What People Are Saying About Chronicle
This tool has simply been amazing … It is fast loading, so checking my bills daily is not a chore. And the interface is attractive. To top it all off, the developer listens to all suggested feature requests, and truly supports their users! –MacUpdate user Summersofar
This program is a huge help in maintaining my organization of all bills and then reminding me when they are due. Highly recommended! –Macupdate user Fanchee
I can’t say enough good things about Chronicle … Highly recommended. –Ken S.
One of my favorite and most practical programs that I have come across in a long time. –Cynthia. L.
I love (and now depend) on this product. My bank does not offer services to do all this program will do, and with the addition of the features in this edition I think this is a great price. –Corey .S.
Here’s What Chronicle Can Do For You:
 1. Never worry about missing a payment.
You don’t need to wonder if you’ve paid the bills this month or not–Chronicle remembers for you. Late payment fees can cost $30 or more. Why risk it? Chronicle never forgets! It keeps track of all your bills, and reminds you when each one is due using iCal–even when neither program is running.
 2. Set goals to reduce or eliminate debt.
Paying off debt can be a daunting task. Let Chronicle help. It assists you in setting goals and tracks your progress as you pay your bills. Seeing your progress is a great motivator!
 3. Keep payments and receipts organized.
Chronicle remembers your payment history for each bill, and even organizes scanned or downloaded receipts by date, so you can quickly find and view them for reference or proof of payment.
 4. See spending history and trends with stats.
Chronicle analyzes your payments by month and year and displays the information for you grapically. Plus, it averages your payments so you can better budget for bills that fluctuate, like utilities or credit cards.
 5. Quickly view all your bills and pay online.
The sortable overview screen shows, at a glance, when each bill is due. Colorful icons alert you when a bill is overdue, due soon, or due in the future. With a couple clicks, you can log payments or make payments online.
Plus:
 Alerts on your iPhone
Reminders are automatically added to iCal, so they appear on your iPhone automatically when you sync. With MobileMe, bill reminders are pushed to your iPhone instantly.
 Customize Chronicle’s Appearance
Make Chronicle look the way you want with three themes.
 Enter payments lightning fast
Log payments in two clicks, without ever leaving the overview screen.
 Colorful icons identify your bills
Add as many bills as you want. Each can be represented by one of over 20 colorful icons.
 Pay your bills online
Chronicle can take you directly to your billers’ website to pay your bills.
 Free Upgrades for Life
All updates to LittleFin software are FREE to registered users—including those who buy it through macZot.
System Requirements: Chronicle requires Mac OS X Leopard or greater, and is Snow Leopard compatible. Tiger Users: Chronicle 2 is available and still supported for those using Tiger. To download Chronicle 2 for Tiger, click here.
Questions? Comments? Contact Mike at LittleFin software anytime at support@littlefin.com. Look for him online in Google Talk if you want to chat.
Learn more at LittleFin.com
This weekend’s ZOT?
Jan. 16th, 17th
Simon – Enterprise or Standard Edition.
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Learn more about it here… |
January 14th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Mike here, developer of Chronicle—let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be monitoring these forums around and happy to help if you’ve got any. Or feel free to send me an e-mail.
Thanks for looking!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:28 am
Hey Mike, and thanks for dropping in. This looks like a very nice package. I presume it links to iCal in Snow Leopard? We also use BusyCal, and it would be nice if there was an option for Chronicle to open up BusyCal instead of iCal when adding a reminder for a bill. Is this something that could be added? Love the iPhone sync integration, and presume it will sync to Touch as well. Just downloaded it now and will try it out.
January 15th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Ozron, thanks for the feedback! Yes, reminders from iCal will sync back to the iPod touch as well, and work just fine with snow leopard. Regarding busycal, many of our users use it, and the nice thing is that the iCal and busycal databases are shared, so changes made by chronicle to iCal are instantly reflected in busycal as well. As long as busycal is set to be your default calendar, you should get alarms though busycal as well. Hope that helps! Thanks again!
January 15th, 2010 at 7:46 am
Instead of using my bank’s bill paying service to schedule and pay all bills, I pay via each company’s site on the day I wish to pay. Alarms are set in iCal and the receipts and payments are logged in my checkbook app. Of course paying on time depends on paying attention to the advance alarms. Chronicles looks like a nice way to do this however. Does it have to use a bank’s bill paying service or can it be set up to debit from one checking account but the bills are paid on each company’s site? (like I am doing now).
January 15th, 2010 at 8:09 am
Macmac, absolutely! You can set a URL for each bill individually. So, when you click the pay bill button on a given bill, you will be taken directly to the companies website where you pay the bill. Hope that helps. Thanks!
January 15th, 2010 at 11:40 am
Does it integrate directly with the vendors. For example will automagically check SCE.com’s website for my latest electric bill?
January 15th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
Hi Billy. No, it does not. However, it does automatically update your due date every time you log a payment according to the repeat interval you set, and it does allow you to store the URL at which you pay the bill, so you can click a button and jump directly to the biller’s site to pay. Hope that helps.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Hey Mike,
I have a calendar called ‘reoccurring’ for reoccurring events (such as bill payments.) Can Chronicle add payment reminders to that calendar or must the calendar be named ‘Chronicle’? I would also like to edit the reminder details. I can’t figure out how to tweak those settings.
Thanks so much,
Jim
January 15th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I agree with Jim. It would be nice to be able to specify our own calendar for bills, rather than having to settle for ‘Chronicle’. If I purchase your app my wife will mostly be using it, and that will confuse her.
Regarding your previous reply, I understand that iCal and BusyCal share the same database. However we normally have BusyCal open, and it’s annoying to have iCal open and pop up every time we add bills. We’d then have to close iCal each time. I would like the option in Chronicle for it to not do this. I’d suggest that my wife and all the other BusyCal users would appreciate that as well.
I can understand if you don’t want to do that if it’s either not feasible or very difficult. But you sidestepped my question and didn’t answer it. Would this be a feature you can add to Chronicle or not?
Finally a question on licensing. Does the license allow the installation on my desktop and laptop simultaneously? Obviously only one copy would be in use at any one time. Also do you offer a family license e.g. 3 user license?
Thanks Mike.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Another thing. On my Mac, every time I create a new bill, Chronicle throws up an error after it opens iCal – AppleScript Error: iCal got an error: Can’t get every calendar. (-1728). Any ideas?
January 15th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
I should add that I then need to click on ‘Save Bill’ again, and Chronicle then saves it and goes back to the Overview screen I started from.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Just found this on your website which answers part of my question:
Licensing: LittleFin software is licensed on a per-user basis. This means you may install our software on as many computers as you own, as long as you are the user of that computer. For example, you may install software on a home and portable computer. However, to use our software for multiple users (for example, to install for several computers at a business) would require multiple licenses.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Also just discovered that each time you rename a bill, it creates a new iCal entry and doesn’t delete the old one. Was just playing around with this and ended up with 3 iCal reminder entries! Is it possible to fix this and end up with just the one iCal entry? Again this would really confuse my wife. Thanks.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
Another bug? After deleting an entry, the details for that entry stay displayed in Chronicle. Shouldn’t it refresh back to the Overview display?
January 15th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Sorry for all these comments, but I’ve found another bug. In preferences I’ve got Reminders enabled, and the Reminder time set to 11:00 AM. However when it creates the reminder in iCal, the reminder time is set to 6:00 PM!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Ozron—sorry about sidestepping the BusyCal question, didn’t mean to do that! I think I misunderstood: iCal should not be popping up when you create reminders. It should bounce in the dock and then disappear—the window should never pop up.
Probably what is causing this and the other bug on saving a bill is this: iCal throws up a “iCal is not the default calendar” warning when Chronicle calls it and BusySync is installed, which causes Chronicle to have trouble saving the reminder and thus the bill. It may also be what is causing Chronicle to pop up.
To solve this, launch iCal, and when the default calendar error comes up, keep busycal set as the default, and then click the box that says “Don’t ask me again” or something to that effect. That will eliminate the error on saving the bill, and should stop the Chronicle window from trying to appear at all.
Regarding whether or not we can add to BusyCal directly: Chronicle uses an applescript to call and write reminders to iCal. BusyCal doesn’t support any applescript calls like that, so until they do (or add a Cocoa API), we couldn’t write to BusyCal directly. I THINK if that little BusySync fix I mentioned is done, it will mostly be a non-issue. Am I correct in that, or would you still see it as less than ideal?
January 15th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Jim,
Right now, the calendar name can’t be changed. However, I think that’s an easy enough setting to add to Chronicle’s preferences that we can add to a future version. I’ll see if we can get it out in version 3.1 coming out next week. If not, then soon after.
Reminder details is another thing that can’t be tweaked directly in Chronicle. But again, maybe we can ad some of those things to a later release. Perhaps a separate preference pane tab for reminders would be in order.
Thanks for the feedback.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Sorry about the double post there to Jim.
Ozron—You’re right about the bug with renaming a bill and the reminders sticking around. That would be annoying. I’ll check into it and get a fix released this weekend.
I’ll take a look at the other item you mentioned with a bill staying visible after being deleted as well.
Thanks again for the comments.
January 15th, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Ozron—just saw your other comment about the iCal reminder time. That seems to be working properly for me here…maybe quit and relaunch Chronicle and see if it works…?
Also, that preference only applies to future alarms. Try maybe turning an alarm on and off for a bill to see if that updates it.
Thanks!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Thanks for your feedback Mike.
Regarding the iCal error, I opened iCal and added a new entry. It simply added the new entry. I then closed iCal and added another entry, and this time it simply added the new entry with no errors. So it seems you need to create the first new entry with iCal running, and then on it’s fine. Thanks for that suggestion.
I appreciate your active feedback and involvement here, and based on your comments I’m comfortable in purchasing a copy for our use. Thanks again and I look forward to the next update!
January 15th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Ozron—great, glad to hear that. If you have any other trouble, let me know. There are several Chronicle users I know of who also use BusyCal, and I do want to make sure Chronicle and BusyCal play nice together!
I really appreciate the feedback and bug reports. Thanks again.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
For Mike and Team macZOT, I seem to have a problem at the moment with my PayPal account and am unable to complete the payment. Forgot macZOT only accepts PayPal. Is there another payment method I can use to secure a copy @ the Zot price? Thanks guys.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Ozron—let me see if I can get hold of Mike @ MacZot. Since they get part of the sale price, I don’t want to sidestep MacZot on the sale without chatting with them, but I’m sure we can figure it out.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Also experiencing problems with the PayPal site. I’ve been getting a “please check back in 30 minutes” message. Please let us know if other ways of paying are possible.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Ozron—can you contact me directly. Have a paypal-less solution for you: mike [at] littlefin.com
Thanks.
January 15th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
ozron –
PayPal looks fine from here. Orders are coming in.
Little Fin will contact you directly.
Thanks!
Mike Biskup
macZOT
January 15th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Thanks guys. My problem isn’t with the PayPal website. There’s a problem with my account and processing payments. There’s a problem ticket with them to look at it.
Mike @ LittleFin I’ve sent you an email.
January 15th, 2010 at 9:46 pm
” Perhaps a separate preference pane tab for reminders would be in order.” YES YES YES!
I’ve been using Chronicle for about a month and would love to be able to set my preferences — individually/ globally with the duration of my choice (it’s just as easy for me to type a number as select from a list, but currently only 3 choices are available). For bills that are mailed, I want a greater lead time before due date than those paid electronically and in person (an option that is not yet on the drop down list of payment options).
would also love more icons – i still have a landline and 2 vendors;0)
thanks for this simple and useful software!
January 16th, 2010 at 5:18 am
Hi Clem: I hear you on more icons. Regarding the reminder days, you can type any number of days in, not just the 1, 5 or 10 days that are in the dropdown. Just type whatever you want there. Hope that helps.