ClearCheckbook Money Management
ClearCheckbook
Money Management Made Easy

The ClearCheckbook Story

ClearCheckbook started as a simple solution for some basic money management and has grown into an industry player for financial management.

ClearCheckbook began as a simple solution to a frustrating problem - an application developed by a web-savvy college kid, in order to manage his finances and balance his checkbook. Brandon O'Brien created a website that ran locally on his computer, so that he could differentiate between what money he thought he had in his checking account, and what money he actually had in his checking account. He learned very quickly that the money he was seeing "live" in his checking account, wasn't clearing with the actual money he was spending - writing checks, paying bills, late nights out, etc. Brandon took balancing his checkbook to the next step - online, real-time, and with greater functionality than Microsoft Excel, and cheaper (read: free) than Quicken, or similar products.

After a little over a year of using this site only for himself, Brandon began sharing his checkbook balancing skills with interested and like parties. Brandon posted a few screenshots to an online blog as an example of what was helping him manage his finances, and he was astounded with the response; so many people wanted to know where to access his easy and user-friendly checkbook balancing tool. Brandon spent about a week coming up with a name for the site, layout and updating the site to allow for anyone to use. ClearCheckbook went live to the world on May 20, 2006 and became an instant success. Since that day, ClearCheckbook has grown rapidly through three major versions and continues to update and enhance the site capabilities regularly.

Brandon strongly believes that everyone should have an easy and accessible tool that allows them to be in control of their own finances - for free. ClearCheckbook is a site that is easy to use, understand, and interact with for everyone - regardless of technical ability. Brandon believes that managing and taking control of your own finances should be a right, not a privilege. Knowledge and ownership of one's own finances should be effortless for everyone. ClearCheckbook continues to exemplify and adhere to this objective as a tool that enables the user to control and have ownership of their finances - easily, inexpensively, and without headache.

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ClearCheckbook Timeline

Here are some of ClearCheckbook's major milestones and updates over the years.

May 20, 2006

ClearCheckbook.com Launched

Mid-2006 thru October 2007

ClearCheckbook's userbase grows and we build new features and improve our hardware to keep up with demand.

October 29, 2007

We launch the second version of ClearCheckbook which features an overhaul on the UI, the start of the Reminders / Recurring Transactions tool, Importing and Exporting Transactions, Auto-complete and more. We also pass 1 million stored transactions and over 10,000 users.

December 30, 2007

ClearCheckbook is moved to it's own private server that we purchased after the site's growth combined with our old hosting solution limitations caused a lot of long load times.

March 2008

We release a mobile friendly version of ClearCheckbook that quickly gains a lot of traction with iPhone users.

December 22, 2008

ClearCheckbook v3 is launched which includes another site redesign and the Premium Membership upgrade. This upgrade introduces many of the features still visible today such as the Account Dashboard and the ability to add transactions from any page.

September 21, 2009

Brandon gives his resignation to his previous job in order to pursue managing, developing and supporting ClearCheckbook full time.

January / February 2010

We build and launch our first native mobile applications for Palm WebOS and Android.

June 27, 2010

The native application for iOS is launched.

March 15, 2012

ClearCheckbook 2.0 for iOS is released.

September 2, 2013

The ClearCheckbook app for Windows Phone 8 is released.

May 5, 2014

We're managing over 50 million transactions

February 21, 2015

The fourth version of ClearCheckbook is launched. This update includes a responsive design for all screen sizes as well as dozens of new features and updates to existing features. The site manages more than 300,000 users and over 60 million transactions.

July 4, 2015

While America was celebrating Independence day by blowing up fireworks, our server was doing some blowing up of its own. The amount of data the site was handling combined with the age of our server was causing the site to get overloaded and was down on and off for a few days. We took this as a sign to start looking for a better hosting solution.

October 31, 2015

ClearCheckbook is moved from our old server to a new hosting solution in the cloud. We now have the ability to scale our hardware based on demand and provide a much more reliable service than ever before.

August 16, 2016

ClearCheckbook v3 for iOS is released. This is a completely rebuilt app that takes the latest design guidelines into consideration for iOS development.

February 13, 2017

ClearCheckbook is managing over 90 million transactions from over 350,000 users.

March 3, 2017

ClearCheckbook MoneyManagement 2.0 for Android is released. This is a completely rebuilt app that takes the latest design guidelines into consideration for Android development.

May 23, 2017

We launch the ClearCheckbook Affiliate Program to help spread ClearCheckbook to people who might not otherwise hear about us.

December 20, 2018

We start the initial planning for the largest re-write of ClearCheckbook in over 10 years and will be known as Version 5. This new re-write will see ClearCheckbook moved to a new, more robust, framework which uses all the latest technologies available to us.

March 23, 2019

ClearCheckbook registers its 400,000th user.

January 27, 2020

We start work on new versions of both the iOS and Android apps to help provide faster and more user friendly mobile experiences.

June 29, 2020

We launched an entirely updated version of both the iOS and Android apps. Version 4 of both apps uses the same codebase which will help streamline updates and provide a similar UI across all devices.

August 15, 2020

ClearCheckbook Version 5 is released! Version 5 was built on an entirely new development framework and includes over 100 updates, new features and bug fixes.

January 21, 2021

We added the ability to connect ClearCheckbook to over 10,000 different financial institutions so your transactions are automatically downloaded each day.

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Latest ClearCheckbook News
Slight update to transaction row background colors

March 22, 2024 - Update

posted in our Support Forums

Additional User account restriction issues

March 22, 2024 - Bug Fix

posted in our Support Forums

Transaction Sync refresh option

March 7, 2024 - New Feature

posted in our Support Forums

Transaction Syncing History

March 7, 2024 - New Feature

posted in our Support Forums

Category Settings update and bug fix

March 7, 2024 - Update

posted in our Support Forums