From...

January 12, 2000
Web posted at: 12:00 p.m. EST (1700 GMT)

by Linda L. Grubbs

(IDG) -- One of your New Year's resolutions is to get physically fit, right? But what about getting fiscally fit? Holiday excess isn't limited to overeating -- Your credit card balances probably swelled right along with your stomach over the last couple of months.

These financial and accounting tools can help you trim the fat off your debt while flexing your monetary muscles. Manage your short- and long-term goals by building a debt-reduction schedule, tracking your portfolio's value, projecting your retirement income, balancing your checkbook and paying your bills online. If you'd like to browse through more personal-finance programs, click "More accounting and finance tools," link below.

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1. Account Pro for Windows: This $100 double-entry accounting and financial planning system is designed for small- or medium-size businesses. It runs on a network, handles up to 2000 client accounts, and performs some transactions automatically. The new version lets users print and export project summary reports and modify how account lists are displayed.

2. Personal Stock Monitor 4.0, Gold Edition: Track the value of your portfolio with up-to-the-minute stock and mutual fund prices from the Internet. This utility includes graphs, company news, historical data, and SEC filings. The Gold Edition includes automatic foreign currency conversion, e-mail alerts, financial history, and more. The trial version can be used for 30 days.

3. Easy Checkbook for Excel: Manage deposits and checks with the trial version of this easy-to-use, Excel-based checkbook program. Its features are comparable to those in big-name personal-finance packages such as Microsoft Money and Quicken: It can track check numbers, deposit amounts, taxable items, and more. Calculation features are built in and its data files are portable.

4. Debt Analyzer: To help you reduce and eventually eliminate your debt, this $25 program builds debt-reduction or loan-consolidation schedules for up to 50 balances at once. Use minimum payments or percentages and pick one of nine priority methods -- or define your own.

5. ActiCalc: This free desktop calculator provides an "adding-machine" tape that records all calculations and allows entries to be updated. Its data can also be imported into your Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The $25 Premium version lets you save headers and footers and pick printer fonts.

6. Retirement Planner 1999: This $25 tool helps you calculate your retirement income based on your salary, retirement-fund contributions, investment returns, Social Security payments, inflation, and other factors. It graphs projected income against your goals and shows shortfalls.

7. Retirement Planning: It's time to start planning for your retirement needs, baby boomers. This $25 program will help you calculate your requirements based on all your retirement-income sources such as savings, Social Security, and pensions.

8. Microsoft Money Deluxe 2000: Pay bills, handle online banking, and track financial budgets. This trial version of a $95 full program is ideal for both business and personal use-it can be used to handle multiple accounts, track reimbursable expenses and mileage, and generate business reports and charts. The package includes customized invoicing options, contact management tools and a Schedule C setup.

9. Integra Office: This network-ready utility combines a powerful time and billing system with a scheduler. It tracks services, receipts, disbursements, appointments, and deadlines, and can filter data on specific criteria. Windows 3.x users need intoff.exe; Windows 95/98 and NT users need intoffnt.exe.

10. Easy Money: This $15 personal income and expense tracking program lets you record items under an unlimited number of user-defined categories. Produce summaries or full reports on selected categories and time frames. Easy Money's report function lets you generate a simple bar graph, but the program also lets you export data to your favorite spreadsheet application to make more complex charts and graphs.