Double entry accounting has been the favourite bookkeeping method for several centuries. All financial transactions are recorded in ledgers (accounts) such that a debit in one ledger also appears as a credit in another.

For the newcomer to the technique, mistakes can easily be made. So Jaysoft have produced PAUL for Spectrum owners wanting a professional system to deal with personal or small business accounts.

Once you have found a way through the accounting jargon, the extensive instruction manual provides useful instruction and promises a lot for PAUL - setting up ledgers, ensuring that entries are balanced, providing trial balances, etc, etc. But in use, the program proved to be disappointing.

One test of a program is to press keys at random, to see if the program can cope with garbage. PAUL didn't - it crashed out with a system error message.

Also on the negative side, screen formatting was poor, and the use of the screen display unimaginative. Data entry is cumbersome; instead of crediting one account and debiting another with a single entry, amounts have 10 be entered twice.

Despite these problems, the program did what was claimed of it, and, once the user becomes familiar with all its limitations and quirks, it could provide Spectrum owners with a useful accounting package.

The instruction manual starts - "Thank you for purchasing Jaysoft's PAUL" and the purchaser deserves at least that for paning with £12.95 for a product of such poor quality!

David Nowotnik