| I bought Pha$ar a couple of months ago, and I'm very pleased with the package.
It's easy to use, easy to set up, has an excellent tutorial (geared to
non-computer types, so even if your spouse doesn't share your interest in
technical-looking devices, you MAY still get him/her to learn how to use
Pha$ar.) It handles multiple user-defineable accounts (up to 40), and supports
up to 130 user-defineable expense/income categories. It's got a good input
parser that makes it EASY to work with. Half of the time, Pha$ar will
correctly guess your input and make that the default. The other half, you can
just type a couple of letters and Pha$ar will figure out what you mean. And
the HELP key works quite well. I've only found one place where you can't hit
the HELP key and get presented with a complete list of choices for which step
to take next... and that's on the menu-driven main screen... so you hit the
menu button on the mouse to get a list of choices.
Pha$ar includes some budget analysis functions, some tax calculation functions,
check-printing functions, etc. but I haven't gotten into them yet. One thing I
just started playing with is the budget-trend plotting function. It lets you
view, in numerical or bar-graph form, how much you've been spending/earning
each month in any expense or income category (plotted against how much you
budgeted... if you decided to use the budgeting options).
Hope this gives you some of what you're looking for. Incidentally, the package
is NOT copy-protected, and installs quite easily on a hard-disk. (I've decided
NOT to buy any more copy-protected packages if I can help it.)
John
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| Thanks for the information. I had decided on Pha$ar, but couldn't find
anyone who had it in stock. I called Abel, and they just happened to
have Money Mentor (the only other package I had heard anything
favorable about) on sale for $29.95; regular price is something on the
order of $55 or so. (Retail is $95).
It just came in today, and I haven't had much time to play with it, but
from the manual it looks to be pretty powerful for what I want to do.
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| Re: -.2
> How much does Pha$ar cost? I am getting married and have decided to
> try the "computer-controlled-budget" idea at that time. Also, my
> fiancee does some bridal consulting work.. would Pha$ar handle tracking
> minimal business expenses too?
I've seen it for around $60.00 U.S. from most mail-order companies. I know it
works for LIGHT business work, but one of its stated limitations is 500
transactions per month. So far this has proven enough for LIGHT businesses...
my wife is a professional pianist, and I keep track of her income/expenses
with Pha$ar. Of course, her expense load consist mostly of deposits and
gasoline charges... with an occasional extravagant outfit thrown in. :-)
John
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