Product Reviews

In the world of personal finance there are really only two serious contenders: Microsoft Money and Intuit Quicken. Both perform a similar job, which is to help you manage your bank and loan accounts, track your investments and keep you up to date with the latest financial management information.

Towards the end of last year Microsoft released Money 99, adding some much needed functionality and a preference for on-line interaction. In fact, Money 99 arrived looking like a Web browser, complete with a customisable home page as the main start-up screen. New investment features were added for the first time, and on-line banking and Internet-based financial advice were a real selling point, along with personal planners designed to keep track of your financial goals. In effect, Money 99 effectively leapfrogged last year's version of Quicken, leaving Intuit with a lot of catching up to do.

So the saga continues, and now we have Intuit missing out the year 1999, and going for broke with Quicken 2000 - sporting a brand new browser-like interface, with a, wait for it, customisable home page as a start-up screen.

You get the familiar drop-down menu, but also a browser-like toolbar with backwards and forwards icons, plus six activity centres along the bottom. As you select an activity centre, the central section loads an overall summary screen in the form of a Web page. For example, the Banking Centre page provides underlined hyperlinks to related activities, such as cheque writing, bank account reconciliation and so on. You can see an account overview section with current balances, account activity, credit card analysis and graphs. Internet links mean you can go on-line and check interest rates for savings, credit cards and loans, plus on-line expert guides to loans and savings - all courtesy of the Quicken Web site.

Web format for the future

In essence, when it comes to look and feel, if you can find your way around a Web page, you can certainly find your way around Quicken 2000. Maybe this is the way application development is heading, certainly if Microsoft products are anything to go by. Regardless, Intuit has done a good job here, and the feature-rich and lively Quicken interface now wins over Microsoft Money's blander browser alternative.

Once you get past the Web-enabled aspects of Quicken 2000 and having perused the activity centre pages, the day-to-day machinations of the software haven't changed too much in this version. Quicken 2000 is an intelligent package in that it realises that not all of its users know exactly what to do when they launch into a personal finance manager for the first time. On first loading the software fires off some audio advice about what to do, and how to create your first set of accounts files. The same well-spoken couple from Quicken 98 take it in turns to guide you through a set-up Wizard, augmenting the on-screen questions with friendly advice as to the whys and wherefores. Once the basic personal information is on board you get advice on creating your first bank account record after which you're ready to proceed.

Audio tips are forthcoming whenever you enter an area you haven't been in before, and 'how to' help is available from the menu whatever section of the program you're in. For those new to Quicken, just like a manual cashbook, you can type directly into the on-screen register a line at a time - although you also get a few graphical forms for cheque writing and so on. As you enter a transaction, Quicken fills in the details based on what you've typed here before. The program calls up names and addresses with just a few letters to go on and generally behaves like an electronic cashbook should. This is much the same in Money 99.

Just like Money 99, you can analyse each line across several categories and subcategories to arrive at the detail you require. It's this aspect of personal finance software that enables you to arrive at such useful reports and graphs, showing just where your cash has gone. For further analysis you can group together transactions in classes, so you could perhaps have a class for private and a class for business expenses, for example.

In real life cash is held in and spent from various types of account, and Quicken 2000 offers petty cash, credit card and bank type accounts for everyday income and expenditure. Deposit and building society

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accounts take care of your short-term savings.

You can also create asset and liability accounts if you want to get clever, and you'll obviously need to do this for your house and the mortgage - particularly if you want Quicken to work out how much you're worth. Creating new accounts is easy, as Quicken uses a step-by-step Wizard to guide you through - complete with multimedia tutor if you leave the CD-ROM in while you work.

Quicken has always excelled when it comes to analysing all that data you've spent hours inputting, and Quicken 2000 continues the tradition. You get cashflow forecasts, budget comparisons and itemised category listings from the banking section, along with plenty of opportunities to create your own reports and snapshots.

A list of 'easy answer' reports enables you to quickly find out where your money has gone this month, or how much you've spent on a particular category. How much you paid to a particular person is easy to establish, as is whether your spending pattern has changed or even if you're spending more or less than last month, for example. There are more options than Microsoft Money has to offer; they're just not quite so easy to get at.

Doing the business

Personal finance managers aren't really designed for small business, and Intuit already sells QuickBooks to cater for that side of things. Nonetheless, some users do use Quicken for their business accounts, and Quicken 2000 Deluxe has managed to add a few options to the menu since the last time around. From the Business Centre you'll find a proper accounts receivable register, this time offering full statement and invoice tracking on a customer-by-customer basis - which amounts to a sale-ledger really.

Invoices can be prepared and printed with proper subtotals and discount lines (the routines have no doubt been nicked from QuickBooks), and you can be reminded when invoices become overdue. New to this release is support for the euro, and you can now keep an account register in your home currency and the euro. Almost as an aside, Quicken keeps track of all of the recognised tax categories you'll find on a self-assessment Tax Return, and the software will transfer these figures to QuickTax 2000 - all included in the price if you have the Deluxe version.

Until Money 99 appeared with investments on the menu, Quicken always took the biscuit in the planning and investments department. Quicken 2000 adds a couple of enhancements to the existing features, but apart from these everything is pretty much the same. Average cost or lot handling is now an option when valuing your investments. You can set up multiple securities in the same account, or create different accounts for grouping together securities of a similar nature. You can handle securities for bonds, shares and unit trusts, and decide on a goal of maximum growth, income, high risk, low risk and so on.

Transaction wise you can buy and sell shares, record an income event and then reinvest the income, deal with security splits like script issues and much more. From your investment home page you can then view a watch list of investment performance, and look at graphs of how well individual investments have fared. There's also an overview of specific portfolios.

Quicken 2000 can update your share quotes and exchange rates from the Internet all at once with a single click, and a new feature enables international stock quote downloads. You can also link to the Quicken Web site where there's plenty of financial information on tap.

I dare say there are investment situations that Quicken 2000 can't handle, but this will be enough for most folk - given that these facilities are built in to a personal finance manager at under £30 for the standard version. Money 99 does now deal with investments, but the use of associated cash accounts makes life a little more complicated. Quicken still offers more for your money in this department.

Top of the tree

I have to admit that I expected more from this 2000 release, and in fact Intuit has really only managed to implement an interface change and a few catch-up exercises.

If you need investment management Quicken 2000 is still the one to go for, and the inclusive QuickTax application in the Deluxe version is a boon if you deal with your own self-assessment paperwork. Money 99 is easier to get into if all you want is a cashbook bank account manager, and for on-line banking Microsoft has pulled out all the stops. Quicken 2000 does manage statement downloading, but only via NatWest now.

In other words, this isn't quite the jump into the millennium that I wanted from Intuit, and it should have got the on-line banking sorted out properly by now. Regardless, if this isn't a priority for you, Quicken is once again at the top of the tree. It has managed to catch up with and even overtake Money 99, but it's a very close-run battle and Microsoft certainly won't be lying down yet.