Ultrasoft has released a very important upgrade to Ultrasoft Money (UM) tonight. It's for anyone that either has Microsoft Money 2005 and/or a T5 or Treo650.

I was fortunate enough to be on the Beta team for the Money 2005 tests and I have to say it works great. There are a few things that I wanted to point out about the new version.

First, it is able to sync with Money 2005...this is BEFORE Microsoft has a version of their on Pocket PC program that will sync to Money 2005. This in itself is a pretty impressive feat. In my tests on the Beta I have had no major difficulties and the speed at which Ultrasoft handled the few bugs poeple had was impressive.

The second feature I wanted to highlight is the budget feature. This alone was worth the price of the upgrade from version 3. Ultrasoft now allows you to see exactly where you are in relation to your budget all the time, anywhere. The instant you enter a transaction in, you see a graphic display that shows you how much of the monthly budget you have used. You can click on the graphic and see the exact dollar values if you want. I also love the reports feature which allows me to see graphically where my various expenditures are at for the month.

There are a ton of other features, some new to version 4.1 and some that have been around for a long time. Here are some other things I like about the program:

1. Ease of entering information. It remembers the names of the Payees so once you've entered a name once the next time takes only 1 or two letters and it will enter the rest of the names.

2. Automation. Do you have automatic bill payments monthly? UM can handle it, once set up it will automatically pop them in the registry on the date you specified then when you sync to the desktop, pop it into Money.

3. Wayyyyyyyy better picture of my finances. This isn't really a sole feature of UM but I love that I can enter all my transactions into my Palm as soon as I have er transacted them. I mean there I am in another Timmies line (if you live in Canada you know exactly where I mean :-) ) and before I even get my extra large double double, in goes the transaction before I forget it. This way I catch all those small things that can add up over a month...like too many Timmy coffees....

4. Complete picture. There's not much I can't view on Money 2005 that I can't view on my Tungsten T thanks to UM. It gives me all the accounts I want to view. It even helps my marriage. Now when my wife asks me 'just what do you spend $40 a week on anyway' I just flip her the bir...er I mean Palm and say now more (of course when one does that one should make sure 'Flowers For My Wife' is ine of the transactions showing, counterbalances the multiple Palmgear entries in the Visa registry)

If it wasn't for this program I wouldn't have dicovered my money leaks ($50 a week on lunches! eek!!). I can honestly say that it is one program that has truely paid for itself. It's helped me to become more fiscally responsible or maybe, more accurately, fiscally aware. I've probably saved more than ten times the money I spent on the program.

Now I know after such slobering over this program you think I am affiliated with the company but no I'm not. The closest I got was the Beta test for Money 2005 synching. But I can say if you find yourself struggling to get a handle on your finaces, this is a great place to start. And if nothing else it gives you a cover for when you're playing Bejeweled 2. 'Honestly honey, I wasn't playing games I was balancing our budget and planning out how to pay for litle Benjamin's education...really' :-)

Dave, Associate Writer (Tim Horton's Coffee Shop, Toronto, Canada)