Auto Maintenance Plus

This is a database to record automobile expenses for maintenance and repairs etc.

Pros: Auto Maintenance Plus make most of the information about the family automobiles available. Original acquisition cost and on-going maintenance cost is captured and maintained. Major groups of these ongoing expenses are grouped in four main heads. These are Oil, tire rotation and coolant; Transmission fluid, spark plus & timing belts; air filters & brakes; fan belts, battery & others. Information regarding insurance etc are maintained too.

Home inventory maintenance is another feature of the application, the information being searchable by item and filterable by cost, date and other combined factors. The data can have details like photographs and so on. A table of important household information such as bank accounts, insurance policies, credit card numbers etc is maintained. Related security information can be stored in a secure vault that include passwords and PIN numbers etc. Some of the important information can be secured by passwords too.

Besides a regular calculator a loan calculator and a mortgage calculator are included so that affordability of such loans/mortgages could be verified easily.

Cons: Though the stated purpose of the program is to maintain data about automobile(s) and maintenance, it is actually a collection of other functions such as home inventory, home mortgage calculation, storing of various password/PIN numbers etc one uses, home budgeting and so on. Not a very logical combination.

Export of data to other programs such as Excel and some accounting package would have been useful. For example home budget data and the actual expenses that are maintained could have been imported into an accounting package so that building the tax return becomes easy at the end of the year.

Overall, though feature-wise not very uniform and logical, the application works well whatever be the reasons for collecting the diverse features. This is a 3 star rated application.

Auto Maintenance Plus should capitalize the PLUS. You get a database to record your automobile expenses for maintenance and repairs as well as a separate table to list original cost, insurance, and license information on all your vehicles. But you also get a home inventory, searchable by item and filterable by cost, date, and other combined factors. And, there's a table of important household information, such as bank accounts, insurance policies, and credit card numbers. And, if that's not enough, how about a calculator with loan-comparison capability for various interest rates and term length? Add in another calculator for determining affordability for mortgage or auto loans, plus optional password security of your important information, and you have many bases covered. Now with photo entry capability and more.