Product Reviews

Horizon takes a unique approach to finances - it uses a calendar to track money.

The program's interface, which looks like Apple's iCal, is divided into three areas: a category list, calendar and summary view. The category list can divide your outgoings and income into discrete elements. Categories act like individual calendars in iCal and there's no restriction on the number of categories you can add.

You add details of your financial transactions directly to the calendar. When you double-click a date you can enter the transaction's value in the Cell Value field below the calendar. Cell values aren't restricted to numbers. For example, you can set one cell to add the totals of other cells in a category in the calendar view.

Every cell you add is matched to the currently active category and the cells are very flexible: you can move one to another date just by dragging it in the calendar. Strangely, though, only one instance of each category can appear on a particular

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date.

The summary view, housed in a pull-out drawer, gives an overview of your income and expenses by clicking on a date in the calendar. A balance of all categories at that point is shown in the drawer. But the summary view doesn't just add and subtract category totals. By adjusting its function via a drop-down menu, it can also find the average, maximum and minimum sums across all categories.

The beauty of Horizon's approach is that it makes it so easy to see your financial situation at a glance. If you're rigorous about entering current and planned spending and expenses, you'll be able to instantly gauge your solvency. Because you can set cell values to repeat, you can plan months ahead. You can also turn off categories to exclude them, so you could, for example, find out how rich you would be if you didn't have to pay your mortgage every month.

Plaudits apart, there are rough edges in the application, and plenty that could be improved in version 2. Import and export functions are virtually non-existent, and editing cells is more awkward than it needs to be - if you click on an existing cell, you have to click a Cancel Edit button before you can select another date in the calendar. It's also hard to tell categories apart by colour alone and particularly difficult to distinguish calculation cells from those containing numbers.

But Horizon is a great first effort and undeniably good value. If you're one of those people who can't abide the traditional ledger approach of other applications, Horizon is worth making a date with.