Manage your money - 25 technical solutions for handling financial problems - Buyers Guide

Home Office Computing, August, 1996 by Mike Hogan

HEADACHE #8 You often miss bill deadlines or the expiration date of discounts or limited-time bidding periods.

Several accounting programs have reminder screens, but M.Y.O.B. Accounting's Business Analyst is probably the most complete. Click on the To-Do List radio button on M.Y.O.B. Analyst and you'll see a series of folders used to organize upcoming transactions for outstanding invoices, expiring discounts, low inventory, or promised callbacks. You can configure M.Y.O.B. to open your To-Do List whenever you boot up as a daily reminder.

HEADACHE #9 You work from home and don't know whether to buy or lease your home office.

Given the tax breaks, you're almost always better off buying a home in which you live and work. But if you live in an area where your monthly mortgage would be greater than rent, you can probably make more by investing in your business rather than in a home. To find out which road you should take, use Managing Your Money's Home Affordability calculator on its Plan menu to determine what you can afford with a 5 percent down payment. (If you want to calculate the payment for a loan that meets your affordability criteria, use MYM's Loans & Annuities Calculator off the same Plan menu.) Then compare the mortgage amount with the monthly rent on a comparable dwelling.

HEADACHE # 10 You can't decide whether to buy or lease the car you use for both your business and personal activities.

The buy-versus-lease calculator in Microsoft Small Business Financial Manager can answer this complex question in a few minutes if you use one of the popular accounting programs. This Excel for Windows 95 add-on imports data from your accounting program and then steps you through several screens of the most obvious questions about your three options--lease, buy with cash, or buy with loan. Then it builds a spreadsheet that gives you the total purchase price adjusted for inflation and shows you how various purchase options affect your monthly payments and cash flow. Unfortunately, Financial Manager can't calculate the tax impact of the different scenarios.

HEADACHE # 11 Your product business is growing so fast that you don't have the cash to keep inventory in stock.

Follow the rule of thumb that says you can grow your sales only as quickly as your assets, liabilities, and net worth. QuickBooks Pro includes this sustainable growth formula in a calculator. Select the Business Library from the Help menu and go to the "How Fast Can Your Business Grow?" question in the finance and accounting section. You'll be asked for information on your company's net worth, annual sales, and profits, figures on your last annual balance sheet. The calculator then gives you your sustainable growth rate and sales targets for the next three years.

HEADACHE #12 You need a quick way to check on your company's health.

Large-company CFOs use a handful of financial ratios to tell them at a glance how their businesses are doing. You've probably got most of this information in your accounting program--you just need to know what to look for. Microsoft Small Business Financial Manager puts far more ratios than you can dream up onto a single Excel spreadsheet for ready analysis and what-iffing. Best of all, you don't need to know how to design the formulas or have to struggle with importing the data. Financial Manager brings in your accounting program's numbers and applies ready-made formulas for the various financial health, liquidity, activity, profitability, and other ratios that provide different perspectives on your company.