Recently I have had reason to acquaint myself with the murky - and deathly boring - world of accountancy, so when I received a ledger utility to review I thought I might be able to practice some of my newly acquired expertise and learn something into the bargain. Alas, I have to admit failure.

This utility is most definitely for those who are already well-endowed with expertise in accountancy. The documentation can't be expected to teach the uninitiated, but even with my small advantage I found the whole thing heavy going. Double-entry bookkeeping has always seemed to me to apply to an artificial environment, and the method handed to me by my own accountant seems suspiciously simple by comparison.

While it is obviously a useful utility in the right hands, I am unsure to whom it might appeal. The requirement of a disc system and printer entails no mean financial outlay and I suspect that owners of such systems would not perform their own accounting. The program, while supplied on cassette, is intended to be customised by you and then SAVEd to disc, for which purpose it is supplied unprotected.

Full details are supplied with the documentation, together with a timely warning about the effect of disabling QUIT, which the program does to prevent accidental use of FCTN = , and the myriad of rewritten TI Operating Systems which abound in the models of this computer.

Bearing in mind the subjective nature of such a review it's not much use to me. Other owners might judge it differently.

P.B.