Money in Excel

[Karliejorg]

My refunds from the transaction tab are not subtracting from my total spending in the Snapshot tab within Money in Excel.  For instance, if I make a purchase at Target, then return half my purchases, that refund amount isn't taken out of the total spending for that month.  I contacted support and they sent me to this forum for advanced formatting. Any help would be appreciated!

Thank you 

[#2]

@Karliejorg 

I don't use Money in Excel--took a look at it when it was first released and considered it pretty poorly designed, especially in the set of budget categories and the rigidity of that portion of the design. It also didn't work with banks such as mine where my data are protected by dual factor authentication during sign-in.

So I continue to use a system of my own design.

Nevertheless, to deal with your question, I need to ask a couple of questions. I think It would be far more likely that it's not a matter of "advanced formatting" but rather is just a matter of correct entry of the data.

You don't mention how the raw data for a return transaction (a credit) is entered into MiE.

1. Do you enter it manually?
2. Does it come in as a credit through a link with a credit card?
3. Does it appear as a negative number when purchases are positive (or is it vice versa). It is, after all, a separate transaction, and simply reverses a portion of the initial transaction.

[#3]

@mathetes Thank you for the reply! 

1. No, the refund is shown on the transaction tab and done automatically from my bank account
2. Yes
3. The purchases come in as a negative number, and the refunds come in as a positive 

I've added a screenshot for the details of the transactions and blacked out the merchant details for privacy.  I've tried to change the category ("shopping", "utilities", etc) to "Refund", but that doesn't have any impact on the Snapshot tab with the total spending. 

[#4]

@Karliejorg 

It's not clear to me from your descriptions how you're expecting that to be reflected in the "Snapshot" as contrasted with what IS showing there.

I would expect the "Shopping" category (at least for 11/24/2020) to show a total expense of $483.50. In other words, I can't imagine that it's totally ignoring, somehow not taking into account, the refund amount. Perhaps you could append an image of the Snapshot screen....

Is it possible that, although the dates shown are in each case 11/24/2020, the refund was in fact several days later and therefore showing up elsewhere? I know my credit card statements will sometimes have two columns of dates, a "date of transaction" and a "date cleared" or something to that effect. They're usually at most one day apart, but sometimes more......