nms@homxc.ATT.COM (N.SCRIBNER) (02/11/89)
I'm trying to decide IF I should get a personal money manager program for my MAC+.???? My requirements are: 1. The program should reduce the amount of time I spend doing checks and reconciling my check book--about 20 checks/mo., 3hrs./mo., which time includes cross checking some things like credit card statements. The descriptions of the programs which "write" checks sound attractive, but I'm not convinced that I would not save any time because: a. I would need to load each check laboriously into the Imagewriter. b. Much of the time of reconciliation is spent in correlating the bank's list with mine--the program would have to provide some clever help for this chore. An interesting glitch is that both my wife and I write checks from checks with a different series of numbers and we also use ATM machines for cash. 2. Support basic budget management including 10-15 flexible categories for debits, about 5 for credits, a way to subcategorize credit card purchases without double counting the total, a method to mark entires for tax purposes. 3. Importing and exporting data for compatibility with other applications 4. Modest cost(< $150). Any advice or suggestions? Neal Scribner (...homxc!nms)
quinnt@rpics (Tom Quinn) (02/13/89)
In article <5484@homxc.ATT.COM> nms@homxc.ATT.COM (N.SCRIBNER) writes: >I'm trying to decide IF I should get >a personal money manager program for my MAC+.???? I recently purchased Quicken for my Mac Plus. As I recall, the cost with shipping was $34 from MacConnection. I had been looking for something to simplify my checkbook recordkeeping, and at this low price, and the fact that MacUser had gushed over it with such praise, I couldn't resist. I think the review was in the December issue, but I'm not sure. Quicken is designed to be a check-register program, with some extensions like nice report generation, tax recordkeeping, and budgeting. You can either have it print checks for you or you can enter checks you wrote by hand. You assign each expense to one or more categories, which may have a budget limit associated with them. You can get nice budget reports using this feature. Reconciliation is handled very painlessly, and literally requires only a few minutes to take care of. ATM cash is handled as a generic withdrawal transaction, and again you may specify the budget categories that the cash was used for. You handle credit card expenses as you would any other check, when the bill is paid. You can specify which of your budget categories were applicable for the various credit card transactions. There is no way (to my knowledge) to have Quicken keep track of your credit card balance between bills, but I don't miss this feature. Other features are batch procesing of check printing (you may defer printing until you have time to babysit the printer for all the checks at once), data export (SYLK files), and specification of recurring transactions. It also comes with some HyperCard stacks for additional reporting capabilities, but I haven't even looked at those yet. I thought it was an excellent deal for $34. I have no association with Intuit Software (the makers of Quicken) other than as a satisfied customer. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thomas F. Quinn quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Computer Science Department