag pictures in too; see "Pictures in your Journal", below.

Who can write. Writing and editing journal entries needs permission to change records in Personal. Without it New and Edit are not offered, and TechieCRM says why if you reach one another way. Deleting a journal entry needs all three Personal rights, read, change and delete; without any one of them Delete is not offered, and TechieCRM says why if you reach it another way. These Personal rights are TechieCRM's own (October 2026): everyone has all three on their own Journal unless an administrator limits them to No delete, Read only or No access (Administrator Guide A3, "Access rights enforced today"). With No access the Journal still opens and lists your entries for now, but New, Edit and Delete are refused.

On the web (October 2026). The web Journal keeps its entries in a journal of their own, and each person sees and syncs only their own entries. The list shows the first line of each entry under its subject. An entry is written with a format bar, the same one the web's email window uses: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text and background colours, bulleted and numbered lists, indents, alignment and links, plus Insert image, which adds a picture from your computer. Pictures can be PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP, at most 1 MB each, 10 in an entry and 5 MB in all; a large picture is made smaller (1,600 pixels on its longest side) as you add it. Pasting a copied picture (a screenshot, say) adds it the same way; a picture that still lives on a web page (pasted along with text from that page) is left out, with a note saying so: save the picture to your computer and use Insert image. If an entry is saved with something it cannot keep (an SVG picture, one over a limit, a link made of data), the entry is saved without it and the page says what was left out. Editing an entry keeps its formatting and pictures. Without JavaScript the entry is a plain text box, and the line breaks you type are kept. The desktop Journal tab shows this same journal (see "The same Journal on the web and the desktop", below).

Pictures in your Journal

A journal entry can hold pictures. Each picture is kept inside the entry itself, so it goes wherever the entry goes and never depends on a file staying where it was on your computer.

To add a picture, edit the entry (or start a new one), put the cursor where the picture should go and press Insert Image on the formatting bar. Choose one picture, or several at once, and press Open. You can also paste a picture you copied (a screenshot, say) or drag a picture file into the entry; it is added exactly as Insert Image adds it. A picture shows at most 640 pixels wide in the entry, however large it is; drag the window wider or narrower and the text flows around it as usual. To remove a picture, click just after it and press Backspace.

The four kept formats. Pictures are kept as PNG, JPEG, GIF or WebP. Other pictures are turned into one of these as you add them:

  • a photo (JPEG, BMP, HEIC, or WebP without see-through parts) is kept as JPEG;
  • a PNG, a screenshot, or a picture with see-through parts is kept as PNG;
  • a GIF that is within the limits stays a GIF, so an animation still moves (a larger GIF becomes a still PNG);
  • an SVG drawing becomes a picture (PNG); the drawing itself is never kept.

Large photos are made smaller. A picture wider or taller than 1,600 pixels is made smaller to 1,600 pixels on its longest side as you add it, which keeps a full-width photo to a few hundred kilobytes. Making it smaller also drops the hidden camera details (such as where a photo was taken) from it.

The limits. Each picture can be at most 1 MB once it has been made smaller, and an entry can hold at most 10 pictures and 5 MB of pictures in all. When a picture cannot be added, the window says which one and why, in red under the entry, and the rest are still added:

  • "This picture's format can't be read.": the file is not a picture this computer can open (a damaged file, a document, or an HEIC or WebP picture on a computer that cannot read that format). Open it in another program and save it as a JPEG or PNG first.
  • "It is still larger than 1 MB after being made smaller.": a very detailed picture that stays too big even at a lower quality. Crop it, or save it smaller, and add it again.
  • "An entry can hold at most 10 pictures" or "at most 5 MB of pictures": the entry is full. Start another entry for the rest.
  • "The picture file can't be found on this computer.": the file was moved or deleted.

Pictures from a web address are left out. A picture copied from a web page along with its text still lives on that website. TechieCRM never loads it (doing so would tell the website when you wrote or read your journal), so it is left out when you save, and the entry then shows the line "A picture from a web address was left out". Save the picture to your computer and use Insert Image instead.

When an entry is saved, every picture in it is checked again. If one cannot be kept (for example pasted text named a picture file that is not on this computer, or the entry holds more than 10 pictures), the entry is not saved and the window says which picture to remove, so an entry is never saved with a picture silently missing. Editing an entry later keeps its pictures exactly as they were.

The same Journal on the web and the desktop

With a TechieCRM cloud subscription (October 2026 update), your Journal is one journal: an entry you write, change or delete on the desktop shows on the web, and one you write on the web shows in the desktop's Journal tab, and on any other computer where you sign in with your TechieCRM ID.

  • When. Changes travel at the next sync, which runs by itself about every 15 minutes while TechieCRM is open (or straight away with Sync now in the Cloud Connection window, Chapter 13). Press Refresh on the Journal tab to see entries that have just arrived.
  • The later save wins. If the same entry is changed in two places before they sync, the copy saved last is the one both keep. A change you made on this computer that has not been sent yet is never overwritten by an older copy from the web.
  • Formatting and pictures carry over. Bold, italic, colours, lists, alignment, links and the pictures kept in an entry look the same in both places. Some fine spacing from the desktop editor may look slightly different on the web. Anything that could run, or a picture outside the limits (an SVG, one over 1 MB, a picture from a web address), is left out when the entry is shown, wherever it was written.
  • Deleting an entry in one place removes it from the other at the next sync.
  • Only your own entries travel. This computer sends and receives only the entries of the person signed in with their TechieCRM ID. On a shared computer, each person's entries stay here when someone else signs in and are sent the next time their owner signs in; nobody's entries are removed because a different person signed in. When a different person signs in, the next sync fetches all of that person's entries once, which can take a moment.
  • Without a subscription nothing is sent: the Journal is kept on this computer only and the tab says so.
  • If the web will not take an entry, the entry stays on this computer, unchanged. This happens when the entry belongs to a different TechieCRM ID than the one signed in here (it is sent when its owner signs in), or when something in it is outside the limits (it is sent again once you edit and save it). TechieCRM notes it in its log; nothing is deleted.

Expenses

Choose Year and Month (◄ ► step months); columns Account (code – description), the selected month's total, and YTD. Amounts come from the source CRM's expense accounts. An expense row is a per-account total, not a document, so it has no detail view to open; the right-click menu offers Select only. Column Setup on this tab works the same way as the Journal's (Account / month / YTD, shown or hidden, in your order, remembered).

When the database can't be read

The Journal says why it is empty in its own words (see "Journal", above); it does not use the office CRM database at all. For Expenses, an empty list can mean two very different things, and from the September 2026 update the module tells you which. If your database simply doesn't carry the Personal tables (some editions of the source CRM don't), the list is quietly empty, because that is the true answer. If the tables could not be read (the connection dropped, or your sign-in isn't allowed to read the database catalogue), you get "Failed to load expenses from the database" with the reason, instead of an empty list that reads as "you have nothing recorded". Signing in without a SQL database at all (a MongoDB-only session) stays quiet too; that is not connected, not broken. One dropped connection no longer switches Personal off for the rest of your session: the next Refresh tries again.

Recording an expense

Home ▸ Create ▸ Expense (on the Personal ribbon) opens a small form: pick the account, the date, and the amount, then Save.

Expenses are kept as a monthly sheet per account, not as individual receipts; that is how the source CRM stores them. Saving adds your amount to that account's total for that day and to its month total, creating the month's row if it does not exist yet. The Expenses tab shows the new total straight away. A negative amount is allowed (a refund); zero is refused.

If you use TechieCRM's cloud, the saved month is copied into this computer's local sync store as part of the save, so it goes up to the cloud with the next sync, including when you add to a month that already had amounts in it (before the late-September 2026 update, those additions never left this computer). If that copy cannot be made at that moment, the save still succeeds and the confirmation adds a line saying so: "It is saved in the office CRM. TechieCRM could not copy it for the cloud just now and will try again at the next sync." Since the October 2026 update the retry is kept in TechieCRM's own database, so it is tried again at the next sync even after the app has been closed and opened again (chapter 13, Desktop saves reach this computer's copy straight away). Nothing needs re-entering.

Expenses recorded on the desktop are not yet shown on the web or phone apps; they reach the cloud database, but those apps list only expenses entered there. Showing desktop expenses on the web and phone is planned.

The account list comes from your database's expense accounts, so if it is empty the form says so rather than opening with nothing to choose. Recording an expense needs permission to change records.

Two limits worth knowing:

  • The entry is booked against you; there is no "record this for someone else".
  • The source CRM's Category and Type code columns are left empty. Their code tables are not documented, and filling them with a guess would mis-file the row; the totals the Expenses tab and the source CRM show are unaffected.

Not yet available

Editing or deleting an expense once recorded, expense-account maintenance, per-user filtering of expenses (all users' expenses are listed), an expense detail view, printing. (Opening a journal entry arrived in the October 2026 update, and writing, editing and deleting journal entries on the desktop in a later October 2026 update, pictures in a desktop journal entry in the update after that, and one journal shared by the desktop and the web in the update after that.) (Column Setup and Search on this panel were added in the September 2026 update; recording an expense in the September 2026 update.)

The ribbon's Home ▸ Create ▸ Journal Note button writes a new journal entry, exactly as the Journal tab's New does (October 2026 update; it was greyed from September 2026 until TechieCRM kept a journal of its own). The entry goes into your Journal, never into a client's notes: the source CRM has no journal of its own, and the notes it files under the type the old Journal tab once read are its sent-email log. Use Home ▸ Note, or an entry's Interactions tab, when you want to record a note against a client.

On the web portal

On the web portal, the menu's Personal entry opens a page headed My Work Day. Despite the name, that page is your Journal and Expenses (this chapter), not the Agenda: the web's Agenda has its own menu entry and its page is headed Agenda (Chapter 23). Journal entries can be created, edited and deleted there as on the desktop, and the web page adds what the desktop panel does not have for expenses: you can edit and delete an expense there too.

A journal entry on the web records Subject, Date and the entry text; that is the whole record; a mood and tags are not part of a journal entry on the web either, for the same reason as the expense boxes below: earlier builds asked for them and then discarded them on save, so they have been removed rather than left collecting answers nothing keeps.

Who can see a journal entry

Your Journal is private to you. Another member of your workspace cannot open, edit or delete your journal entries: they are not listed in Notes, they never appear on a client's Interactions timeline, and a direct link to one answers not found rather than saying it exists.

Two people can be given sight of your Journal, and in both cases it is read only: nobody but you can ever add to, change or delete your entries:

  • your workspace administrator, because the business owns the records its staff create; and
  • any colleague your administrator has specifically given access to your Journal (Journal ▸ Journal access, administrator only). Access is granted one person to one Journal at a time, in one direction: giving Cal sight of Ann's Journal does not give Ann sight of Cal's.

When somebody has more than their own Journal to look at, the My Journal heading gains a Whose journal dropdown listing the Journals they may read. Everyone else sees no dropdown, because there would be nothing else in it.

Reading somebody else's Journal never looks like reading your own:

  • the page says "You are viewing name's private Journal (read only)";
  • there is no Edit and no Delete button, and no New Entry button either; a new entry would be the reader's own, not the Journal owner's;
  • following an edit or delete link by hand answers not found.

To give or remove access, an administrator opens Journal ▸ Journal access, picks the user and the Journal, and presses Grant; Revoke takes it away again. Both actions are recorded in the audit log. Only an administrator of your own workspace can do this; TechieCRM's own support staff cannot, even while helping you with your workspace open in front of them.

Expenses are yours alone in this release; there is no administrator view of another user's expenses.

An expense on the web records Description, Amount, Category and Date; that is the whole record. It is stored as a monthly expense-sheet row, the same shape the desktop reads, so an expense entered on the web appears in the desktop's Expenses panel under the same account and month. Currency, vendor, receipt reference, a reimbursed flag and a client link are not part of an expense in this release; earlier builds of the web form asked for them and then discarded them on save, so those boxes have been removed rather than left collecting answers nothing keeps.

The category pills above the expense list filter it, and the count beside the page heading is the number of expenses being shown. The summary card is deliberately NOT filtered: it is your overall total and your three largest categories, labelled as such, so it does not change under you when you pick a pill. An expense imported from the source CRM whose category is not one of the six named ones is shown as "Category n" and keeps that value when you edit the record.