I'm a simple guy. I won't spend a lot of time figuring out a complicated program. While I have a lot of use for a good, solid expense application, I've stuck with paper and pen due to the complexity of many out there. The Palm's built in Expense is simple and self-explanatory, but just try to get your expense reports into Excel. Trust me, it's an exercise in futility. So my monthly expense reports have remained a long, dragged out, wasteful, pen and paper experience. Until now. This month, I was introduced to Trip Deluxe, another fantastic product from Hands High Software. Hands High has already given us Memo Plus and ToDo Plus and many other useful products. Trip Deluxe is NO exception. And to say that integration with Excel is automatic just doesn't do it justice.

Let's see why Trip Deluxe spells the end of paper Expense Reports.... FOREVER!

Expense reports can be a total nuisance to compile. I never seem to remember to jot down the starting mileage before I start, and when I do remember to do it, I seem to forget to bring a pen. It's the same story with the finishing mileage. What a pain in the neck.

Trip Deluxe allows me to store all of this vital information right in my Palm. Since I ALWAYS have my Palm with me, it's as simple as opening Trip Deluxe and selecting New from the main menu.

Trip Deluxe will remember as many as 15 different cars and will track up to 15 different, user configurable categories of trip. Configure your car list from Trip Deluxe's main screen by tapping 'Menu-Edit Car List'. Likewise, Trip categories are listed and edited in the upper right hand corner.

Working with Trip Deluxe is as simple as tapping 'New'. Once in the Trip Edit screen, choose a car from the car list, select a category from the list and tap the 'Start' box to enter your starting mileage. Tap on a number to select it and drag up to increase it or drag down to decrease it. Notice that the date and time are automatically entered into the Trip Edit slip. 'Who', 'Where' and 'Why' fields are provided below. This can help you to further track your trip expenses. 'Where' and 'Why' lists can be customized, allowing you to store frequent locations and reasons to speed data entry. Tapping the arrow to the right of the 'Who' field will take you to the Address Book Lookup screen. If your contact is not listed in your address book, simply enter the name in the field manually. All that's left for you to do is to log the ending mileage into the 'End' box. The length of the trip is automatically tabulated and entered in the Length field. Each trip slip is listed on the Main Trip Screen with the Total Mileage listed in the lower right corner.

While working with Trip Deluxe is that easy, it is simpler still to create your customized expense report in Excel. Using the Trip Report Generator that comes with Trip Deluxe, all you need do is open the Trip Deluxe shortcut to Excel on your desktop. Excel opens with the Trip Deluxe graphic, 'Report' and 'Customize' buttons. Choose 'Report' and VIOLA, your Trip data is imported, filtered to your needs and displayed for printing or saving. The 'Customize' button opens Trip Report Wizard, which will walk you through a series of options to customize the report to fit your needs.