Dropbox is in the process of changing their authentication method for their API. This change is nullifying all existing authentications by September 30th and will require you to re-authenticate your Dropbox connection with ClearCheckbook if you're currently using Dropbox for your Automatic Backups.

The process to re-authenticate is extremely simple and can be done by logging into your account and then clicking on Tools at the top of the page. Next, click on the Automatic Backups link and then the red 'Cancel Automatic Backups' button. After that, click on the green 'Authorize Backups to Dropbox' button and follow the instructions to authenticate Dropbox with ClearCheckbook. Note: It might not have you approve the connection again, but simply redirect you back to ClearCheckbook. If that's the case, everything still worked correctly if you see the Automatic Backups Enabled text.

Once you do that, your backups will continue working past the September 30th cutoff date. If you don't re-authenticate before September 30th, ClearCheckbook won't be able to access your Dropbox account to save your backups.

This change does not affect Google Drive or OneDrive and will not remove any existing backups to your current Dropbox folder.

If you want to learn more, you can read up on the Refresh Tokens change in this blog post: https://dropbox.tech/developers/now-available--scoped-apps-and-enhanced-permissions.

The Bill Tracker got a slight user interface update and we also added a new "Autopay" flag when adding and editing bills.

Bill Tracker Interface Update:

The update to the Bill Tracker interface will help make finding information about the bill much easier on quick glance. For example, this will save you from having to click through a bill to see which account it's set to pay from.
Here's a sample of what the new Bill Tracker page looks like:


The bills are now separated between overdue and paid/upcoming bills. If you don't have any overdue bills, the paid/upcoming bills will take the full width of the screen.

Autopay flag

In an effort to help you keep track of which bills are on autopay and which you need to manually pay, we added an autopay flag when you add or edit a bill. If you check the Autopay checkbox, a new icon will appear next to the account name the bill is being paid from.

You can see the icon in the screenshot below next to the Checking account name in the Paid and upcoming bill:


The new autopay flag will be available on the mobile apps in the next update.

We've added a few updates to the ClearCheckbook website and apps over the last month that you might have missed. These updates include a Crypto Portfolio and Retirement Calculator for the website. We also added Account Groups to both the iOS and Android apps.

Crypto Portfolio

The crypto portfolio is a new tool where you can track your crypto holdings and see your gain/loss on each of your coins. The crypto portfolio can track any coin in the top 300 based on market cap. You can learn more about the crypto portfolio at the Crypto Portfolio Knowledge Base.

Retirement Calculator

The retirement calculator is a new feature built around the Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement. The retirement calculator will tell you when you can retire based on your portfolio value and yearly expenses. This is a great way to help get an idea of whether your current saving methods are enough to let you retire early. The Retirement Calculator can be found under the Calculators section in the footer of the site.

Account Groups in iOS and Android apps

Both the iOS and Android apps have been updated so you can use your Account Groups to organize your accounts in the Accounts list. You can set up and manage your account groups through the website or on the app itself. For specific information on managing account groups on the apps, check out the relevant app Knowledge Base pages: iOS - Android.


If you have any other suggestions for improvements we can make to ClearCheckbook, please let us know!

We received the following notification from our transaction processor, Plaid, in regards to transaction syncing:

"In anticipation of upcoming government relief funds being distributed at scale, we are proactively reducing our transaction update interval to alleviate pressure on bank infrastructure. During this period of high traffic, some institutions may also experience elevated error rates. We will update this message when we revert back to normal."

If you notice your transactions not syncing as fast as they normally do, it's probably due to the above notice.

Plaid called out these institutions specifically as having syncing delays:

• Huntington Bank
• PNC
• Wells Fargo
• Fidelity
• Charles Schwab
• US Bank
• TD Bank
• USAA
• Capital One
• American Express

Some of those are temporary and some are ongoing. It's also likely there are other institutions with connection interruptions but those are the most frequently used by ClearCheckbook customers. If you're connected to one of the above institutions and haven't seen any new transactions sync in several days, I suggest contacting Plaid directly to get status updates on your institution. You can contact them here: Plaid Support. Click on the Support button at the bottom right side of the page to start a support ticket with them.

We're sorry for any inconveniences this is causing. Plaid provides transaction services to thousands of financial services, including many large scale apps such as Venmo and Coinbase. We're hopeful they will get these delays under control and connections with the above institutions re-established.

We just released our first big update of 2021 which includes over 20 new features, tweaks and bug fixes. The biggest new feature is the ability to connect to your bank and have your transactions automatically synced to ClearCheckbook!

Connecting with Financial Institutions
You read that correctly! We're extremely happy to announce that ClearCheckbook can now connect with over 10,000 different financial institutions so you can have your transactions automatically downloaded each day. This feature is available to all ClearCheckbook Premium members and allows you to connect accounts at up to 5 different financial institutions.

You can see if your bank is supported by using the Search Institutions form on our Syncing with Financial Institutions knowledge base page. More information about how to set up ClearCheckbook to sync with your bank can be found on our Connecting to your Bank knowledge base article.

Updates / Site Tweaks:

• Updated the Account Settings list to make account information easier to see at a glance
• When adding transactions, we added an alert if it seems like you might be entering an incorrect date (for example, maybe you forgot to change the year)
• We added a Knowledge Base article for Site Navigation
• Updated precision of currency conversions to 9 digits
• If you set up custom transaction form ordering, the input focus will be on the first field that takes keyboard input (rather than always defaulting to the Amount field)
• We added links in the Register Options to view only Current and Future transactions
• You can now delete payments in the Money Lending Tracker in case you mistakenly added one
• Updated how file attachment URLs are generated to improve privacy and security

Bug fixes:

• The name of a bill might be displayed incorrectly under some circumstances
• Currency conversions weren't being set up correctly when creating a new account with a currency different than the global default
• Investment Portfolio gadget was showing an incorrect Last Price under some circumstances
• Inactive categories were showing up as n/a in the Budgets list. Now they are hidden from the list.
• Made sure currency conversions couldn't be set to 0
• Fixed how split children amounts were displayed in CSV export to allow for better import
• Archived account names weren't showing up in exported files
• Sum of splits wasn't being calculated correctly when editing a recurring transaction
• Orphaned categories were causing problems in Profit and Loss report
• Fixed a bug that would cause an error in the Duplicate Transaction check if an account didn't exist

We already have several other updates that are currently in our queue or are already under development. If you have any other suggestions for new features or any other improvements we could make to ClearCheckbook, please let us know!