When used in the same phrase, the terms 'personal' and 'finance' are guaranteed to send a shiver down even the most sturdy spines. Most of us dread having to crunch numbers to find out how much (or how little) cash we have at our disposal.

I used to poo-poo the idea of using a personal finance management program, because I was adamant that I could take care of everything in my head. Of course, in reality, I couldn't and after using a money manager on my PC I realised that it makes so much sense to use a computer to balance the books.

I've now taken things a stage further by installing Pocket Finance Diary on my Pocket PC, a tool which allows you to log and track income and expenditure on a daily basis. It means that every time I want to make a big purchase in a shop I can find out how it fits in with my monthly budget.

The program itself is a breeze to use. All you really need to do is enter an expense or an income, selecting the date and inputting a description (shopping, bills, wages, etc.) The program will then add this to your monthly list, which is presented very clearly complete with colour-coded entries for incoming and outgoing entries.

I always love a good bit of filtering in a data management app, and Pocket Finance Diary has this in abundance, allowing you to browse only income or expense for month, or view spending by category. You can also list movements between two specific dates, modify records, and export them as a CSV file.

If you want to keep track of your finances on a daily basis, I can't recommend Pocket Finance Diary highly enough.