In what will soon become a very long list of updates and new features and refreshes to the site, I'm proud to announce several new upgrades and features that have just been released.

Sub-Categories:
You can now add sub categories for better tracking of your spending habits. All sub categories will be rolled into the overall category for reporting purposes, but will also be broken down so you can view spending in the individual sub categories. The same is the case for pie charts and spending limits.

To add a sub category, simply go to the Settings->Categories page and add a new category name and select the Parent category from a drop down list.

Currency Conversions:
All balances can now be converted to your global currency with the Currency Conversion tool. You can access this as a dashboard gadget or through the Settings->Currency Conversions page.

If you have more than one currency set up, you will have the ability of entering a conversion rate for your secondary currencies. We will be using this rate to convert all balances to the global currency (set in your Settings->Account page). Individual transactions will not be converted, just overall balances.

Updated Reports:
The reports area has been cleaned up and made more usable by splitting Account and Category reports into separate tabs. You can now view all of your Account information on one page and all your Category information on a different page.

The reports have also been updated to reflect the new sub-categories feature. All parent categories are reported with the sub-categories rolled into them. In the Line/Bar reports, you can scroll down and see your parent and sub-category totals broken down. The Pie charts show the parent and sub-categories rolled into one total, but you can select to view the breakdown of sub categories via a drop down menu. This way you can compare individual sub-categories with each other.

Minor Updates:
- Currencies sorted with "most used" currencies at the top
- Check # / Memo / Payee field added to Recurring Transactions
- Fixed some CSV importing issues for fields listed with parenthesis and quotation marks
- Finally fixed (hopefully once and for all) the iGoogle gadget and GoogleTalk Checkbot

There will be more announcements on Monday. I can't say anything right now, but it involves a lot more time and resources being devoted to ClearCheckbook.

We are finally back up and running on our main server. Our main server has been upgraded to 12 GB of ram and dual 1.5 TB hard drives. It has also been moved to a new hosting facility that offers more bandwidth than our previous one.

Sorry to all of those who experienced the SSL issues during this transition. Everything should be resolved now and you should hopefully notice an improvement in load times for the site.

The only known bug that might have occurred is some of the reminders may not have been run while on the temporary server. If you had a recurring transaction set to hit between July 25 and July 30, I would suggest double checking to make sure the transaction was posted to your account.

Since this is by far the most requested feature and the one thing that drums up the most discussion on this site, I wanted to give everyone an update to the status of the ClearCheckbook iPhone app.

I am working on the basics of the application right now (adding transactions). For the first version, there will be some basic features such as adding/editing/deleting transactions, managing accounts and categories and syncing with ClearCheckbook.

I am limiting the initial version to these basic functions simply as a way to get a functioning app out on time. After the release of the basic app I will begin developing a more complete app that has reporting, searching, etc capabilities.

I have registered with the Apple iPhone Developer site and started the developer approval process. This must be done in order to put an app up on the App Store. I've heard this process can take a while, so I'm not sure when it will be done. I am hoping this approval comes before I am done with the app.

I thank everyone with an iPhone for staying patient. Having to learn a new programming language takes quite a bit of time... and then turning that knowledge into a reliable app takes even longer.

For those of you with a Palm Pre, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device... I am focusing on the iPhone app for now for several reasons:
1. The App Store on the iPhone is by far the most used.
2. I have an iPhone myself so it's much easier to test on a device I have.
3. I am one person and can only learn so much at a given time.

After the release of the iPhone app, I will start to pursue other mobile devices.

You can now export your custom fields when you export your data. This was overlooked originally, but has finally been added to the site.

The Google Gadget should also now be working again in Firefox. Part of the Google API had changed and one of the functions we were using to resize the gadget was acting up. This has been taken care of so the gadget should show up correctly after Google updates it.

We just rolled out the ability for premium users to create additional users to access their accounts. This has been a highly requested feature and is ideal for a couple who has joint bank accounts.

When you create a new user to access your account and they add transactions, their username is appended to the description of the transactions they add so you can easily see who has added what transactions. The main users name will not show up next to all the other transactions to make things easier to read.

To set up additional users for your account, you must be a premium member and then go to Settings and click on the "Additional Users for this Account" link. You enter a new username and password on this page to set up the new user.

All additional users will have the same permissions as the main user. This means they can add/edit/delete transactions, reminders, notes, gadgets, etc.