The paperless checkbook - Microsoft Money for Windows 95, Meca's Managing Your Money Plus 2.1 for Windows and Managing Your Money 7.0 for Macintosh, Intuit's Quicken Deluxe 5.0 for Windows and 6.0 for Macintosh - includes related article on managing investment online - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, July, 1996 by Mike Hogan

Manage Your Business and Personal Finances Better

ONE REASON YOU WENT INTO BUSINESS FOR YOURSELF was to stop making money for others and start making it for yourself. Now you've arrived--only to find that not every penny coming in goes to you. Some belongs to the government; some to your business. The rest belongs to you, but how can you keep track of it all? Was that credit card expenditure personal or business related? Did that check made out to you personally get properly credited? How much cash do you really have to spend? The latest personal finance packages let you manage this chaotic world and manage it quickly.

Personal finance packages not only help you balance your checkbook, but a click of an icon displays a pie chart of your monthly and yearly expenditures. Do you need to find out the balance of your savings account and transfer funds between accounts? Some of these programs dial into your bank account to perform cutting-edge electronic banking services. Intuit's Quicken, Microsoft Money, and MECA's Managing Your Money take most of the work and math out of small-business and personal bookkeeping.

Using these programs, you can analyze your balance sheet, improve your cash flow, track investments, and make better-informed business and retirement decisions. You can also keep track of your financial obligations more efficiently because most tax-preparation software imports data from personal finance packages. Quicken for Windows even introduces you to the Internet with a built-in Web browser.

Personal finance managers have come a long way from their early days as computerized checkbooks, but they haven't made the leap all the way to full-fledged accounting programs. If you're heavily involved in job costing, inventory tracking, or payroll, you probably need to invest another $100 and buy a true double-entry accounting package, such as Intuit QuickBooks Pro 4.0 or Peach-tree Complete Accounting 3.5.

But a good personal finance manager program will be just fine for a large share of America's 20 million small businesses. We rounded up the top five best-selling programs and lived with them for a while. The three Windows and two Macintosh programs we selected are used by more than 90 percent of consumers using personal finance software. We tested Intuit Quicken Deluxe Version 5 for Windows and Version 6 for Macintosh, Microsoft Money for Windows 95, and MECA's Managing Your Money Plus Version 2.1 for Windows and Version 7 for the Mac. Computer Associates declined to participate in the review because its latest version of Simply Money was in an early beta phase.

All of these programs let you seamlessly manage your personal finances one minute and your business dealings the next. But they're not all created equal. Since three of these packages cost less than $50 (street), price may not be an issue, but comfort certainly is. We have our favorites, but each program can claim devotees who'd rather fight than switch. As the name suggests, choosing a personal finance manager is very subjective and you'll want to find the right fit. Take a close look at our conclusions and see whether they match your money-management needs.

Managing Your Money Plus Version 2.1 for Windows

Rating: * * *

WIN/MAC

One of the earliest personal finance managers, Managing Your Money 2.1 is a high-quality and appropriately featured program whose functionality is closer to Quicken's than Microsoft Money's.

Parent MECA Software wandered in the desert for a while but has picked up the trail again. Even though MYM's user base has diminished over the years, its prospects are bright due to a joint venture between Bank of America and NationsBank (two of the country's largest banks). This undertaking will create a bank-online version of MYM. At press time, Nationsbank had started distributing copies of MYM through its branches in southern states and Bank of America has similar plans.

The retail version of MYM lacks online banking but it includes electronic bill paying through CheckFree. You'll be able to transfer your program knowledge along with your MYM files to the banking version without much effort. Prices for the upgrade will range from free to minimal, depending on your bank.

If you're a customer of one of these institutions, MYM will definitely do the job for you, no matter your skill level. MYM was the first program to sport a novice user interface--a concept that later appeared in Quicken and Money.

MYM's icon-filled interface is called SmartDesk and it's a replica of a fully equipped home office. Click any object in the imaginary office--file cabinet, bookshelf, calculator, check register--and you'll launch the tool that corresponds to that icon.

Microsoft Money gets well-deserved plaudits for its program design and online help, but MYM is no slouch. MYM assembles the appropriate tools for a given task on a single screen, but it goes Microsoft Money one better by adding an extensive, Quicken-style menu system. Right mouse button help is also an integral part of MYM's easy-access interface.