Money 98 Financial Suite

For those fortunate enough to bank with one of these more forward-thinking institutions, you can now ask Money to download your bank statement for you. Of course, if you're using the bank's own software, you could have done this already, but using Money 98 the bank statement doesn't just sit there for you to look at. You can ask the program to compare the transactions you've entered with those that have cleared. Any transactions that don't match either in reference or amount will be highlighted. The end result is a very quick and easy bank reconciliation.

If you go one step further and ask Money to download the statement and enter the transactions found into your computer bank account, then this will reduce manual data entry significantly. Again, if Money can't match a reference with a known supplier or customer, it will display a list for you to decide what you to do with these postings.

While posting manual data entry yourself, you can also choose to select one of several means of paying bills by electronic transfer, and even set up regular payments. Money uses what it calls Epays for a normal electronic instruction to your bank to pay a bill you've already entered into your bills owing area. However, you can also use Apays to set up a bill for automatic regular payment, and Xfers for transfers from one bank account to another at the same bank.

Of course, all this clever stuff depends upon the exact range of electronic banking services your bank or building society provides, and Money can help you find this out. Once you have an account set up in the Online Banking area, you can select Getting Started, then click Investigate Offerings. Money will connect to the Internet so that you can see what on-line services your financial institution offers.

You can also find out how much they cost and how to sign up. I tried this exercise and found that only The Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays Bank are Money 98-compatible at present. Still, it's early days yet.

Doing it the manual way

For those of you who don't bank with either of the above it looks like a manual data entry process for the moment. Just like all of it's predecessors, Money 98 uses a cashbook-type register for direct entry on a line-by-line basis, or you can use one of the ready-made forms if this suits you better.

Direct entry is a simple and intuitive affair: you need to decide whether you're creating a deposit, cheque, transfer or withdrawal, and then proceed to fill in the fields provided. To keep things neat, Money uses categories to analyse your incomings and outgoings, and you can further divide these into subcategories if you wish using a category of, say, motor expenses with subcategories for petrol, road fund licence, insurance, maintenance and so on.

You can set up as many as 14 types of accounts, such as the obvious bank current, bank savings and building society accounts. Credit cards, mortgages and loans are also on the menu, as are retirement accounts including pension and investments - other assets and liabilities cover the remainder for those who want a full balance sheet.

Money 98's business facilities are just about capable of keeping up with a small office or home-run cash-based business. VAT is catered for, so you can track tax on sales and purchases, but the built-in reports are quite basic.

Invoicing is available on the separate tools menu, so you can create and print quotations, invoices, proformas and credit notes, and these can then be updated to the accounts concerned. Payee names can also be used for recording bills yet to be paid and Money will remind you when these bills are due.