I am a freelance writer and broadcaster, so I need an application that handles both business and personal financial transactions. I'm in Canada, so I need something that can track the GST (Goods and Services Tax) that I pay when I buy business-related supplies, and the tax that I collect from most of my customers. I also need something that can report to me how much to send to Ottawa every three months.

For many years I've been using Quicken 6 under Win-OS/2. I also have QuickInvoice version 1, which is an add-on to the main program. It works pretty well, but it would be nice to have a native OS/2 app, right? Over the years I've test-driven a few alternatives, but always returned to Quicken, because it does what I need to do, with the least amount of fuss. (I've used Quicken since version 2 for DOS, so it is like a familiar and comfortable old shoe.)

For instance, I tried a personal finance manager called Check+, thinking that I might use it for my personal accounts. I found the interface difficult to work with, making it much more time consuming to accomplish tasks than with Quicken. I also gave a program called Money Tree a spin. (I think it is now orphaned software.) It had a more intuitive interface than Check+, but still not as easy as Quicken.

Enter InCharge. A quick read through the features list tells me this app has everything I need to run my business, and a whole lot more. InCharge can handle mortgage calculations, real estate, mutual funds, insurance. If you're in the United States, you can upload the latest tax tables and use the program to track your tax situation as you go along through the year. (Ignorance may be bliss, but not when you're dealing with the Taxman, wherever you are.)

One of the features that caught my eye was the clock/calendar function, which can run independent of the main program. The clock can remind you of things like scheduled transactions and bills coming due. It also has ten alarms that can remind you of events coming up during your busy day. It can log time spent on up to five different jobs and post the information directly to a customer account in the main program. This is an attractive and time saving feature for a self-employed type, where billable hours are the lifeblood of the business. I've been using a fine little freeware app called Time Tracker to log my business activities, but the idea of having a job timer linked to a financial application is a good one.

However, I must confess that I did not get to the point where I could put the job timer to work. After about three hours of trying to create household and business chequing accounts, with many returns to the Help files, my brain went into neutral. The combination of my lack of accounting knowledge, my unfamiliarity with the terminology used by InCharge, and the number of decisions to be made in setting up the program did me in. During my first attempt at system configuration in the default "MyBooks" I forgot to enable the business functions. My attempts to back out and enable them didn't seem to work. I took the program creator's advice and went to the sample data area to get a better feel for the program. While that helped a bit, this area is not a tutorial. I didn't see much point in staying there. I created a new set of books with business functions enabled, but again found the process of creating and editing budget categories in this unfamiliar environment to be a steep learning curve. I attempted to record a payment in my newly-created business account, thinking this seat-of-the-pants approach might help the categories fall into place. This payment involves a payment to a supplier, plus the GST, which InCharge handles as a "Spread" transaction. Again, I've been spoiled by Quicken, which calls it a "Split." In Quicken, using simple, visual line items, you choose the category that describes the material or service you purchased, and then add the GST as a separate category. The InCharge interface left me stumped: Do I put the entire amount in the amount box? How do I identify the amount that is tax? What do I put in the tax code box, and the other boxes below that? Perhaps, in time, the answers would come clear. I took a break and had one more try at it. I felt as though I were getting nowhere fast.