Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!plaid!chuq From: chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Quicken Message-ID: <76699@sun.uucp> Date: 9 Nov 88 05:07:37 GMT Sender: news@sun.uucp Lines: 58 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!