I like precision. I'm not a precise person, but I like it when things add up.

I just took our most recent bank statement and put the numbers into a spreadsheet I've been keeping of expenses for the last 13 months. I take the big numbers -- so much in and out from the ATM account, the deltas on the other accounts -- but I also take the individual ATM entries, categorize them -- books, cleaners, groceries, etc -- and give them a spreadsheet entry all their own. The net out is that I can see, overall and by category, how spending has changed over the last however many months I want to look. Today I added a small bit of sophistication to that. Our bank doesn't supply the ATM transactions in electronic format (at least, I don't think they do), so up to now I've typed them in. Today, I scanned in the statement and lifted the numbers from the scanned file directly into the spreadsheet. Nice. I still have to categorize them, and I did find that the OCR component of the package isn't 100% reliable -- but it was still faster and neater.

I like that. This is the functionality I wanted in Quicken, that accursed product. (The current version, not the vintage one I'm still using.) Now, if I could just automate the charting, and put some intelligence into it....