At its simplest level, Money keeps track of bank account balances, salary mandates and bill payments. Increasingly, it fulfils the same role for small businesses and self-employed professionals. Call 0800 550551 for your copy.i.berwick independent.co.uk. COMPUTER buyers often cite managing household finances as a popular reason for owning a PC. If you are buying a place or thinking of remortgaging, this booklet may help.

A flexible mortgage gives you the chance to run your loan like a bank account, so you can pay in extra lump sums or borrow back money already paid into the account.The guide is sponsored by lenders First Active. The Institute of Financial Planning (IFP) is a worthy body set up to promote better-qualified, upmarket advisers. The new group wants to promote a higher standard of qualifications - and a single set of exams - for all advisers.Good luck to them.The Independent's personal finance editor, Nic Cicutti, has written a useful free guide to flexible mortgages. The idea is that they will join with the big IFA Association (IFAA) to unify the industry.

How are we supposed to compare different advisers?There have been moves to bring the various factions together, but all have been doomed by in-fighting. Great fun for the drama queens; irritating for everyone else. Why can't they sort themselves into one big, professionally run body?The exam system could be sorted out, the customers would have more confidence and IFAs might start to earn some of the respect they think they deserve.But at last two of the rival groups have started the long peace process. Networks also wield enormous power.None of this makes any sense to the customer - and nor do the rival sets of financial services exams. Instead we have the rival attractions of the IFAA, the IFP, SOFA and the LIA. Many other IFAs are members of networks - businesses which take a cut of the adviser's profit in return for business support. We know a chartered certified or chartered accountant is a member of a professional body and has passed some serious exams.