tedious

The product is stable and the price is reasonable, but there are many opportunities to make input easier that have been missed. For instance, when entering payments, shouldn’t the default be that one is going to pay the whole bill and less than that the exception? Instead I have to enter the amount twice (payable and payment) for every transaction. Similarly, if one normally pays all bills from one bank account, why not set that as a default value, changed by exception? When “copying" a transaction, the payment info is not included. "Recurring transactions" is a nice idea, but the amount cannot be simply modified from time to time—as all costs are. When entering a vendor, the program does not accept a few characters to find the vendor, but instead one has to constantly pick from a growing list.

There are a few odd bugs, such as the program can become exceptionally slow to add a new vendor, but a simple restart clears the issue. The “remarks" entry can in some instances clear the payment information, but it never crashes. I use the program to capture the income and expenses of a 6-unit apartment building, which I consider accounting lite. Typically, I enter bills and payments at the same time, as there is little reason to pay net 30 the water, recycling, taxes, etc., so the repetitious bill and payment entry takes double-entry accounting too seriously.

I’ve used the program for over a year and I despare of seeing an upgrade to make these annoyances go away. When the right alternative presents itself, I will abandon Book’n’keep.

Dickinsf about book'n'keep