Finance Group Test

In which delusional discovers an essential Revo utility.

Money by tomtom
Money is the commercial program in our round up.
Features
Money is aimed at the home users, and includes features targted firmly at this market. It includes all the usual features like budgets, catagories and multiple account types.
In addition it provides excellent Report making facilities, linking in with the Sheet application to graph you’re status, so the graphs are of an impressive standard. You can also save the reports for later reference.
Ease of Use
The program is easy to find your way around. The interface is good, it is discuessed more below. If you purchase a boxed copy of the software you recieve a printed manual, which helps as you don’t have to keeps flicking between a helpfile and the program. The manual also includes tutorials to help you get up to speed with the programs.
Interface
The interface is one of the most important parts of a program is the interface, and Money’s has been well thought through. From the start you can see what each part of the interface is supposed to do. The top of the display is a line of tabs which switch between the main area’s of the program, allowing quick access to each part. Good use has been made of hotkeys here, for instance, tab switches you between the tabs and Esc returns you to the accounts screen.
However, some functions are lacking in hotkeys. There appears to be no hotkey to get to the Edit Account screen. Fortunately you don’t have to access the screen too often. However, it is annoying to have to reach for the stylus every so often. The overall high standard of the interface makes these small quirks all the more obvious. Fortunately the rest of the interface is of a quality you’d expect from a commercial program and more than compensates for the small oversights.
One of the other great touches is the way that the columns of the display resize to fit the data they need to display, something neither of the other programs do.
Overall
Being the commercial package, the program has to be worth is price tag. To justify the price you pay, Money packs alot in to it’s simple interface. It is also a fast program, very optimised which a commercial program should also be. the interface is well thought through, being powerful without being overwhelming.
However, $49.50 is still alot to pay for a Psion program, especially considering the price of the other two programs in the group. Whether you can afford the price is down to you. You won’t be dissapointed if you do though.
Before you rush off and get it, check out the next two programs, as they are cheaper, and might do what you need. Maybe not as smoothly, but for less outley
4*
Next

:TecBank from PalmTec:

TecBank is the midrange program. It offers many features, and is one of the most registered programs of all time.

Features

TecBank offers perhaps the most comprehensive set of features in our round up. You set up your accounts into groups, however many or few you need. You can set up one group for savings, one for current accounts, or just have all you accounts in one group, it's up to you. Like Money, it offers support for forign currencies, but in much greater depth. The only restriction is that each group has to be in one currency, you can set up a secondary currency for each though.
There are also a host of optional modules for such diverse things as keeping track of the items in your house and maintaining an expense account.
It also has all the usual budgeting features. These are somewhat like Money and PocketBank's catagories, however they are not as flexable.

Ease of Use

TecBank is more difficult to use than Money and PocketBank. This is mainly because of the complexity of the options on offer. TecBank has the most features of the group, and this has been reflected in the overall program. However, the included helpfile is good at pointing you towards the right button to push. The helpfile is also the most comprehensive of the group, offering a full rundown of the main program as well as all the included optional modules.
Interface
The interface for TecBank is not as polished as either Money or PocketBank, but it is easy to find your way around. Good use has been made of hotkeys, and this has been applied throughout the program. Most hotkeys can be guessed, all of them having logical keys assigned to them.
The information is split into columns in all three programs, making it clear what is what. TecBank takes this a step further by allowing you to decide what columns to show. It offers a middle column which lets you display a variety of information. You can also combine the payment and credit columns into one column, saving screen space, especially useful for fitting more info onto the screen of a Revo.

Overall

TecBank is by far the most confiurable and powerful program here. It offers a whole seprate menu system to house it's myriad of options. However, this functionallity comes at a price. Less time has been spent on the interface than on Money, and the program runs slower overall. However, speed is not a great consideration when chooseing a finacial package, and full use is made of on screen messages to tell you what's going on.
The sheer scope of the application may also be overwhelming for some, but if you want the most comprehensive program, this is the one to go for.

4*

Neuon - Shareware - £10
	Easy to use. Excellent compression. Archive entire programs with about 3 taps. A polished application generally delusional