We're finishing some updates that we're going to roll out tonight which should help greatly reduce the amount of stress on the site and really help to speed things up.

This update affects the Balance Overview and the balances that appear at the top of the Accounts and Jive pages. These two features of the site draw a lot of processing power the way they're currently being processed. In the new method, things will be much much quicker and won't rely on the database nearly at all to calculate the balances.

In addition to fixing the balances you see on the site, it will also help tremendously speed up the time it takes for the Google Gadget and Dashboard Widget to calculate your overall balances.

The updates will start around 10:00pm EST and could last up to a few hours. During this update, the site could run slower than normal, so be prepared.

I'll make another post once the update has been successfully completed.

CheckBot has been updated to give you the ability to access your category limits. To do this, make sure you don't have any accounts and categories with the same code, then enter the same message to checkbot with your category code.

For example, I have a category set up for food with the code of "f". To get the limit for my food category, I would enter "lim f" and CheckBot will reply with my limit.

Remember, if you're using a cellphone, enter the message as "clearcheckbook:lim f" with the number as 265010.

The Import feature has been updated with an option that will attempt to match categories associated with imported entries. Some programs export categories with the QIF file (like MS Money). Now, when you import that file and select the option to create the associated categories, it will attempt to do so.

If the category associated with the imported entry does not already exist, it will create it and assign the entry to that category. Right now this has been tested and works with MS Money QIF files. If you have a file that has categories associated with it but they're not getting added, use the Contact form to let us know and we'll see what we can do.

On another note, the first round of invites for the beta testing have been sent out. Hopefully there will be another, much larger, round of invites being sent out in a few weeks when V2 is much more fleshed out.

Because development of version 2 is taking a little longer than expected, I thought it would be good to give everyone a list of what some of the new features will be to V2 and also list some other improvements to existing features. Also, at the end of this post I'll be detailing some requirements for initial testing of V2.

You can find pretty much all of these as suggestions that were made in a previous blog post asking for ideas for version 2.

• Ability to split transactions


• Quick Add on the accounts page


• Jive entries directly from the accounts page


• Added features to the search page


• Updated handling of credit card transactions


• Ability to set recurring transactions


• Updated reminders system


• Much needed improvements to Currency / Time Formatting

There will also be many other behind the scenes improvements which will dramatically increase the responsiveness of the site as well as some other smaller features that aren't listed above.

In an effort to take a giant leap forward in the usability of the site, Internet Explorer 6 will no longer be actively supported. There are simply too many flaws with the browser that make cross browser compatibility nearly impossible. Because we believe in moving the web experience forward instead of backwards, we encourage all Internet Explorer 6 users to start using Firefox or upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

While we're not going to make it impossible for IE 6 users to use the site, as it should still work for about 90% of tasks, we strongly encourage you to consider upgrading to a better browser. We will also continue to make features compatible with IE6 if it doesn't involve drastic measures.

We should be ready to start alpha testing the site by this weekend. I only want to open it to maybe 10 or so users and will grant access to those users who have been here the longest time over new members.

The ideal alpha tester is someone who has some programming / web / computer knowledge and will be able to provide details to any errors they come across. We also want to get a wide range of people to test the site. This means we need different operating systems and browsers to go through the site and see if there any flaws with any of them.

If you are interested in being among the first people to see and start testing V2 and feel you meet the criteria above, please leave a comment on this blog post with the operating system and browser you use along with any other information you think would be helpful in determining if you're a good fit to start testing.

For those of you who fit the requirements, I will be in contact with you some time over the weekend with details of the testing.

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!