June/July 1995
Newton Software Review
Pocket Quicken for Newton
Mobile money manager that works
I hate keeping track of how I spend my money. I only do it because I fear
the IRS and the embarrassment of bounced checks. I've tried every possible
way to keep track of my finances and business expenses while out and about.
From a pocket full of stapled receipts to a macro-laden spreadsheet on a
PowerBook Duo, nothing really worked. When I bought my first Newton at MacWorld
Boston '93 I thought my solution was close at hand.
Wrong. No software.
Tandy's Zoomer had Pocket Quicken built-in, but I damn sure wasn't going
to buy such an ill-conceived paperweight of a PDA just for that; I'd sooner
use post-it notes and a broken crayon. Surely Intuit would release a version
for the Newton soon, I thought. I tried a variety of commercial and shareware
financial management packages, but none had the sleek, friendly design and
compatibility I wanted. Until now, that is. Pocket Quicken for Newton 1.0
is now shipping and was worth the wait. With just a few minor caveats, Pocket
Quicken is very good software, perfectly suited to its task of mobile personal
financial management.
Field testing at the grocery store
Installation is a snap. The program weighs in at 362K, so it will fit into
a MessagePad 110 without a RAM card. Setting up accounts is painless, even
for a money moron like me. Pocket Quicken uses the obvious metaphor of a
wallet. There's a little flap showing six out of a total of twelve possible
accounts such as checking, credit cards, and cash. To enter a transaction
you tap the launch button in the NotePad, then tap the account you want.
A transaction slip pops up with a ching-ching cash register sound and a
large entry field for the amount. Enter the amount and choose a type, such
as check or withdrawal. Tap the Payee pop-up and you can choose from a list
of your most frequent choices. You can assign a user-definable or preset
expense category if you wish, or assign it to an expense report from a list
you create. Recurring payments are handled particularly well. Enter the
same payee and amount twice and it shows up next time with the amount already
entered. There is no place to enter bank transaction numbers, but I don't
mind because I never do this anyway. The whole procedure is snappy enough
to use in a grocery checkout line, and even faster once you have a few recurring
payees on your list. It's almost fun. You can generate detailed reports
on any account or category, making it very easy to see where your money
is going. When you get your bank statement you can check off the cleared
items and compare your cleared total against the bank's to see who won.
Quibbles
The well-written manual offers a workaround for the lack of a mileage tracking
function which involves creating a bogus account and substituting miles
for money, then converting the totals back into money in Newton's conversion
calculator. This works, but it's so kludgey it feels like bad shareware.
You can attach a note to any transaction, but the text area accepts handwriting
poorly, forcing you to use Graffiti or the soft keyboard. The check number
field on transaction slips contain a distracting and space-wasting comma.
You can go back and change anything on a transaction slip, but changing
a date causes sorting problems because the program sorts by date then by
modification time, which could throw the check sequence out of whack.
Magnet for money
Not surprisingly, Intuit added the ability to export Pocket Quicken data
directly to Quicken running on your Macintosh or Windows PC. The separate
Pocket Quicken Connect should be available by the time you read this. With
this feature, Intuit has created the ideal data acquisition tool for their
desktop products. For many fence-sitters Pocket Quicken may be reason enough
to buy a Newton. For me it's made check writing much less of an unwelcome
adventure.
Category: Financial Management
Developed by: Intuit. (800)243-4650
Internet: balcones@aol.com
Memory needs: 362KB
System needs: Newton hardware
List price: $69.95 (disk)
Pen Computing Issue #5