Display article   Subject:  Quicken:  Automate Routine Financial Tasks
   04/30/97   19:43:53


QUICKEN:  AUTOMATE ROUTINE FINANCIAL TASKS

Every home has financial tasks.  These include keeping track of
checkbooks and paying bills.  They SHOULD include reconciling our
checkbooks with our bank statements each month.

And about this time of year we're faced with another fiscal task:
calculating our taxes.  Quicken from Intuit can make all these
jobs easier.

Home offices that produce income often have additional financial
management needs.  These include budgeting, cash management,
accounts payable, accounts receivable, and more.  Quicken's
features simplify these tasks, too.

In addition, Quicken prints checks!  This makes the home office
more efficient, reduces errors and produces professional-looking
results.  (One of the challenges faced by home offices is
acquiring an appearance of professionalism in every aspect of the
business.  Custom computer-printed checks adds to this
professional appearance.  These personalized checks for use with
Quicken are available from Intuit.)

The Appeal of Quicken

People like Quicken because it looks familiar.  The two primary
screens of Quicken are Write Checks screen and the Check Register
screen, and they look like a typical checkbook.

After keying the correct information into the check on the
screen, press <ENTER> to accept it.

The information for the check then appears in the check register,
the balance is updated, and the check is ready to print.

On all your recurring bills, Quicken will "learn" the
transaction.  This lets you select a recurring payment with just
a couple of keystrokes, making this process much faster than
writing checks by hand.

Categories and Reports

If you wish, you may use Quicken's categories to organize your
checks and deposits for later reporting.  Quicken includes a set
of sample business categories and a set of sample home categories
to get you started.

Quicken's reports constitute one of its most valuable features.
To print a report of your checks and deposits, select the
Transaction Report from the Activities Menu.  You can opt for the
transactions to print by date, payee, category or memo, whether
the check has cleared, or any combination of these.  You may ask
for subtotals by week, month, quarter, etc., as well as by payee
and by category.

At tax time you can print helpful reports such as all charitable
donations, all interest income, etc.

The Category Reports offer the same flexibility.  Rather than
showing individual checks and deposits, Category Reports show
summaries by week, month, quarter, etc.  You may create reports
showing all or only selected categories.

The Budget Reports let you compare what you've spent during a
month with what you've budgeted in each category.  Again, you
have great flexibility in creating these Budget Reports.

Hope for Reconciliation

Reconciling your checkbook with your bank statement can be a
burden, but it should be done to make sure that both you and your
bank have an accurate balance for your account.  Quicken
simplifies this task by allowing you to type in the bank
statement balance and then identify the checks and deposits that
have cleared according to the statement.

If your account balances, you receive a congratulatory message.
If not, you can either fix the problem or accept the bank's
balance as correct.  Automating this reconciliation process can
save you time!

Getting Down to Business

Quicken offers functions that small businesses need, without
requiring the business person to learn double-entry accounting.
Accounts Receivables can be keyed in, totaled and reported by
setting up a separate file just for these receivables.  You can
set up Accounts Payable by postdating checks in the register and
tracking these postdated checks.  Quicken can handle cash flow
forecasting, petty cash, payrolls and other business tasks with
similar ease and simplicity.

And It's DeskMate!

As a DeskMate application, Quicken retains the familiarity and
ease of use that all DeskMate applications share.  Having learned
one DeskMate program, people find it very easy to learn new
DeskMate programs.  The similarity in the menus, dialog boxes,
help systems, etc. of DeskMate programs "quicken" the learning
curve on any new applications.
