If you want to get a grip on money management and get your finances under control, our Reminders and Recurring Transactions tool can help you with that. In its most basic form, the Reminders and Recurring Transactions tool will show you what days you have to pay bills or remember to do other important things. From there, you can set it to email you a reminder, have it recur several times and associate transactions with it. This mini-tutorial will give you an overview of the Reminders and Recurring Transactions Tool.

To get to the reminders and recurring transactions tool, click on the Tools item in the navigation menu. Next, click on the Reminders and Recurring Transactions link in the list below. When the page loads, you’ll be presented with a calendar for the current and next months, as well as list of any upcoming reminders you may have. If you don’t have any reminders added to the site, you’ll see a form to add a new one.

The reminder calendars will show what days you have reminders set to occur and how many are set to happen on that date. If you click on the date in the calendar that has a reminder occurring on it, the list on the right will re-populate with that reminder and all upcoming reminders up to 30 days after the date you selected. If you click on a date without a reminder occurring, it will display the Add Reminder form on the right pre-populated with the date you clicked on. You can move forward and backward in time in the calendar by clicking the “<<” or “>>” links above the calendar.

Adding a new reminder is very easy. If you don’t see the add reminder form already, there is a link above your list of upcoming reminders to display the add reminder form. When you’re adding a new reminder, you give it a title/description so you know what the reminder actually is.

Next, you can select if it’s a one time reminder or if you want it to repeat over a time period. If you want it to repeat over set durations, click the Repeating option. This will bring up an “End Date” input that lets you select when the reminder ends. Next, you select if it repeats every x days, weeks, months or years. For example, if you get paid every other Friday, you would set your Start Date to the date of your next pay check and then set it to repeat every 2 weeks.

If you want more flexibility over how the reminder will repeat, you can select the Repeating (Floating) option. This is a little more dynamic and lets you set reminders for time periods such as “Every Second Tuesday” or “The First Day” of the month.

After deciding how the reminder occurs, you have the options to add a transaction to it and an option to email you. Adding a transaction to the reminder lets you easily schedule payments that may be automatically deducted from your bank account or pay checks that come in. If you select the Add Transaction option, you’ll see a typical Add Transaction form like you would when adding a normal transaction to the site. Simply fill out the details and the transaction will be posted on the day the reminder is set to occur.

If you select the Email Me option, you can tell ClearCheckbook to send you an email reminder up to a week in advance of the reminder occurring. This is great if you need to know a few days ahead of time so you can write a check and mail it before a bill is due.

After adding the reminder, the calendars on the left will update and you can see your reminder if it falls within the current or next month. If you need to edit your reminder, you can find it in the list and click on the name of the reminder. This will bring up a form that lets you edit any of the options. Deleting a single occurrence or the entire reminder can also be done by clicking the appropriate link in the list of reminders.

If you have a transaction associated with a reminder, the reminder list will show the amount next to the reminder name. There is also a Post Now link that if pressed, will automatically add the transaction at that time, rather than when the reminder is set to occur. This is helpful if you pay a bill early and want it to show up in your register immediately.

In addition to going to the Reminders and Recurring transactions page, you can also add it as a gadget to your Dashboard page. This will show the calendar and any upcoming reminders.

The Reminders and Recurring Transactions tool is a great tool for money management. By scheduling all of your upcoming bills and alerting yourself of them, you’ll be less likely to forget a payment. The Reminders and Recurring Transactions tool also ties into our Estimated Future Balances feature so you can project your balances to a future date.