No, not by paying us! We want to hear any suggestions for updates, feature requests, ways to improve the site or anything else you've been thinking about. We're getting ready to gear up for some major upgrades to ClearCheckbook for its one year anniversary on May 20th.

Version 2 of the site is going to bring some big changes. There will be some layout upgrades and visual tweaks, the javascript that handles most of the actions on ClearCheckbook will be majorly overhauled and the code running the site is going to get updated too. After these updates you'll notice a huge improvement of load times.

We've also got some big new features planned for release around May 20th as well. We know you'll be excited to see those. Also, stay tuned for a blog post some time near the early-middle part of April asking for some beta testers for these new features. We're going to open a limited beta for some of you to get a months head start on testing out these new features and new version of the site!

So please, if there's anything you've been wishing was a feature on the site or you think something would work better if it was handled differently, please let us know by sending us an email with the Contact Us form. It doesn't matter how big or small the request is, we just want our inbox filled with them so we can look them all over. We won't promise to add all the features and requests, but we will read them all and implement the most requested / best ones.

Thanks for making the site great!

As part of the constant effort to make your finances readily available to you and to let you know whether or not you can afford that new toy you've wanted... We're proud to announce the Official ClearCheckbook Mac OS X Dashboard Widget.

With this new widget, you can quickly and easily see your account overviews at any time simply by loading up Dashboard on your Apple computer. Similar to the Google Homepage gadget, you can see your account overview as well as a breakdown of all of your accounts.

To install and set up the dashboard widget, you can start by downloading it in .dmg or .zip format. After downloading and opening one of those files, double click on the ClearCheckbook Widget. After the widget is installed, flip it over and enter your account information (username and password). After you enter your password and click "Done" your password is encrypted and your data will be retrieved.

The widget will update every 15 minutes when you open dashboard, plus there is a refresh button on the back of the widget so you can manually refresh it whenever you would like.

Try it out and let us know what you think!

Google Homepage is one of the best places to keep track of pretty much anything you can think of online. Now, you can add ClearCheckbook to that list. We just finished setting up the ClearCheckbook.com Gadget on Google Hompeage!

What this means is you can add the ClearCheckbook Gadget to your Google Homepage and see your account balances without having to log into ClearCheckbook. We also provide you with some quick links to adding entries, viewing reports, jiving/balancing your records and more.

Is this secure? Of course it is! We have generated a 16-32 character string for each member of the site consisting of numbers and uppercase and lowercase letters. You can only access your Gadget by sending that code. Don't worry though, you don't have to manage this. All you have to do to set up your new ClearCheckbook Gadget is log into ClearCheckbook, go to "Tools" and then click on the image of the gadget. Everything else will be taken care of for you.

Try it out and let us know what you think by posting in the comments.

Update: Mar 14, 2007 - I have enabled scrolling on the gadget because some users who have more than 5 or 6 different accounts were starting to get cut off. You'll have to re-install the gadget by following the same steps above. Future updates will not require a re-install.

That's right. ClearCheckbook just surpassed $100,000,000 in transactions today. Right now we're nearing 2,900 active members (meaning they've verified their account and have added entries to the site) and are at almost 170,000 entries.

I'm glad to see the site growing so well. If there's anything else we can do to make the site better for you, let us know in the comments or by using the Contact Us form at the bottom of each page.

The reports were the original reason people wanted me to create this website. When I showed some screenshots of the reports I had set up, they convinced me to move the site from my home computer and personal use and open it up to anyone to use.

As time went on, more and more people joined the site and the time it took to generate the reports grew and grew. We tried to implement a few other changes that would cut back on the load time by letting you generate your reports when you wanted to, but even that took a very long time.

Last week we did some brain storming and developed a new way to handle the reports. This new method actually keeps track of the the total amounts for each month so it doesn't have to generate them each time you reload the page. This brings a tremendous improvement in speed to the site. Now, instead of minute long load times for the generation of reports, the reports are created in less than half a second.

In addition to the blazing speed of the new reports, the look got a bit of a facelift and we added the different accounts to the reports. Now, in addition to seeing your categories, you can see all your accounts and how much you deposited or withdrew from each account for each month.

A few other great additions to the reports are the ability to track how much you deposit into a category (previously you could only see how much you took out) and also the ability to click on any month in any category or account to see those purchases and deposits.

On top of the update to the reports, the Search page has also been updated to allow for searching within specific accounts.

We hope you enjoy the updated reports. Try it out and let us know what you think by posting here in the comments!