Microsoft is testing a new feature or template, Money in Excel. You can apply to be one of the first to try it.
Money in Excel is a separate Excel ‘premium’ template that will connect with bank accounts, import transaction information and display as charts and lists.
Transactions
Bank accounts can be linked into Excel and merged into a single transaction list. All the usual Excel table options are available to sort and filter the merged list.
Source for all images: Microsoft
Charts and Graphs
There are charts like current vs previous month spending and expenses by category.
Most frequently used merchants and highest spending merchants are listed.
There’s nothing stopping you adding your own lists and charts because the transaction list looks like a standard Excel table.
Recurring Expenses
Money in Excel will try to detect repeating payments from the incoming transaction lists or you can add them.
Office Watch already has an Excel Subscriptions Manager which also handles recurring expenses paid by several people in a household, sales tax, cancellation dates etc.
Get in the Queue
To get Money in Excel go here and click Sign Up. That takes you to a Microsoft Form.
Money in Excel is only available in the USA. If you live elsewhere, still complete the form, nominating your country. That will be a ‘vote’ to encourage expansion of the template to other locations.
Completing the form will put US customers in a queue for the template. Microsoft will email once you can get it.
Gotchas
Microsoft hasn’t said which Excel versions will accept Money in Excel.
Excel 365 for Windows – certainly
Excel 365 for Mac – hopefully
Excel 2019 Windows/Mac – maybe, just maybe
Excel 2016 and earlier – possible but unlikely.
The ‘Premium’ template means it’ll only be available to Microsoft 365/Office 365 subscribers.
Bank compatibility
Each bank has to provide the connectivity with security to let Excel import your transactions. It’s a safe bet that not all banks will have such a feature.
Hopefully Money in Excel has an option to manually enter transactions for unlinkable accounts.
Changing labels on transactions.
All the grouping of transactions sounds great but companies can and do change the label on each line item. There needs to be a way to merge items with different labels (e.g. company changes name).
PowerQuery has a useful option to change labels on incoming data, hopefully Money in Excel will let users take advantage. See our COVID-19 statistics worksheet which uses Replacing Values to match names.
Subscriptions Manager for Excel 2007-2016
Track COVID-19 stats in your own Excel spreadsheet
