By: Joel T. Patz

Dozens of programs manage your finances. None address the tedium of managing notes. NoteSmith Pro handles the servicing of leases, mortgages, car loans and annuities.

You start by entering information such as payor, cosigner, collateral and payment plans in NoteSmith's tabbed dialog box. The Investment and Escrow tabs in that box let you record principal reduction, accrued interest, type of note, expected yield, tax consequences and payment tracking. The program also manages IRS forms and can issue payment coupons, build reports and develop amortization schedules.

You can customize the program to a limited degree, and use a nine-level password utility to restrict access to confidential information. The program exports data in the QIF format, which is supported by most financial packages.

NoteSmith has a few serious problems. It's easy to add a payment but hard to delete one that's incorrectly entered, and errors in the documentation or program itself could lead you astray. The program suffers from inconsistent navigation aids, and the printed documentation lacks illustrations. You can send a report of your notes to the printer or screen; however, a custom report selection on the main menu was so hampered by conflicting documentation and dialog boxes that I found it unusable.

NoteSmith unquestionably serves very specialized needs, but its developers should improve the DOS-like interface and spotty documentation. A checkbook metaphor and better error-checking would solve many of this program's problems.

Info File
NoteSmith Pro
Price: $449
Pros: Addresses specific needs
Cons: Interface; documentation
Platforms: Windows 95
Disk space: 5MB
RAM: 8MB (12MB recommended)
Princeton Investments
888-226-2486, 970-226-2486
WinMag Box Score: 3.0