Once upon a time there was a man named Dan.  When Dan was young, he led a simple life, easily keeping all his affairs in order.  Balancing his checkbook took a matter of minutes.  However, he noticed that he sometimes made mistakes.  He also noticed the bank sometimes made mistakes.  But usually they were easy to identify and take care of.

One day, Dan fell in love with Rita.  They got married and had a few kids.  That’s when things started to get complicated.  He still made mistakes.  His bank still made mistakes.  But NOW, Rita made mistakes too!  This made it a little harder to identify the problems and take care of his checkbook.

You see, Rita kept the checkbook in her purse.  She did a fine job entering entries in the checkbook.  Dan however, was no longer able to enter his entries in the checkbook.  (Because it was in Rita’s purse!)  Instead, Dan stuffed the receipts in his wallet.  Come payday, poor Dan had a sore back — not so much from working hard every day, as from sitting on a wallet full of receipts all day!

OH! the day after payday, when his wallet was empty 😉 was Dan’s favorite day.  But Dan dreaded payday.

First, he’d enter Rita’s few stray receipts that still weren’t entered.  Then, he’d enter his wallet’s receipts.  (It always kind of freaked Dan out – how many times they went negative — often not just “barely” – especially after deducting NSF charges!)  Finally, after those tasks, he’d pay the bills, carefully adding up all the entries.  Yeah, payday was no fun.  BUT, payday was a walk in the park compared to the one day a month when it was time to RECONCILE the checkbook.

Typically, Dan was happy just if the account balance came out positive.  But neither Dan nor Rita (nor probably the *#&% bank!) knew precisely how much money they had.

Dan’s bank took special measures to make reconciliation frustrating.  His bank decided to group the statement entries into broad categories:  Deposits, Checks/web-bill-pay, and ATM/other.  And then, within each of those categories to list entries in (usually) date order.  That meant, for each line on the bank statement Dan sometimes had to wade through pages of checkbook entries.  Of course, each entry the bank had that Dan didn’t have meant somebody (read DAN) didn’t enter an entry.  And THAT meant entering an entry.

One day, Dan discovered checkoncile.com.  He realized first of all that both he and Rita access their “virtual” checkbook simultaneously!  That meant no more wallet full of receipts.  (And, more importantly, no more sore back!)  Furthermore, there was no limit to the number of accounts that could be setup.  Which meant they could keep “His”, “Hers”, and “Their” account checkbooks in one tidy, secure place.

Please understand that Dan absolutely hated sending his cellphone provider a large sum every month.  But when he discovered he could access checkoncile.com securely from any mobile device, value was instantly added to this bill!

Furthermore, Dan absolutely gushed over the ease with which he could reconcile his accounts.  It was easier than doing it manually, because checkoncile.com did all the math for him.  Which meant NO mistakes.  Which meant both he and Rita knew exactly how much money they had.

But checkoncile.com had more to offer.  Future plans include an OFX-standard option to retrieve bank entries automatically, budgeting tools and advice, recurring entries, etc.

Dan had truly discovered a gem, and in the process, made a little more room in Rita’s purse.  All for a less than $1/week.  And let’s face it:  you can hardly buy anything for a buck.