Quicken 2004 XG, as with Microsoft's Money 2004, is a product waiting for the banking world to catch up with it. Its aim of getting you to effectively manage your finances has stood it in good stead throughout many iterations, yet as with all accounts management software, it's close to something exceptionally useful, and yet not quite there.

And the reason for this? Simply put, the ideal program would allow you the option of automatically correlating up-to-the-minute information direct from your bank or building society's online banking service, and allow you to deal with many of your transactions direct from the Quicken 2004 XG screen.

Sadly, you can't, as the overwhelming majority of banks aren't compatible with the program for some reason, which is all the more staggering when you consider that many of those that fall into that category are Internet banks. The one that did work which we managed to test - HSBC - required us to jump through so many hoops that it was ultimately not worth the effort.

And that's a pity, because all that aside, Quicken 2004 XG is a supremely polished and surprisingly user-friendly piece of software (although its adoption of the evil product activation system isn't something that cheers us greatly). It starts by asking you various questions, and while it does take a good chunk of time to give the program all of the relevant data it requires, from there you can plan, manage, analyse and schedule your finances with genuine ease.

But Quicken 2004 XG isn't just about personal financial management. Included in the package are tools, for instance, that can help you manage and track your investments. The program keys into various Web sites to keep its data up to date, and again, this is quite a useful feature if it applies to you.

The depth of the options available is impressive, and the program happily consolidates your portfolio. It can also work with a home business, from invoices and cashflow through to more sophisticated predictive tools. And finally, the last ingredient is a full copy of TaxCalc 2004, a perfectly able and really rather good self assessment package.

Where Quicken 2004 XG scores, though, isn't just in its comprehensiveness; it's also in its presentation. We found it eclipsed its main competitor, Microsoft Money, in this department, and it's thus the easier to use and navigate of the two programs. Either, to be fair, will adequately handle the job in hand, but if we had to pick, then Quicken 2004 XG has the edge.

All the more disappointing, then, that the online side of things, quite possibly the holy grail of financial management software, still has a way to go. Maybe in the 2005 edition...

This is a solid piece of money management software, but it falls short with some of its online options. What it does, however, it does very well.