Look ma, no forms! - Portable Software's QuickXpense 1.5 - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Sept, 1995 by Angela Gunn

The next time you visit your local computer store, don't laugh at the box that says "the painless way to prepare expense reports." QuickXpense for Windows isn't kidding. If you contract your services to large corporations and have to deal with their annoying expense forms, this easy-to-use package is worth its weight in administrative assistants. It intelligently and unobtrusively walks you through the process of preparing a variety of expense forms-and if you need to work with a form that isn't included in its many templates, Portable Software will prepare an electronic version just for you.

QuickXpense has both brawn and brains. After installation, the package holds your hand through a welcome interview, which asks questions about your usual methods of payment and the types of expenses and reimbursement methods you use in business. You then choose one of the included expense-report forms, or if you use a standard form from a particular company, you can download it from Portable Software's BBS.

QuickXpense is wonderfully designed and very flexible. In addition to doing math on the fly (with complete understanding of how to calculate for cash advances, partial reimbursements, and other accounting bugaboos), it automatically sorts entries by date. Choosing an expense type from the pick list generates an entry blank with proper SmartList entries. For example, an entry for airline-travel expenses will bring up the SmartList of air carriers, and an entry for dinner or breakfast calls up a list of restaurants generated by the package from previous entries.

You can also tailor SmartLists to include all your usual stomping grounds ahead of time. If you keep your contact list in Act! or WinFax Pro, QuickXpense automatically links to your list when your're recording expense incurred while traveling. You can set the package to alert you when expense reports and payments are due, and it will even flag you when a particular credit card is within $100 of its limit (or any amount you specify).

When it's time to reconcile your expenses and payments, QuickXpense can apply a number of different analyses to the data. Users of personal finance programs such as Quicken for Windows, Microsoft Money, Managing Your Money, or CA-Simply Money can share their expense information with the package, thus eliminating duplicate data entry.

The technical support for this product is excellent. You can call a toll-free number to order a tailor-made XpenseForm, which costs $99 (though due to extreme demand, you'll have to wait several weeks for new forms). And we were particularly impressed with the CompuServe support forum, where company advice is swift in coming.

If you're wise in the ways of recordkeeping, you'll be pleased with QuickXpense's power, flexibility, and ease of use. The less organized among us will find it a godsend.