Checkbook

Some say knowledge is power. Growly Checkbook gives you the knowledge to take control of your spending. By recording all your transactions -- deposits, checks, credit and debit cards, billpay -- you’ll know how much money you really have. It’s a good first step to getting your finances under control.

Checkbook allows you to manage both checking and savings accounts in one document. If you have accounts in more than one bank, create one document for each institution. Recording transfers between accounts in the same bank is simple.

No frills, no complications. Checkbook has the tools you need to get the job done, so you can get back to your real life.

Balancing act

The least fun thing about checking accounts (not normally considered a barrel of laughs anyway) is reconciling what you think you have against what the bank claims you have. This is usually called balancing the books, and it can be a hair-tearing experience. Checkbook helps you with a straightforward process that lets you know at every step of the way how far away your number is from theirs.

During reconciliation, the top panel shows your progress. All irrelevant transactions (those that have already cleared) are hidden. The checkmark column shows the status of each transaction: you click the checkbox to indicate that the transaction appears on the bank statement. When your balance matches the bank’s, the difference goes to zero and you’re done.

Fast data entry

Checkbook helps you enter your transactions, so you can get through the drudgery and on to something more fun. The # column is for the check number, or other transaction type. Those other transaction types can be entered by typing a single character -- “v” for Visa, “m” for MasterCard, and so on.

Because people shop at the same places again and again, Checkbook suggests the closest matching name while you’re typing in the Description field. If this is a repeat, you only need to type the minimum number of characters needed to distinguish the transaction from others, for example “wal” might be enough to specify “WalMart.”

If you accept an existing description, Checkbook pre-fills the previous amount in the payment or deposit field, so if you’re entering a repetitive transaction such as a mortgage payment you can finish the transaction with just a few characters.

When you create a new transaction, just type the return key when you’re done, and Checkbook will automatically create another one.

Searching

Quick searches are simple: just type in the search field in the toolbar and hit return. Checkbook will show all transactions that match the text.

Sometimes simple isn’t good enough, so Checkbook also lets you search on every field of the transaction, narrowing the search down by date, description, transaction type and status, and so on. No more flipping through register pages trying to find the check you wrote for those music lessons last fall.

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