Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!sun.soe.clarkson.edu!rpi!rpics!quinnt
From: quinnt@rpics (Tom Quinn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Personal money management??
Keywords: money
Message-ID: <583@rpi.edu>
Date: 12 Feb 89 18:29:58 GMT
References: <5484@homxc.ATT.COM>
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Reply-To: quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Tom Quinn)
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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.

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Thomas F. Quinn					quinnt@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Computer Science Department