Money Matters - accounting software - evaluation

Nation's Business, July, 1990 by Ripley Hotch

Money Matters One of the problems of elaborate PC programs is that they can give you more than you need, confusing you with too many instructions or taking up valuable machine memory (and some of your own as well). For the average small business, a full-blown accounting system is more than it needs, but simple bookkeeping is not enough.

Enter Money Matters from Great American Software. Money Matters is a scaled-down version of Great American's One Write Plus, but it adds some nice features--and takes away a few things you might not want. One thing it takes away is a requirement for you to begin with a trial balance. You can just begin work, changing your chart of accounts on the fly (you start with one of 14 charts, depending on the kind of business you have), and generating budgets as you go. It also does away with payroll and inventory.

A handy addition is a feature called Supertrack--Great American's president, Roger Melanson, calls it "triple-entry accounting." Supertrack "cards" track a particular piece of equipment, job, or other kind of account. So if you want to check how much you are spending on maintenance for that particular item, you have it at once. Or if you want to check on how much revenue a particular item or salesperson is generating, you can check that as well.

You can track all of the costs and billable hours for a particular job, so that you have all the detail you need to generate an invoice based on actual cost of the work.

This feature has been so well received that Great American has upgraded its big brother program, One Write Plus, to add Supertrack.

Money Matters generates a range of budgets and reports, handles multiple companies and checking accounts, prints checks and invoices, reconciles accounts, and performs all the usual tasks you want from a good basic accounting program.

Although no accounting program is exactly intuitive, Money Matters does obvious things in an obvious way, has pretty good prompts (though the on-line help could be more specific), and gives a good visual representation of what is going on. It even helped me find a bank error (can I help it if the bank can't read my writing?). And the price (list $89.95; street price as low as $55) makes it virtually a steal.

Money Matters requires IBM PC, XT, AT, PS/2 and compatibles, DOS 2.1 or higher, and 512K of RAM. Great American Software is at 615 Amherst St., Nashua, N.H. 03063; (800) 388-8000.