The Chronic Consumer

Remember how I told you I need to buy some small-business software to help keep my financial records organized? Well, I was out at one of the national computer superstores today, and didn’t really see anything that I liked.

They either had programs that were far too sophisticated (and expensive) for my needs or that were completely unrelated to my type of business. For example, I don’t run a nursing home here so I obviously wouldn’t get any use out of the assisted living software I saw!

A couple of people have written in and told me to use Microsoft Money for straightforward home business transactions. I’ve tried Money in the past (just for my household budget) and didn’t like it too much, so I’m don’t want to use it again.

I guess I’ll just have to start searching online for the kind of software I need.

Have you heard that PayPal is now offering a browser plug-in that lets you access your PayPal account from any site on the ‘net? I just discovered this a couple days ago when I was signed into my account to make a withdrawal.

According to the info on the site, the plug-in would allow you to shop more easily by auto-filling information like name and address, alerting you to potentially fraudulent sites, saving your receipts, and checking your current balance from anywhere.

This sounded good, so I tried downloaded the plug-in and installed it in Firefox.

It sits up at the top right-hand corner, and is just a “P” logo. There’s a drop-down menu that allows you to do any of the things I mentioned above, and I guess it is kinda cool to be able to check my balance instantly.  I haven’t used it for shopping yet, so I’m not sure how effective it is in that respect.

The only problem I’ve noticed so far is that there’s no logout button in the plug-in. That means if you share a computer, you’ve got to go to your actual PayPal account page and sign out from there, otherwise whoever uses the browser after you will be able to access your info.

That seems like kind of a silly thing for the developers to overlook, so maybe it’s in there somewhere, and I’m the one missing it!

Anyway, check out the PayPal plug-in if you’re a big online shopper like I am.