Keep the credit. Lose the interest.
Having credit is good — paying interest is bad. Balance Review shows where you truly stand today: balances plus pending charges, the month's recurring bills, and the payments you've already scheduled. Then it turns that into a plan — what to pay, on which card, in what order — until you're carrying zero.
Optional read-only bank sync · Manual entry and CSV import always work
A representative view — blue values were pulled by bank sync; every row gets a recommended payment.
The credit life cycle
The goal isn't to cut up your cards — it's to keep them open, use them well, and carry nothing. Wherever you're starting from, the path runs through the same five stages, and the tool is built around them.
- 1
Face it
Take an honest inventory: every card and loan in one grid, what's accruing interest and at what rate, and where utilization is working against your credit report.
In the tool: The accounts grid, utilization bands, and the cost-of-carry strip.
- 2
Stop the bleeding
Stop adding interest-bearing debt. Cover every minimum, and stop being surprised — pending card charges and the month's recurring bills are already in your projection.
In the tool: Issuer minimums, overdue and under-scheduled alerts, pending + planned projections.
- 3
Pay down with a plan
Decide what this month's dollars do: highest APR first, or fewest accounts. If a 0% balance transfer tempts you, check whether the upfront fee actually saves money before you sign.
In the tool: Payoff simulator (Avalanche, Snowball, Proportional), promo-cliff warnings, balance-transfer analyzer.
- 4
Statement payer
Pay every statement in full. You're interest-free — but issuers generally report the statement balance to the bureaus, so heavy use still shows up as utilization.
In the tool: Pay to Statement and Pay Full modes with statement-cycle tracking.
- 5
Credit as cash
Run your cards like debit cards with credit-card protections: pay to zero — or prepay past it — before the statement closes, so near-zero balances are what gets reported.
In the tool: Prepay to Zero, Prepay to Credit Balance, and Daily Sweep modes.
Wherever you are in the cycle, Balance Review meets you there — an honest view of today, a plan for the month, and a five-minute daily check-in until zero carried debt is just how you operate. Reported utilization is a real scoring factor — see the CFPB's explanation of credit utilization and FICO's "amounts owed" overview.
Key features
Everything you need to operate a personal balance sheet — without exporting to Excel every Sunday night.
True position, projected
Today's balance plus pending charges, this month's recurring bills, and the payments you've scheduled roll into a projected new balance for every account — the real number to plan from, not just what has posted.
One grid, your way
Every card and loan in a single inline-editable grid. Group rolling cards, zero-interest promos, loans, and mortgages separately, hide columns you don't use, and exclude accounts that aren't yours from your credit totals.
Statement cycle tracking
Track statement balance, new balance, and due date per account. Business-day-aware planning window highlights what's coming due.
Payment strategy modes
Assign each account a mode — Prepay to Zero, Prepay to Credit Balance, Pay Full Balance, Daily Sweep, or Pay to Statement — and get a recommended payment automatically.
Scheduled payments by date
Stack multiple planned payments per account, and nudge a card's standard monthly payment to the day you actually plan to send it — it reverts to the normal date next cycle. The dashboard rolls it all up by date so you see exactly what leaves your checking account each day.
Payoff simulator
Model Avalanche, Snowball, or Proportional strategies with configurable monthly extra ($ or %). See payoff month and interest saved side by side.
Balance-transfer check
See whether a 0% balance transfer is actually worth it. Enter the transfer fee and promo length, and the upfront fee is weighed against the interest you'd avoid — an apples-to-apples call at the payment that clears the balance before the promo ends.
Utilization & insights
Utilization by account and portfolio-wide — the balances your issuers report drive your credit-report utilization — plus monthly interest estimates for accounts that carry.
Credit score tracking
Log the score from each place you check it — a card issuer's FICO dashboard, a bank's VantageScore, or a service like CreditWise. See where each one falls in its rating bands, one headline rating across them all, and a trend line that puts every model on a shared 0–100 scale so 846/850 and 871/900 are finally comparable.
Snapshots & history
Automatic daily snapshots capture every account's balance, statement, and due date. Click any date to see accounts exactly as they were.
Bank sync (optional)
Connect accounts through Plaid to pull current balances and pending transactions automatically — daily and on demand. Read-only, and your bank credentials never touch Balance Review.
Alerts & monthly digest
Email alerts when a payment is overdue, under-scheduled, or a 0% promo is ending — plus a monthly digest summarizing balances and recommended payments.
A look inside
Four screens do the work: the Dashboard rolls up your true position, Accounts is the ledger you operate, Insights models the payoff, and Credit tracks the score over time.
How it works
- 1
Add your accounts
Enter credit cards and loans manually, import a CSV, or connect your bank to pull balances and pending transactions automatically. Balance Review detects recurring patterns from imported statements so you don't have to re-map every month.
- 2
Choose a payment mode per account
Pick how you want to handle each account: pay in full, prepay to zero, prepay past zero to hold a small credit balance, sweep daily, or pay down to the statement balance.
- 3
See your true position, then plan the month
The dashboard shows more than a point in time: recommended payments, card charges pending but not yet posted, this month's recurring bills, scheduled outflows, and the projected new balance for every account — plus a rolled-up view of what leaves your checking by date.
- 4
Model payoff strategies
Use the Payoff Simulator to compare Avalanche vs. Snowball vs. Proportional, apply an extra amount as a dollar figure or percentage of your baseline, and see how many months you shave off.
- 5
Track history automatically
Daily snapshots record every account's state so you can diff two dates, review utilization trends, and audit what changed over time.
Security & data handling
Use it alongside your budgeting app
Quicken, Monarch, YNAB, Rocket Money — they're great at daily transactions, categorization, and budgets. Keep them. Balance Review is the strategy layer beside them: it shows the position they don't — the month's recurring charges still ahead, card charges pending but not yet posted, the payments you've already scheduled — and turns it into a per-card payment plan.
| Capability | Your budgeting app | Balance Review |
|---|---|---|
| Daily transactions & categorization | Its core strength — keep it there | Not duplicated — no second transaction register to maintain |
| Recurring charges still ahead this month | History and budget categories | Projected onto each card before they hit |
| Card charges pending, not yet posted | Often invisible until they post | Counted in today's true position |
| Payments you've scheduled | Reminders at best | Stacked by date and netted into the projection |
| Per-card payment strategy | Limited | Prepay to Zero, Prepay to Credit, Full, Sweep, To-statement |
| Payoff modeling | Basic snowball at best | Avalanche, Snowball, Proportional with $ or % extra |
Balance Review doesn't replace your budgeting app — it's the daily five-minute check-in beside it: where you stand, what's coming, and exactly what to pay on each card this month.
About Balance Review
Balance Review is built and operated by Tech Clarity Solutions LLC as TechClarity.ai, the same independent studio behind RankZen and TickerLoft. It started as a personal Excel workbook for running credit card and loan payments every month, and grew into a production app so the same operating model could run on any device without spreadsheet drift.
Balance Review is a planning tool. It is not a bank, lender, tax preparer, or financial advisor, and its recommendations are informational — always confirm exact payment amounts and due dates with the account provider before sending money.
Frequently asked questions
Updated July 2026