Track your finances - The time to start is now!

As we approach the end of the calendar year, we all have friends and family complaining about tax preparation issues and such. To help ease this yearly burden, I would suggest that your think about tracking your finances for the coming year in some sort of system. This can be an inline program like Mint.com, software like Quicken or Quickbooks or even on paper or in an Excel spreadsheet. Like most tasks, it is more important that you DO it than HOW you do it.

Tracking your finances is one of those tasks that is much easier when taken in small pieces. If you take a few moments to enter in financial data -- checks written, bills received, donations given -- as they appear, it can save your significant time and frustration later. First, doing this in small chunks is less intimidating than trying to do it each month or, even worse, all together at the end of the year. I try to enter data at least once a week and reconcile my accounts religiously at the end of each month. By the time I get to the end of the year and meet with my tax accountant, I only need to print out 2 reports, hand over my 1099 and W-2 forms, and we are done. I know exactly how much I will need to pay, or receive as a refund by the time he leaves our house. We have done this for over 10 years now and the ease of it is always welcome and amazing.

The beginning of a new year is always a great time to start tracking you finances. You will receive bank statements and bill which clearly reflect your balances and these can be used as opening balances in any of the financial programs available. Of course, that same could be said for starting at the beginning of any month. Don't worry about inputting older data. Start fresh and move forward. It is rarely useful to input older data unless there is a particular issue you are trying to address.

This month I am preparing to switch over to Quickbooks for Mac 2012 for both my personal and corporate financial needs. I was using Quicken for Mac for my personal accounts and an old copy of Quickbooks Windows for my corporate accounts. My copy of Quicken for Mac no longer functions under Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and the Quickbooks for Windows requires me to run it in a virtual Windows machine on my Mac. I hope that by using the same program for both -- and one that runs natively on the Macintosh, I will save myself a fair bit of work.

Remember, it doesn't matter what system you use, only that you have some system in place. Below are a few online and computer-based financial systems you can try, but even pen and paper will make tracking your finances easier than the typical "shoebox" many people face at the end of the year.

There is a great series of columns on Tidbits that helps to lay out many of the option if you are upgrading from Quicken for Mac or just looking for a place to begin.

Link: Finding a replacement for Quicken

Link: Follow-up to Finding a Replacement for Quicken

Financial Products available from Amazon.com - Reviews and Information

Quicken Essentials for Windows | Quickbooks 2012 for Mac | Moneyworks Express for Windows | iBank 4 for mac |

Other financial program alternatives

PocketMoney (Win, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android)

GnuCash (Win, Mac, Linux - Free Download)

Mint.com (Online, Free)

Microsoft release Outlook.com email services to replace Hotmail

Today Microsoft released its new email service Outlook.com to replace its Hotmail brand. This new streamlined Metro interface design looks good and functions well so far. You can use your existing Microsoft account to log in and then choose an email alias (i.e. douglaswelch@outlook.com) for your new email address. Here are several articles that discuss Outlook.com... Goodbye, Hotmail; Hello, Outlook.com [REVIEW] Outlook Is a Completely New, Feature-Filled Webmail Service from Microsoft Go Get Your @Outlook Email Address Quick Before Someone Else Does I will post links to more articles and reviews as they appear.

Shared calendars are one part of an organized family

by Douglas E. Welch , techiq@welchwrite.com 206-338-5832 Reader/Listener Line As a parent with a school-age child, I often hear other parents bemoaning their disorganized existence. Along with the busy schedules of two working parents you might have art classes, karate classes, Little League, soccer and more. Add in more than one kid and organizing your life can quickly become a nightmare. This is exactly why one of my most important organizing devices is a shared calendar that reflects all the activities and events for everyone in the household...and I do mean everything. If someone -- is required to be somewhere -- at sometime, it goes into the calendar. If we are given a calendar that reflects all the events for a particular activity (say, Little League), all these events immediately go into the calendar, along with notations on whether we are providing the team snack, working in the snack bar, etc. Even events that occur anytime during the day, like family birthdays, and other rem...

Google Docs adds templates

I have started to move away from using Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc) in favor of online tools like Google Docs . Even as a computer consultant, I find that I use probably less than 10% of the features in any of these projects. One feature I really like in Google Docs is the easy, online file sharing that also allows you to edit simultaneously with someone else. Today, Google Docs added some templates including business cards, brochures and more. At the moment, it looks like they are rolling out this feature over time, so you might not yet see the templates on your account. When available, you will find the templates under the New... menu item. From Open Loops ... Today, Google quietly rolled out a new feature for their Google Docs Applications: Templates! It's so new that it isn't even listed on the new features page at this time. When one opens their Google Docs account and chooses to start a new document, a new "From Template..." command is pre...

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