The Jive page is a very helpful tool for you to keep track of your money and check all of your purchases with what your bank is saying you made. This is basically the Web 2.0 equivalent of the century old checkbook balancing tool.

When you load up the Jive page you will see all your accounts listed at the top of the page. You can click the check mark next to the specific accounts you wish to display. For example, I have a checking account with Bank of America. I regularly make purchases with my debit card and check my Bank of America account online.

So if I wanted to check and see if my purchases match up with what Bank of America says I've made, I log into my Bank of America site and click on the checking account. I view the list of purchases and deposits and then go back to my Jive page on ClearCheckbook and select each entry. This lets me see if there are any entries in my account that I did not make.

A great example of how this is useful is something that happened to me recently. I was traveling and flew into the Chicago Ohare airport and bought some pizza at one of the vendors for lunch. I was charged the 6 bucks or whatever the day after I made the purchase. A month later another charge for the same amount was made from the same pizza place at the airport. Since that withdrawal wasn't in my ClearCheckbook jive page I knew something was wrong. I contacted the bank and told them the story and had them credit my account back. They did and everything was fine. Without jiving my account I probably never would have found this and lost 6 bucks.

After you jive all the entries your bank account lists, there is a total at the top of the page that says "Jived:" and some amount. This amount should match what your current balance is on your banks website. If things don't match up, you know something is wrong and can do some detective work to figure out what that is.

So in short, the Jive page is there for you to check with your bank statement and make sure all your withdrawals and deposits are accounted for and no one has messed up and charged extra purchases to your account.

If you have a story about how you use the jive page or how it helped you find an error in your bank statement, post about it here in the comments!

With New Years a week behind us, have you stuck to your resolution to keep your checkbook balanced or keep a better watch on your budget? If you made a resolution regarding your spending, ClearCheckbook.com is here to help you keep your resolution and help you stay on top of your finances.

With our easy to use interface you can keep track of all your savings, checking and credit card accounts in one place. You can balance your checkbook, view reports on your spending, import and export your records, plus update your account from anywhere with CheckBot.

Do you know someone who made a money related resolution this year? If so, let them know about ClearCheckbook. We're positive that after just a few weeks of using the site they'll be thanking you.

Happy New Year! We hope that all our current members continue to enjoy using the site and that new members will continue to join and experience how easy we make managing your money.

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