Did you come up with a nifty short cut to work around your financial software functions? Here are some great short cuts that are guaranteed to cause problems for you eventually.
1. Speed Through Set Up
Getty Images / Troy AosseyMake the already simple set up for your financial software even easier by omitting important account information or by fudging details such as account balances during the set up. You will remember to go back and enter the correct data after you started using the software any way.
2. Forget On-Screen Help
So, you have noticed Help on the upper right side of the screen in any financial software you use. Even if the on-screen help in your software can be used in a variety of ways such as with
Microsoft Money Help, do not click on Help to bring up the on-screen Help feature. Surely you would rather pay to have someone attempt to walk you through a procedure after you wait on hold for 37 minutes listening to an eclectic mix of Muzak.
3. Do Not Use a Reference Manual
Independently written reference manuals are available for some financial software packages, such as the
For Dummies books. But cracking open a reference manual to get the details on using your financial software makes as little sense as using the help feature in the software. You will particularly want to stay away from the
top reference books for Quicken and the
best reference books for Microsoft Money4. Do Not Register Your Financial Software
Forget about taking the time to register your financial software and those pesky bug fixes and software updates will become a thing of the past. Or maybe you loaded your financial software from your neighbor's software CDs and you can not register because you do not own a legal license. You will never get caught with the illegal software and owe thousands of dollars in fines, so saving on buying the software is worth it.Having a password slows you down. If you choose to set a password any way, make it something easy to remember like your house number. No one will hack into your computer and your baby sitter would never be interested in your accounts, would she? Besides, you have firewall software and you are pretty sure you let the automatic update run last month.
You do not back up anything else on your computer so why start with the hassle of backing up your financial software data? If your hard drive crashes, you can always just start all over again with setting up accounts, downloading transactions and reassigning all
budgeting categories to transactions. You will especially enjoy recreating scheduled transactions so you do not miss paying a bill along with once agan setting up paychecks and loans.
