Checkbook Wiz Reviews

I have a checkbook register app (Pocket Money 2) that I’ve used for years and really like, but the original developer passed away and the new one destroyed it by “updating” it into something nearly unusable. But I digress. I have several complaints about most of the checkbook apps now available.

Icons - how many people, when we all used pen and paper registers, drew little pictures in them when they noted a category or named their bank? At least make them optional. If I use a category for groceries, I know what that means. I don’t need a picture of a shopping cart.

Recurring entries - no app I’ve looked at allows customization. I receive SSA checks on the third Wednesday of every month. In apps other than PM2, I can only pick monthly. Third Wednesdays occur on various dates. Most calendar apps allow that kind of customization so i assume it can be done.

Screen clutter - most apps have screens that are much too busy with graphics and unnecessary pictures. Simplicity is usually the most elegant.

There are other things, but you get the picture. Developers should search CheckbookWiz Store to find apps that have the highest number of 5 star ratings and, without violating copyright laws, try to make something similar. Or look at the ones with the most 1 star ratings to see what people don’t like.

End of rant. Thanks for reading. BYW, I only gave CheckbookWiz 1 star hoping people will read it. CheckbookWiz is maybe a 3 star.

I used the unpaid version for a while. It was not great, but it did the basic things that I needed it to do. Then I decided to try the paid subscription. The program was not any better. I found that after a year, I need to start all my accounts again from scratch or the program became unbearably slow. Toward the end of the subscription period, I canceled so the subscription would not renew. But the program immediately reverted to the unpaid version rather than running to the end of the subscription period. The final straw was today, when I tried to enter a transaction and got a screen telling me to sign up for the paid subscription, and was given no other option. I would not recommend this program to my worst enemy.

Update on July 17, 2020. I absolutely love CheckbookWiz, BUT... I bought the paid version to get rid of the ads. Two days later I still have ads. I contacted support and they told me to use restore purchases button. I have done it repeatedly. I also deleted CheckbookWiz , reinstalled it and loaded my data back in from iCloud. Still, I have ads. Also, the balance for my checking account has been off by large differences. it seems like almost every time I open CheckbookWiz , a different balance shows up. I
I have paid for and tried to use so many different bookkeeping apps that I am now giving up and going back to my Numbers spreadsheet. I use an app for two or three months and then my account balances go crazy and are incorrect. This has happened repeatedly. My spreadsheet is quicker and easier to use in the long run.

As far as the checkbook part of CheckbookWiz , it works really well. Yesterday, I downloaded the paid version. I still have ads all over the screen and ads that bring up their own screens. I just want to get what I paid for, which includes no ads.

UPDATE: Finally gave up on CheckbookWiz. No more support provided by the developer. Plus, they keep charging every six months with no improvements. Much better apps out there. One morning CheckbookWiz was working fine and then that afternoon I opened CheckbookWiz to find that my data was gone up through November of 2017. I tried to restore from the iCloud backup and CheckbookWiz just hung there. I wrote the developer using their website contact and it’s been a week without hearing from them. So many of my years of data are gone. Reconciling is taking me forever right now using my bank and credit card statements. Oh, AND connected to this recent problem, suddenly I’m seeing ads all over CheckbookWiz again. I paid for Checkbook Wiz Pro years ago to get rid of the ads. I mentioned it in my support request which has gone unanswered. Avoid CheckbookWiz and any others by this company.

I’ve used CheckbookWiz for years and even with the bugs that messed up account balances, removed transactions and caused errors when using certain categories, I still continued to use CheckbookWiz because I’ve been using it for so long and it was the closest free app I could find to an old checkbook app I loved that was no longer supported on the newer iOS at the time (very simplistic without a bunch of filler).

They added ads where you have to wait before moving on, fine. But now with this new update, I’m unable to add any transactions because it says I have “-4964 transactions left”. I can watch a video for 50 transactions which I’ve done and I’m grateful for that but I will be looking for another app. I don’t mind paying but with the issues I’ve experienced with CheckbookWiz, I’d rather not. I will just keep it for historical purposes.

I have used CheckbookWiz for about 3 years. It is my favorite checkbook app and the most customizable. I can have multiple “accounts” and look at my total in months, quarters, or the year. My biggest complaint is CheckbookWiz has lost all my information 3 different times. It’s so frustrating and only once did I get it back (I bought the pro version). Starting over is awful and losing all my information is ridiculous. This last time it happened I started backing it up manually every day. I updated my phone with the IOS 13 and CheckbookWiz has been a little glitchy since then-it won’t let me add pictures and has crashed a couple times-and since the apps last update. So, overall love CheckbookWiz but get it together and stop losing all my info. Also the customer service is awful!

Long-time, paid user here. On the plus side, I manually backup to Dropbox and to iCloud, regularly and flawlessly. Restore has also worked great. But, the developer is no longer responsive to support requests.

The recurring transactions are a mess. They don’t sort by ‘next-scheduled-entry’ date in the list of recurring transactions. It’s gotten to the point where any time I need to make any change to any recurring transaction, I delete the recurring transaction and create a new one with the current details.

if you change the name of an account such as from “Chase 7314” to “Chase 8562”, it does not update the old transactions, at least not with recurring ones. Not a big deal, but from now on I’ll just use “Chase.”

CheckbookWiz is inexplicably slow—unexplained, frequent delays of 3-4 seconds started with an update in 2021. (EDIT: I resolved this by stopping using that account that was slow. I noticed that not all the accounts were slow, so I stopped using the slow one and just made a new one with a similar name.)

Converting to using an iPad took time. Sorting through the many apps for managing finances. Once I understood how CheckbookWiz worked it started to look better than the other apps that I had tried. It has the primary functions that is required to track my finances. Customizing the categories allows you to make it meet your needs. To bad it doesn’t allow local backup of the data file. As iPad now has external flash drive ability. But is still a very good program. But needs to allow the date to be free to adjust.

I have been using CheckbookWiz for years now, strictly for the checkbook ledger feature (I manage my checking/savings accounts only). The checkbook features themselves are great, but CheckbookWiz could use improvements. The Search feature is there and it works, but it’s a global search on the home screen (can’t just search within my checking account). I’m using an iPhone 14 Pro with latest iOS and over time, the responsiveness of CheckbookWiz has continually declined. Not sure if it’s a bug with the iOS app or what. Overall, I love CheckbookWiz for managing my checkbook.

I went through quite a few checkbook registers until I found this one. I was using another program that worked in the beginning, but then started to have sync problems.
I've been using this program for several months now and it has performed flawlessly. I highly recommend this program if you need to sync between your iPhone and iPad as I do.

Update: after using this for about a year now, the program seems to have syncing problems. It nulls some of my debits and loses the names of the payee; this happens when there are syncing problems with my other device. I'm still using it as a standalone, but gave up on syncing, it's become too difficult to maintain since one device shows a different balance than the other.

Another update:
I’ve realized that the syncing problems may be iCloud issues, after experiencing problems in other apps. This is a really good app.

I have had CheckbookWiz for a couple of years now and I am pleased with what it does. It allows me to keep track of multiple accounts just like I would with an analog checkbook register with a whole host of features that help keep me organized. It is relatively bug free and with the exception of the ads it operates pretty smoothly (I can’t tell you why I have not purchased the upgrade yet but I most likely will now that I have shamed myself into it). I cannot speak to the more advanced functions like reports and such as I don’t use them. I highly recommend CheckbookWiz for someone wanting a good, complete and relatively simple way to track one’s bank and credit card accounts. UPDATE: So I upgraded and I’m so glad I did. Getting rid of the ads made a difference and the ability to print reports, compile data and print them is pretty nice. It’s not QuickBooks Pro but it does the trick for what I need. Still very happy with CheckbookWiz.

I LOVE CheckbookWiz!! I depend on it...probably not unlike most of you, I have OCD lol I am most comfortable when I am aware of every cent, in the bank as well as debt. Mistakes happen often & CheckbookWiz has been there for me making it easy to catch errors. The only reason it doesn’t get 5 stars is the cloud sync. It works, but (twice now with one phone & also whenever I upgrade my phone) the cloud syncs data from a couple years ago. I panic because I literally lost all my financial information!!! This past time took almost a week to finally update & go back to my comfort zone of seeing every cent! So basically CheckbookWiz is a life saver but also likes to watch you squirm occasionally!

Update: Version 3.6.1 was able to bring back all recovered transactions, but only because I had CheckbookWiz on my iPad also and did not update the iPad app. If it wasn’t for that back up I would have lot everything. Quite a scare, but great app.

Do not update to version 3.6. This was a fantastic app until the previous update. Once I updated and opened CheckbookWiz , every transaction from the past year disappeared from my device. I lost everything, the iCloud backups also disappeared. I have to start all over the the beginning. While starting over, when I add an account, every time I try to type in a beginning balance, CheckbookWiz crashes. I contacted support with these issues and the person who responded doesn’t even work with this particular app, asking me to tell him what the update does and doesn’t have.

I have been using CheckbookWiz for about 4 years now. I love that I can copy previous inputs, search for data and maintain more than one bank account. I wish it had a delete feature under payer. Sometimes I type in the wrong data and it automatically saves it but does not let me delete it, this goes for payers I no longer use. So you can image my payer list is quite long now. I also love the memo and Category options. They just started with the ads in the middle of data which is new and I am not a fan. Maybe I will look into upgrading. CheckbookWiz does close on the “other” option for income and lately has been closing randomly after I saved an input. I still really like CheckbookWiz just some bugs here and there. Using Checkbook wiz still makes my life less complicated and my checkbook balanced. Thank you! SweetpeaV

As others have said was looking for a replacement for iReconcile which is no longer supported. This is an amazing app and well worth the $1.99. There's only two suggestions that would make it better. 1) Allow for account selection with the reports. I have multiple accounts setup and the reporting doesn't let me look at individual accounts, it just aggregates it all together. 2) Once you select a category for a payee, it should default to the last selection. The default is to other forcing you to recategorize every time you make a selection. Thanks for a wonderful app!! The new version category binding worked then it stopped. Not sure why!?

I love CheckbookWiz. I would like a few things to be a little different. I have issues with the recurring transactions. Also, credit card accounts should be handled differently than other accounts. And credit card accounts should include due dates on payments and should show you how much you’ll owe on your bill. Instead of telling me I have 200 available it should tell me I have 200$ available and a 100$ balance if my credit limit is 300$. The credit card aspect should be completely redone if they’re gonna claim to keep track of it because credit cards function differently than checking accounts.

CheckbookWiz is everything I’ve been looking for. Over the last few years I’ve tried out about 25 or so different apps. At one point I thought this one was messing up and even sent them an email. But I realized it was me and had to immediately let them know it was me that I messed up. Sorry guys🤪. Anyway, it has it all. Even a calendar section to keep track of spending on any particular day. I can finally quit looking for the right app because this one is it👍

Update: Enjoying the ease of use and everything CheckbookWiz offers. Much like a regular check register with all kinds of different awesome benefits. It’s only gotten easier and more enjoyable being able to input purchases and income on the fly. That’s important when I forget about buying something and realize when I check the bank the next day that I don’t have as much in the bank as I thought. Hasn’t happened since I started using CheckbookWiz.

Awesome...as soon as I make a purchase, I simply add that immediately in...then i check my online account until it has cleared...then i check the box...It’s SO much better than a written registry..Every week, I match my Checkbook with my bank account to look for fraudulent charges...I have about 10 payments that are the same monthly..so i add them all, on the day my SSDI check is deposited...so I know these charges will be coming out...and i easily edit the dates, once posted to my bank account...I don’t get blindsided by forgotten charges!! WAAAY BETTER THAN A PAPER LEDGER

I use it to make sure I won’t be overdrawn in my account as payments are withdrawn. It helps me time my income deposits and bill payments accordingly in advance. The recurring payments and deposits feature is very helpful. Simple to set up and use. I wish it had a few more features, options to automatically enter recurring payments 2 weeks or 1 month before due, and reversing the order of the register, top to bottom instead of bottom up.

Do you want to be on top of your finances? Track your everyday spending and what not? Then CheckbookWiz is for you. CheckbookWiz has tremendously helped me with managing my money. By just taking an hour every couple of weeks and entering all my bank transactions, I can see what I'm doing with my money. Especially since CheckbookWiz lays it out SO beautifully. It is so detailed and precise and I have never been in so much control of my money. I love the ease of use. I love the layout. I love how I can see where every penny has gone or come in from. There is a wonderful search bar too, in case you needed to look something up. You can look up by category, keyword, bank account, and more. It's so precise too. If you search "food", you can see all the times you spent money on food. And you can choose the time frame that the search uses. You can search just the month, or one day, or the whole year. And when you hit search it will bring up EVERYTHING related to what you put in there. It's a powerful app and I highly recommend it.