OS/2 e-Zine! - Electronic Teller v2.80a

Electronic Teller v2.80a

- by Christopher B. Wright

Background

Once in a while you find a shareware application that is so stunning, so impressive, you wonder why people even bother buying "mainstream" products. One of these products is called Electronic Teller, or E-Teller, it's currently at version 2.80a, and I'm here to tell you, grab it and register it today.

Installation

Downloading E-Teller from the Internet will take some time (some versions of the program are over 2 meg), but once you do, all you need to do is unzip it and run the auto-install program. You can get a feel for the sophistication of this program simply by looking at the amount of time that was put into the installation routine. You get dialog boxes and a progress indicator to help you through the process, all carefully put together in a way that exudes professionalism. E-Teller will automatically create an application folder and program icons for you when it finishes installing, and will, if you desire, place a "reminder" utility in your startup folder so you can remind yourself of important dates (pay day, tax time, etc.).

Use

There is a lot you can do with this program, much of which works just as well as the more "mainstream" products you'll find at your local software store. It does all the primary personal accounting functions (keeping track of the various funds in your various checking, saving, and credit card accounts, how much you've spent, etc.) with ease. You also get "Quicken-like" extras, such as bar-charts, pie charts, and line graphs of how much money you have, how much you've spent, and how long you have until Guido breaks your kneecaps. Actually, I added that last part myself, but you do get a reminder utility which sits unobtrusively out of sight until you actually need to use it--a nice feature lacking in some PIMs. You can generate detailed and high-level reports of your financial history, and finally, you can attempt to reconcile your electronic statement with your bank statement by factoring in interest, banking fees, deductions and other such information.

The Basics

Any financial program worth its digital salt has to be able to do two very specific things:

It has to be able to keep track of every bank account you have without getting them confused, and
It has to be able to give you an accurate record of any and all financial transactions in those accounts.

E-Teller does both of these things admirably. Not only that, but it also does a good job of letting YOU decide how you want everything organized. The service desk (gif 10k), the "main screen" of E-Teller, allows you to create account folders that will contain whatever accounts you want to hold in them. Only one account folder can be open at a time, which can be awkward at first, but there are no restrictions to what kind of accounts you can put in each account folder. Want to classify everything by bank? You can create individual bank folders, and keep all your accounts for a bank in its folder. Want to classify everything by type of account? You can do that too: create a folder called "Checking Accounts," and put all your checking accounts in that folder, then do the same with "Savings Accounts" and "Credit Card Accounts." It's up to you: everything depends on how you want to organize.

E-Teller allows you some measure of security with these accounts as well. Every account folder can be given a password, and if you wish, that password must be entered before the account folder can be opened. Of course, you don't have to do this, but it's a useful addition to the program.

You do most of your work in E-Teller by opening up a specific account and working in that account's "Book". Account books (gif 11k) list all the transactions for that account. You can add, delete, and modify individual transactions however you wish through E-Teller's button bar and transaction notebooks, which is where your new information will be entered. Transaction notebooks also allow you to split up large transactions and itemize them, allowing your financial reports to be more detailed and useful.

Advanced Features

Depending on the type of account, the account book will display information specific to it. For example, a checking account will display your starting and ending balance, but a credit account will display your credit limit, the amount of credit you've used, and how much you have left to use. You can link up information in different account books when one will affect the other: for example, if you write a check to pay off a credit card, you can enter your transaction in your checking account book, and have that transaction also recorded in your credit card book! This saves a lot of time, and makes bookkeeping a lot more efficient.

E-Teller also makes it a bit easier to balance your books with your bank statement. Because there are so many extra factors in your account (monthly interest, banking fees, etc.), E-Teller has a function called "Reconcile" that attempts to match the two. Reconcile opens a dialog where you put in the date of your bank statement, your bank statement's balance, and any interest and/or bank fees accrued during that time. E-Teller will then attempt to "make everything fit."

E-Teller also has the fancy bar, line, and pie-graph (gif 5k) features found in the latest versions of Quicken. You can define what months and days of your account you want the graph to display. If you choose the pie graph, you can get a graphical breakdown of all your spending habits. Most of my expenses, for example, have to do with bills and computer hardware and software, with much smaller slices for the less important stuff (food, clothing, gas). In a similar vein, you can also display and print out text reports of your net worth, spending history, etc. Currently, you can only print out Express (very brief) and Transaction (detailed) reports, but the on-line help (which is very thorough) says that future versions will include more types of reports.

Also, E-Teller can design and print checks, matching yet another offering of Quicken's. Selecting the "Print/design cheques" button on the button bar takes you to a window where you can design and print your own checks. I've little use for this feature, since my financial needs are very simple, but it would be useful for some.

One of the features many Quicken users will find invaluable is E-Teller's ability to convert to and from .qif files. Those of you who use Quicken for your basic financial records should be able to transfer your records to and from E-Teller with little or no difficulty.

Nice Extras

Along with the basic and more advanced features of E-Teller are some useful but not critical features that deserve recognition. The first of these is the on-line help, which is extremely thorough and comes with a tutorial complete with screen shots of the service desk, account books, and dialog boxes. I classify this as a "nice extra", and not as an "essential feature" because E-Teller is intuitive enough for the average user to play around with for an hour or two and become fairly comfortable with using it, but if you want to learn to reconcile your books, this will definitely make it easier.

E-Teller also comes with a calculator and a calendar utility that allows you to "schedule" reminders. As I mentioned earlier, part of this utility can be placed in your startup folder, to remind you of recurring events. What I didn't mention is that you can schedule anything you want--anniversaries, birthdays--anything. The calendar is limited to showing three months at a time, but right and left arrows allow you to travel forward and backward in time, and by double clicking any date on the calendar, you get a dialog box for that day. You can then type in your reminder, and choose what kind of reminder it is: whether it's a one-day only thing, whether it recurs on that date, or on that day (for example, every Thursday).

Unregistered vs. Registered

The unregistered version of E-Teller has all the functions of the registered version, but there are a few catches: first, you can have no more than two account folders. Second, you can have no more than around 200 entries in an individual account book. Third, you have a "nag" screen that pops up every time you activate the application. These go away as soon as you get a registration number from Paul Caron, the author of E-Teller. Registration information is clearly detailed in the help index of E-Teller, and it's worth doing.

Conclusion

This is a very, very impressive program.

E-Teller runs neck-and-neck with shrinkwrapped, store-bought programs in most respects. Some of the really high-level features, such as electronic, on-line banking and the like are not included in E-Teller, but this is not something that I am particularly bothered by, and I don't feel most other people will be either. E-Teller is a well-written, well thought out application that is an excellent example of how useful and powerful shareware can be. I use it everyday, and find it to be intuitive, pleasant, and powerful. If you're looking for an OS/2 financial application, you don't need to look any further than your favourite shareware FTP site. This one works, and works well, and is well worth your time.

Electronic Teller v2.80a (zip 2meg)
Author: Paul Caron
Registration: US$35

Christopher B. Wright is a technical writer in the Northern Virginia/D.C. area, and has been using OS/2 Warp since January 95. He is a recent member of Team OS/2.

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