How can we help?

Getting started

Clearward runs on iPhone with iOS 17 or later. When you open it, you can either Build my plan or Explore the sample app, a demo filled with fictional data that leaves your own workspace untouched.

Building a plan takes three steps:

• Debts. Add each card or loan with its balance, APR and minimum payment. Type numbers naturally: 3,000, $50 and 18% all work.
• Monthly budget. Enter what you can put toward debt each month.
• Plan. See your estimated debt-free month and what to pay each debt this month.

Your plan

Every minimum is paid first. Whatever’s left in your budget goes to one focus debt, chosen by your strategy:

• Highest interest first (the default) usually means the least interest paid overall.
• Smallest balance first clears individual debts sooner for quicker wins.

When a debt is paid off, its minimum rolls into your budget for the next one. In Plan, use the extra-payment slider to compare your choice against zero extra, and open the month-by-month schedule to see principal and interest for each payment.

Logging payments

Logging a payment records a note in Clearward. It never moves or verifies money. By default it also lowers that debt’s balance by the same amount; you can switch that off for any payment. Because interest accrues between statements, fine-tune the balance from your next statement when it arrives.

Importing statements

Open Spending → Review a statement and choose a file you’ve downloaded from your bank. CSV is the most reliable format.

CSV files

• Map the date, description and either one amount column or separate debit and credit columns.
• Dates can be 2026-01-31, 01/31/2026 or 31/01/2026. Choose the format that matches your file.
• For a single amount column, tell Clearward whether positive or negative amounts are spending.
• Comma-separated UTF-8 files work best. Semicolon- or tab-separated files need re-exporting.

Date,Description,Amount
2026-01-31,"Fictional Grocery, Downtown",-42.50
2026-02-01,Fictional Store Refund,12.00

PDF files

Text-based PDFs are supported when each transaction line starts with a full date, followed by a description and one amount. Scanned or image-only PDFs and locked documents can’t be read. Use a CSV export instead.

Review

Every imported row starts unconfirmed. Check the date, amount, category and type against your statement, then confirm rows one by one or use Looks right — confirm all. Transfers, card payments and income don’t count as spending; refunds reduce it. Exact duplicates of transactions you’ve already saved are skipped automatically.

Category suggestions

On iPhones with Apple Intelligence on iOS 26 or later, you can ask for on-device category suggestions while reviewing an import. If your device doesn’t support it, Clearward tells you and built-in rules and manual categories keep working. You can remember a merchant’s category while reviewing, and remove remembered rules in Settings.

Backups & deletion

Your data lives only on your iPhone and is excluded from device backups. To keep a copy, go to Settings → Export and save the JSON file somewhere you trust. To erase everything, use the delete option in Settings or delete the app.

Current limits

• US dollars only.
• Projections use a fixed APR and minimum; promotional rate schedules, daily interest and fees aren’t modeled.
• No OCR for scanned PDF statements.
• Identical legitimate purchases on the same day can be treated as duplicates. Compare the import notes with your statement.

Contact us

Email support@clearward.app with questions, bug reports or feature ideas. If something looks wrong, it helps to include your iPhone model, iOS version, and the steps that led to it.

See the privacy policy for how your information is handled.