Looking for an easy way to take control of your checkbook? Then a shareware program from Splasm Software, called CheckBook Pro, might be just what you’re looking for.
What makes CheckBook Pro so great? How about some of these features:
QuickFilter – this highlights the ability of CheckBook Pro to highlight any set of transactions, based on your own search criteria, using your own criteria. Want to search all your transactions for a certain category? You can. How about using the To/From field, to track how much you’ve paid to a certain company, or how much someone has paid you. You can search through all your transactions, or just the ones from Today, Yesterday, or a custom date range of your choosing. You can hunt down a particular check you wrote, using the check number, or find a particular transaction based on the dollar amount. The options are practically endless.
Scheduled Entries – do you have a set of payments you make on a monthly basis, such as rent, fees, membership dues or subscriptions? With CheckBook Pro, you can enter those into your scheduled entries, taking the hassle out of managing your regular payments.
Account Summaries – this is one of my favorite abilities… the option to receive reports to help me see exactly where my money is going. I can view reports based on categories, so I won’t wonder where all my entertainment money goes, or why my grocery money is always a little low.
Categories – this ties in to the above features. It’s not good enough to just know that I have a certain amount of money left at the end of each month. Should I have more? Why don’t I? With categories, I can see at a glance if my entertainment expenses far outpaced my food or gas payments, and I can budget accordingly.
Splits – a common feature in most financial applications. This lets me take a transaction that I’m either paying or receiving that’s coming from two different people, or being paid to two different people, but is all part of the same expenditure or receipt. This feature also supports categories, so if a particular payment is both entertainment and food (for instance, a birthday cake), I can keep things categorized correctly.
Import – Since most of my transactions originate with my checking account, I can take a file exported from my bank’s website and import it into CheckBook Pro. This is great both as a time saver and for accuracy. CheckBook Pro can import OFX, QIF and CSV/Text files, so financial websites, as well as popular programs such as Quicken are supported.
Multiple Currency – I’ve never used this feature, but according to the CheckBook Pro website, CheckBook Pro supports transfers between accounts using different currencies. Nice.
Before I continue with the features, I should mention one thing. There are actually two “flavors” of CheckBook… the standard CheckBook and CheckBook Pro. The standard CheckBook application costs $14.95 to license, while $24.95 gets you a license for CheckBook Pro. So far, all the features listed are standard in both versions, but the following are only available in CheckBook Pro.
Smart Folders – This goes right along with the fantastic search capabilities built into CheckBook and CheckBook Pro. If you’ve gone to the trouble of refining your search so that it only shows transactions you made via your check card in the entertainment category on Thursdays, and you’ll be searching for that regularly, you should really use Smart Folders. Smart Folders will basically save that search, updating it constantly, so all you need to do is click on your saved Smart Folder and you’ll instantly see all the results, without having to type your search query again.
Folders – These are your basic folders. If you want to group or archive your entries into groups, you can.
Global Account Summaries – similar to the reporting feature included in the standard CheckBook application, but in this case able to gather results from all your accounts.
Global Scheduled Entries Reminder – again, a wizard to watch over and manage your regularly-scheduled transactions, but with an eye on all your accounts.
Multiple Entry Change – have you made a mistake in entering a few different transactions? With this feature, simply highlight the ones you want to edit, then change them all at the same time. Similar (for those familiar with the concept), of editing an entire album of MP3 files at once, using a tag editor. No need to change the Artist tag 12 times, once for each song, simply do them all at once. A great time saver.
There’s more, of course (there always is), but I think that gives a good overview of exactly what CheckBook and CheckBook Pro have to offer. Do you want something to “just” keep track of your checking account? Then CheckBook is for you. Do you have a lot of accounts, and lead a busy financial life? Then you might want to try CheckBook Pro. Either way, you’ll get a stable, nicely-done application to help you get control of your finances. You can try out CheckBook Pro for free, so go nuts. See which features you like, then purchase accordingly.
