[markusk]

I've been using Quicken since 2002 and I really appreciate how it allows me to figure out where my money is going. As others have stated, you can also see your expenses within each category and check that against your monthly allocated budget for that category -- but you must designate each expense with a category.

Reconciling WAS a tedious process until I set up "download transactions" for all of my accounts (checking, savings, creditcards, etc). I use my one creditcard for all purchases (and pay everything off at the end of the month). I download each account once-a-day or every-other-day, which gives me an update of all of my purchases. This way, I don't have to manually enter each and every transaction (which was initially fun, but time consuming). Also if an unauthorized craditcard transaction is made, I will know it the day it is charged to my card.

Using the "download transactions" feature will generate a "c" for "clear" in the "cleared status" row in the Register for each transaction. Later, when you receive the bank statement and reconcile the account, everything should match (converting the "c" to "R"). Reconciling this way takes only 1-2 minutes maximum. Reconciling also tell you which checks you wrote have not been deposited/cashed.

Anyway, hope I understood the original question and my attempt to answer wasn't too confusing....