Review: Inesoft Cash Organizer 2008

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I have always been keeping track of my how my cash flows, whether I am spending more than I should be and where exactly I am spending too much. It was rather surprising for me when I started because I did not realize that I spend as much as $50 on soft drinks from the vending machine in a particular month back when I was in college. Needless to say, this was one expenditure I could cut down on.

But using my Excel spreadsheet for such record keeping, while it did the job, was not really effective. And when it came to analyzing such reports, I can tell you that it was an even bigger headache. Using a Windows Mobile device, I knew that there had to be an application for me and that’s when I found Cash Organizer by Inesoft.

Introduction

Inesoft’s Cash Organizer helps you manage your money but it’s more than just that. It also does reports and syncs with your desktop (if you want to) so you could view it all from your Quicken or MS Money application. It supports Pocket PC (both phone and non-phone versions) running on WM2003SE to WM6.0. For desktop sync, it only supports Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP and Vista.

With regards to desktop money managers, it syncs with all localized versions (except Japanese) of Microsoft Money 2005-2008/Plus (be it Standard, Deluxe, Premium or Small Business versions), U.S. and Canadian versions of Intuit Quicken 2003-2008 and Germany editions of BuhlData MeinGeld 2008. If you are interested in giving it a go, you can download a trial version of Cash Organizer. It’ll give you 25 days of unrestricted use. Licenses cost $29.95. So how does Cash Organizer fare in it’s everyday use?

Well I have to say that I am really impressed. It does not just help you keep track of your cashflow as you will soon see. If used properly, it can be a really useful tool in helping you manage your finances and cut down on wastage as well.

Don’t Forget The Manual

Most applications you download may not come with a Manual but when it comes to Inesoft Cash Organizer, you’ll a 41 page guide to help you through. Not that you need it because most of the functions you can pretty much guess on your own. However, there have been times when I was unsure of certain issues or if there were a better way of doing things and the manual has been really great at that.

The manual comes with screen shots and easy to understand language so you should have no problems following it. If you do face a problem or want to get the most out of your Cash Organizer, I would recommend that you read the manual as you familiarize yourself with the program. It might just save you a lot of time in the future.

Account Screen

When you launch Cash Organizer, you will be asked to create a file, after which you will be taken to the Account Screen. This is where you can see all your accounts at glance and the balance in each of them. If you are a business owner, you do not have to create separate files at launch if you plan to separate personal and business accounts. Instead, I would put them all in one account (as it’s much more convenient that way) and you can always choose to hide or show certain accounts so you can always just look at whichever set(s) of accounts you want. It even adds up the total worth of all the accounts so you can see whether you’re currently in the black or red. Good start I must say.

Entering Transactions

So we get to the most important part of any money manager, entering transactions into the program. Needless to say, it looks like Inesoft got it well covered with 2 options: one from within the main program, and the other through an application called Cash Organizer Express.

Through The Main Program

This is how it looks like when you enter your transactions using the main program. It may look daunting to first time users but you might soon come to appreciate that. In case you are wondering, you do not have to fill up every single field though the more you do, the better you can track your finances.

What I really like about this is that when you tap on the arrow next to the amount field, a mini calculator will pop up so you can do some simple calculations. This could be useful when say you want to consolidate multiple transactions into one. Or if you plan to split a transaction between the people at lunch. The possibilities are endless and it’s a really nice touch I would say.

Through Cash Organizer Express

Launching Cash Organizer every time you want to key in a transaction can be a bummer. So use Cash Organizer Express instead. It’s not exactly a lite version of Cash Organizer because all it let’s you do is to key in new transactions and it will be something that you will be using pretty often. What I like about Cash Organizer Express is that the keys are large and it’s really easy to enter your transactions, be it the date, amount or even category. Yes, it’s really finger friendly (unlike the main program) and pleasing to the eye (in my opinion at least).

What you may not know (and I did not realize this until much later) is that you can customize the bar format, language and alignment to your liking. Just tap on ‘Options’ which is located on the top right of the application to make the changes.

Registered Transactions

This is where the raw data of all your transactions are. If you used a spreadsheet before to manage your finances, then you would be familiar with this page. It lists out all your transactions and breaks it down as to how your money flowed. Say you started an account with $1000. You spend $20 on it. The page will then you show you the amount for the transaction as well as how much was left after each transaction.

However, that’s not all you can do here. If you noticed any error, say you meant to put a transaction into another category, this is where you can make such changes. It also comes with filters where you can choose to view unreconciled transactions or even future transactions. You could even group your transactions according to category or payee to better follow it if you wanted to.

Have A Project or Two

Projects are what Inesoft uses to group transactions for the same purpose. Say you are going on a business trip. There’s no need to create an account specially to track spending. Just create a new project and make sure all related transactions are placed under it.

It’s not just for businesses though as you could do it for just about any transactions you want to group. Say you want to remodel the house. Create a project for it. What about tracking how much you spend on presents? Create a project. You get the picture.

Plan Your Transactions

There are just some transactions that keep repeating themselves: getting a salary, paying the bills or even your monthly contributions to a charity of your choice. Instead of entering them as they come by, you can schedule them in the Planner tab

There are a lot of recurring options that you can choose from for such payments or income. Will you only be receiving it 3 times? Or every 2 months? Or maybe every certain number of days. There are a lot of options for you to choose from.

And if you think that these entries are generic, well there are some templates for you to use. So instead of scheduling ‘Salary’, you could set it up to say ‘Salary for March 2008′ or ‘Rent for April 2007′. Look up the manual to see how to go about it so that the entries serve you even better.

Setup Your Budget

Many of us hate budgeting because it can be really difficult to keep track of them. Not so with Cash Organizer. Setup up a budget (or more than 1 if you choose), choose how much you want to spend for that and select the categories that are part of the budget. Confused? Well let me explain.

Say you have a monthly transportation budget expense of $300. So what you do is select all expense categories that are part of this budget and it could include parking, gas, insurance payments and so forth. Now, when you enter a transaction that belongs to any of this category, it will deduct from the budget amount so you know how much you have left.

One thing you may not realize is that budgets can be used for incomes as well. These are great for sales personnel or just about anyone who has a certain income target to meet. For example, you could set up a budget for commissions of say $1000. Every time you earn a commission, you enter it into Cash Organizer. That way you can see how on track you are and how much more commissions you need to meet your budget.

View Your Reports

So you’ve entered all the transactions, you’ve scheduled your payments and incomes , you’ve set up your budgets. Now what? Well all those raw data would not be useful if you are not able to analyze them right? And that’s what the Report tab is for.

What I love about Cash Organizer is that it offers you a wealth of reports to choose from and you can customize them according to your needs. First the types of reports. From your net worth to your current balances and even how much you spend in each expense category or make in an income category can be plotted into a nice pie or graph chart for better understanding. And when I talk about customization, that means you can choose exclude certain transactions or view them in a certain time frame.

I am not an accountant or professional bookkeeper so I would not know if the reports here would suffice your situation but from a personal standpoint, there are more than enough for me to keep track and manage my finances and I would presume that would be the case for many of you reading this as well.

Customize Your Payees And Categories

Take the customization up another level with your payees and categories. For me, it depends on how you set up your payees and categories but at the very least, you will need a good set of categories. Have parent and child categories to better group your transactions. If you make them really specific, you might not even need to organize your payees. To be honest, I really have no need for payees because my categories are pretty specific but you might choose another way to set up your Cash Organizer.

The Extra Features

Based on the features that I have discussed above, Cash Organizer would be more than sufficient for the everyday user right? Well I guess Inesoft was not just targeting these users because it added a few useful features as well.

Need A Loan?

It’s got a pretty useful loan calculator. Useful in a sense that after you enter all the details about the loan, you can actually find out the total cost of the loan, that is, how much you would be paying for something, including interest. From there, you could even schedule the loan payments so you don’t have to key in the details again.

While it might be useful in seeing the full amount, you might be wondering what else it can offer? Sometimes, you just have to take a loan to buy a house because you don’t have the cash to pay for it in full right? Fair enough. But think about the smaller purchases you make. Is it really worth it to pay in installments for that new plasma TV if you cannot pay it in full now? You might just be surprised.

Cross-Country Transactions

If you travel a lot, then you will find this feature pretty useful. If you don’t, well it’s just something you can ignore.

Just to point out to those who plan to use currencies, you might be pleased to know that you can set the exchange rate anytime you choose and there is even a history of the exchange rates that you’ve used before. Sure it does not have an online rate exchange but then again, when you do change your money, do you use the online rate or the rate that the bank gives you?

Import & Export

Not the business but bank transactions that is. Some of us, while wanting to keep track of our expenditures, just don’t like the idea of entering data at the time of transaction. If that sounds like you, here’s an alternative.

Only enter data when you pay by cash. For cards, download the transactions from your banks online statement (check with your back to see if they support this). From there, you can import these transactions and then categorize them when you have free time. How’s that?

As for export, well that’s just what it is. Export the data from your Cash Organizer profile into Quicken, Pocket Excel, Windows or Unicode Text. Unless you have a good reason for using this feature, I would recommend that you use the built-in sync features of Cash Organizer which I will discuss shortly.

Looking For Something?

Sometimes you need to look for a particular transaction, either to edit or delete it. In that case, the search feature of Cash Organizer is what you want to use. I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest because you can only enter a term and then pray that you hit the one you one but it’s still better than manually looking through the transactions one by one.

Today Screen Plugin

Want to find out your account balances at a glance? Or maybe you just need to know if you’ve exceeded your budget for the month before making that purchase decision. In both cases, use the today plug-in to help you out. Choose which accounts and/or budget you want to show and Cash Organizer takes care of the rest.

Security Options

Nervous about having all your transactions there for your friends to see when they want to play with your Pocket PC. Then put a password on it. That way, every time someone tries to access the main application, they’ll need a password to get in. What’s great (or it may not be great depending on how you look at it) is that you do not need a password for using Cash Organizer Express.

Don’t Forget To Backup

They always say you should backup your important files and data. Cash Organizer is no different. Even if you have a backup system in place, there’s no harm using the feature offered. To be extra careful, it even allows you to save your data in 2 locations if you choose. That way, you can sure it’ll survive just about anything. Too bad it doesn’t do it automatically.

Need To Sync?

Here’s what I was talking about earlier when I said that you should not use the Export facility. That’s because Cash Organizer has it’s own sync feature that syncs with many of the popular desktop applications out there. From Quicken to Microsoft Money to even Germany editions of BuhlData MeinGeld 2008 are supported.

So what are the shortcomings of the Cash Organizer? Well there are a few I have found during my review.

A Desktop Version Would Be Nice

I would have loved a Desktop version of Cash Organizer. Sure, I could use Quicken or MS Money as my desktop version and Cash Organizer as my Pocket PC version but still. Inesoft has been asking users for a year or two now whether they wanted a desktop version on their main site but so far, no news as to when one will be developed. Sometimes, entering and viewing data on the desktop is a much better experience and I do hope that Inesoft will develop one soon.

What’s The Difference?

Before Cash Organizer 2008, there was Cash Organizer 2007 of which I was a user as well. The thing is, I did not notice much difference between the 2 versions. In fact, apart from the different skin used in Cash Organizer Express, I could not see any other difference. I guess there’s the support for newer versions of Quicken and MS Money but other than that, there seemed to be no changes.

Why No Soft Keys?

It’s been over 2 years since Windows Mobile 5 with softkeys were released and I find it weird that Inesoft had not integrated it into Cash Organizer 2008. It could be forgiven for the 2007 version for it to not have softkeys but for the 2008 to be missing it is really mind-boggling.

Finger-Friendly Please

Even with the lack of softkeys, I would not have minded if it was more finger-friendly but the only part that was, was the Cash Organizer Express application. the main application was pretty unfriendly, especially in some instances that fields were so close together that I was forced to take out the stylus. I hope that Inesoft can improve on the interface in the next version. Don’t we all want finger-friendly software?

It Can’t Go Online

This could be just me but I would have preferred if Cash Organizer could go online to sync with my bank accounts. That way, I would not have to keep in importing and organizing them every now and then. It could be too much to ask for such a feature-packed application but since we’re suggesting improvements, why not?

There might be other shortcomings that I may not be aware of due to my usage fo the program and if you do encounter any of them, let me know if the comments below.

What I Like About It

• Is a very feature packed application. Doesn’t just help you manage your finances, it has tools and features to maximize the data you have as well.
• Scheduling transactions with templates.
• Budget center is really useful and easy to setup/use.
• Reports are easy to understand and available in many formats.
• Cash Organizer Express is a great application for entering transactions. Being finger-friendly is a big plus. Another plus is that it loads pretty fast as well.
• Keep track of spending limits by setting up alarms in your budget.
• Backup and restore for peace of mind.
• Ability to sync with many versions of desktop money managers.
• Today screen plug-in is useful and integrates well with the main program.
• Availability of security option that is to set passwords.
• Support for multiple currencies and a history of exchange rates.
• Able to import files such as those from bank statement transactions.

What Could Be Improved

• Make the interface more finger-friendly by supporting softkeys as well. At the very least, make it such that I do not have to use a stylus.
• Able to go online to sync with bank accounts.
• No desktop application for use on a PC.
• Automatically backup the data with each exit of the application instead of asking the user.
• There are still elements of Cash Organizer 2007 in the 2008 version (such as in the About screen).

Conclusion

Cash Organizer is not just a tool that helps you keep track of your expenses. It also helps you in managing it as well. While it won’t tell you what’s the best credit card for you to switch to, it can tell you where you are spending too much so you could start cutting down. It’s budget system is very useful, especially if you follow it and it’s ability to import bank transactions is definitely welcomed.

I would have loved a desktop version of the application to go through my transactions while I am on the PC but that’s just me. If you have yet to give Cash Organizer 2008 a try, go ahead do so, especially if you’ve been looking for an application to track expenses. A full featured 25 day trial is available and licenses go for $29.95, a paltry sum when you consider how much it would save you in the long run.

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