🚀 go-pugleaf

This is just a quick note of praise for a Quicken, by Intuit.

What is Quicken? Believe it or not, it's the proverbial "checkbook balancing
and check writing" program that every computer maven has always said will be
the backbone of the home computer, right next to the recipe database.

Personally, I never thought I'd EVER bother balancing my checkbook on a
computer. What a waste. Except that I do some freelance writing and stuff on
the side. And I have to track subscription moneys for OtherRealms. And
expenses for both -- or else I'll have a very unhappy IRS sending me letters
asking me to justify my taxes. I've been doing this with a hacked together
Hypercard stack, but it was unwieldy and ugly. So I took a look at Quicken.

If you're beyond keeping your books manually (or, like me, too lazy) but you
don't need accounting software, Quicken is wonderful. For every transaction
you can define a number of different categories that fit what you're
tracking (interest expense, postage, article payments, phones, etc, etc) and
divvy up the expenses and income. Categories can be marked as tax-related
items. They've got a procedure you can follow to track your credit-card
purchases and 'petty cash' disbursments as well. There are hooks to plugging
in budget numbers; you can get it to print checks automatically via either
imagewriter OR laserwriter. Recurring transaction setups. Lots of neat toys.

All you need to do is keep track of receipts and take the time to keep
Quicken in sync with your checkbook. For me, this is about 10 minutes a
week -- less time than I was spending manually. Whenever you want, you can
print out reports showing what's going on in each category. If you're
records are reasonable, tax day becomes trivial -- no mad searching for the
receipt box and trying to remember what's what.

It's one of the nicest, cleanest pieces of software I've seen. It takes a
really simple concept, implements it in a functional, useful way. It's dirt
cheap (something like $50 at computerware) and solid as a rock -- and tax
deductible if you use it for your outside stuff like I do.

The ONLY thing I can't get it to do is print out a check register sorted by
check number. It insists on sorting by date. This, as we say in the
computer-writing biz (recently retired....) is at best a minor nit. 

It's amazing. For the first time in the history of mankind, my checkbook has
been balanced to the penny for six straight weeks. I finally know how much
money I'm making from my freelancing (not enough) and how much I'm spending
to do it (too much -- but that's not surprising). I never thought I'd bother
balancing my checkbook on my computer -- but Intuit looked at the jokes and
rhetoric and turned it into a product that anyone who's doing more than just
bringing home a salary (but not enough to require an accountant or 'real'
books) will love and become dependent on.

Quicken's got one of the stronger recommendations I can make. It's one of
the few programs I didn't realize how much I needed until I got it. 





Chuq Von Rospach	Editor/Publisher, OtherRealms		chuq@sun.COM

It's not justice you want, Roderick! It's blood!