I must confess at the outset that I've never seen one of the vital roles of the micro in the home as that of keeping check of cheques, and showing me just how early each month I become overdrawn!

However, before you nod your head in agreement and turn the page, this is not such an insignificant program as that. It will allow you to produce a kind of a spreadsheet of your accounts, but in a very simple and user-friendly manner.

Having a disc interface fitted on my machine, I have a dread of watching a program load in and then crash on trying to run with the revised page. Even resetting the page is not always enough, so it was good to see that Microaid have included a routine to take the problem away from peripheral-users. If the page is not set low enough, then the function key is set to re-load the program into the correct area of memory (I admit I was actually cheating, and had transferred the program to disc to make my reviewing easier!).

The user is then asked to select a period for analysis, from weekly to quarterly. The program prompts for various inputs concerning types of income, and regular monthly outgoings. The categories are already decided, but are very comprehensive in their coverage. After this phase, variable monthly outgoings are given a value, at the end of which the profit or loss is spread around these variables. It is then possible to have as many passes through the next part as needed, with each variable sum being displayed and possibly altered.

The user is given the option to freeze any figures, and then passes continue until all the figures are frozen and Income=Expenditure. Colour is used intelligently throughout to clarify the various stages, and I found it virtually impossible to crash the system. When the final part has been reached, there is an 80 column spreadsheet display which can include a year of analysis and a title for accounts. For interest, I altered the listing to make a system for a fictitious business, and found that even in this capacity, the program was easy to use, accurate and extremely clear throughout. Output can be to the screen only, or also to a printer - a very good addition.