ISO Good Personal Budget App

[JMH]

I'm a longtime Palm user (at least, long enough to have had one with the word Pilot in the model name) and once my Toshiba e740 gets here, I'll be switching over to PocketPC. Really one of the main cons to this decision is that I can't use QuikBudget anymore. QB has been absolutely perfect for organization of my personal finances, and I don't know how I'm going to handle those once my m500 is no more. Can anyone recommend a good, cheap (but doesn't have to be freeware) PocketPC program that would handle this? It'd ease my changeover tremendously. Thanks!

(P.S. I've seen screenshots of PoQuick Money Enterprise, which seems to be the TYPE of thing I'm looking for, but may be a little more than I need. Is this a good program? If not, are there any similar programs that are a little simpler?)

[blusparkles]

Hi JMH - I was one of the lucky winners of PoQuick Money Enterprise in the Pocket PC Thoughts New Year giveaway. One of my new years resolutions is being able to budget better and track where all of my money goes. PoQuick definitely does this very well.

PoQuick lets you create as many categories (and sub-categories) as you want, and lets you assign an icon (for easy visual identification in the "balance sheet") and also, more importantly, a budget for each category. Apparently there's a feature that where PoQuick lets you know if you've gone over budget for a particular category, but I haven't tried this yet.

Other features I like are the graphs and reports. The report I did for the last month told me that I'd spent $250 on books, and more than that on Pocket PC software! Yikes! I'd also spent $450 on Christmas presents! The ease with which such figures can be tabulated and presented to you in both visual and textual format is absolutely priceless (and a bit of a shock for a careless spender like me).

Another thing is that they're coming out with a desktop version of PoQuick Money, and if you pre-order it, you can buy it for only $7.95 (to retail for $39.95)!

I'll be doing a review on this program soon, so keep an eye out :)

[JMH]

Thanks a lot, bluesparkles. Seems like what I want. Can I set it up to debit my budget a certain amount at regular intervals (i.e. payday) and distribute that amount among the various categories I've created?

[Martin I Pettinger]

Hi JMH

Thanks for the information on PoQuick Money Enterprise sounds just like what my family needs. We are careless spenders too and there is another little one on the way!

I linked to your site and liked your reading list. Question is: can you get any of these books as e-Books - it would be so useful to have Covey 7 Habits as a lit book.

Martin

[blusparkles]

JMH: you can set recurring transactions, which sounds like it would achieve what you want. This means you create a transaction (ie deducting $10 from your savings account every month to pay off x bill) and set it to reccur at a set interval. This is also useful for automatically adding your wage to your account whenever you are paid.

Martin: PoQuick is a great program! Fairly easy to use, and offers a lot of features to help you budget your money, and also quickly see how your money is being spent. A lot of the books that I posted on my website can be downloaded as e-books, either using Palm Reader (http://www.palmdigitalmedia.com), or Microsoft ebook reader, though unfortunately the 7 habits of highly effective people doesn't appear to be one of them. The books I have on ebook (in Palm Reader format - they're actually cheaper) are: The Procrastinator's Handbook: Mastering the Art of Doing it Now; Write it Down, Make it Happen: Knowing What You Want--and Getting It!; and The 100 Simple Secrets of Successful People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It.

[Martin I Pettinger]

Hi

There is a post with a link to handango - http://www.mastersoftmobilesolutions.com/ whereby PoQuick Pro V2.6 is free. I am going to try this out - see how it compares to Microsoft Money 2000 which I currently use.

Martin

[blusparkles]

Yes - but keep in mind that this is an old version of PoQuick. One of the main improvements with v 3 is the speed - it's much MUCH faster than the free version they're currently giving away.

The best way to see whether PoQuick Money Enterprise is the program for you is buy downloading and running the demo. As far as I know, all the features are available in the trial version.

[Martin I Pettinger]

Hi

Yes the free version is slow. I have transferred most of my account details - one thing that I found a little frustrating is not being able to edit re-occuring expenses - there didn't seem to be an option to change the frequency from monthly to weekly. You see I put some expenses in as monthly - wondered why I had lots of money at the end of the month only to realise that I got the frequency wrong. Only solution I've found so far is deleting monthly debits and re-entering as weekly. Other than that I really like the balance sheet option and the pie chart of where all the outgoings disappear to.

Martin

[blusparkles]

Oh yes - this is also something that I found frustrating. I too got the frequency of a recurring transaction incorrect, but I couldn't find an easy way to edit the recurrence. I also had to delete the transaction and just settle for entering them in monthly. Another feature I would like is to be able to enter all of my monthly bills in one section, and then have it automatically add these to transactions on the appropriate date. To take that idea further, have a separate screen (section) for "recurring transactions" so that you can put in wages and monthly bills that are automatically added on the set dates to the appropriate account. Would be much easier, then, to add, remove or edit recurring transactions.

Just my 2c

[TheNewSteve]

I bought it a while ago... it's STILL slow. Version 3.16. Unbelievably slow.

-Steve

[ombu]

I work with Cash Organizer, it's expensive, bought it a long time ago and Iwon't live without it, features, speed, everything's great, but the price.

Just in case.

Best.