I have tried this "ClearCheckbook" app on my Chromebook for the last few days and it seems to work OK. It is pretty basic, as in it looks like it was programmed in BASIC on an Altair 880 computer in 1978, Not that there is anything wrong with that!
PLUSES: It's free, in its basic form. You can upgrade to "Premium" for a one-time fee of $4.99. No monthly subscription required, no staggering costs. It is simple and basic. You can enter checks, payments, deposits, withdrawals, and transfers and then "clear" transactions to balance the account with your statement balance or even the running balance on your bank's website. You can set up recurring bills, but have to manually click on them to enter them. No ads - or promotions for credit card deals. No offers to check your credit score. Just basic accounting.
MINUSES: It's a little primitive and clunky to use. Not a lot of pull-down menus in the traditional sense, but icons you click on. It takes a while and some trial-and-error to figure out the best way to enter a transaction. Then again, this is true for a lot of programs - I am still learning the nuances of Quickbooks 2002! Memorized transactions include only bills, not deposits or transfers. The latter can be set as "reminders" and entered with one click later on. All data is stored on the web, so they see what your finances are like and if you have slow or no internet service, well, you are stuck.
I have not tried the "Premium" version yet, but will probably do so, once I am comfortable with the base version. There is also apparently a full version that runs "on the web" which provides even more features. The image above appears to be of that version. So apparently, there are three versions: The app, the premium app, and the website versions.
Basic accounting software shouldn't need to change over time. Basic checkbook balancing programs were some of the first software packages sold for nascent PCs - even before the IBM PC came out. They have not changed much since then.
Quickbooks is a powerful tool - or can be - as you can create invoices, generate reports and charts, and do all sorts of fun things with it. Over time, however, they keep adding functions to the program to the point where it is almost an e-commerce site, if in fact is already is. But as a retiree, I have no need to generate invoices or reports. I just need to make sure the payments I make don't bounce and the statement balance on my credit card is paid off before the due date.
ClearCheckbook, in all three forms, has a "Budget" feature, but I am not sure budgets are of much use. Our government has a budget office and they set up budgets for every department of government. In most cases, departments go over budgets, as things happen that can't be anticipated. For example, starting a war.
Recently, I had to pay our homeowner's/hurricane insurance bill, which was $4000 this year, up over $500 from last year, and another $500 from the year before. 15 years ago, the bill was a little over $1000 and stayed pretty flat for a decade. Not now.
Then there are medical expenses. Mine are small, but Mark has had three teeth implants this year, and each costs a few thousand dollars. Hard to budget for that. Plus, since we are retired, we basically spend what we need, and if we don't need, we don't spend.
For working people, who can accurately predict their income on a monthly basis, I guess a budget is a good thing and a good way to think about money. Myself, I found them maddeningly difficult to set up and nearly impossible to follow.
But maybe it is time to start thinking about it again.
UPDATE: While the program is easy to use (almost two simple) there are three major flaws:
1. Data is kept on their servers, which means if they decide to pull the plug, you lose everything.
2. The "description" field erases itself when you save, unless the transaction is a recurring one. This is frustrating, as all you see is dates and amounts, with no description or payee.
I tried the one-time $4.99 "upgrade" which supposedly adds payee lines, but it didn't seem to change anything other than to put "premium member" in the upper lefthand corner.
Verdict: Not a realistic solution to anything!
UPDATE: Once you "upgrade" you have to go into settings and enable fields like payee and description. This allows you to enter data in these fields, but the data evaporates as soon as you hit "save."
The fields automatically erase contents unless you enter them in order, too. Makes no difference, as the data evaporates once you hit "save". So all you have is a list of amounts and dates, nothing more.
Poor coding. And getting an item to save or clear takes a LONG time, which tells me they have limited server capacity.
No reason to make this a cloud program when the data could be saved locally. Then again, this illustrates the folly of the chromebook.
UPDATE: There are FOUR versoins of ClearCheckbook, the free "app," the $4.99 "premium" app, a free web-based version (clearcheckbook.com) and a premium web-based version, which has a monthly fee (boo! hiss!) starting at $5 a month. The web-based version has far more features including generating reports and such. Once nice thing, is that if you start with the free app, you can also run the free web-based version.
All you data is still in the cloud, though. Remember Webshots! Remember Ring thermostats!
UPDATE: OK, the "app" even in premium mode, is useless! It takes forever to save and retrieve data. It looks like an abandoned app, although the app store shows it as updated as of March 2026.
But why bother? The web version is 1000% better and much clearer. It doesn't erase description fields like the app did, The only defect I can see is that your data is on the cloud.
But, then again, if they shut down the server, you can just start over with some other site, program, or app - as I did when trying out ClearCheckbook.
So maybe we'll give it a try. At least for a while.
