Jun 25 2020 07:24 PM
Two Problems in setting up Money In Excel
1. Setting up my bank: my bank requires a code to be typed in. I receive the code on my phone. When I type it in in the Money for Excel set up it doesn't go through. Is there a work around? Otherwise I can't add my bank.
2. In the Money In Excel templet there is a section to add custom Expense Categories. Unfortunately I have more categories than the sheet allows and it is a locked section. How can I increase the number of custom categories?
Jun 27 2020 12:37 PM
Solution@Bruce_GilbertI have a similar problem with Money in Excel. The Plaid integration does not utilize two-factor authentication which I use with my bank logins.
Jun 29 2020 02:13 PM
Jun 30 2020 06:06 PM
Jun 30 2020 06:19 PM
Double underscore to what Bruce has said.
Fortunately I'd recently developed my own income and expense tracking spreadsheet. What MIE offers that's nice (the foregoing limitation with Fidelity aside) is that automatic importing of data from one's financial institutions, but it ain't all that hard to go get the CSV or XLS files they now all provide, albeit in some pretty idiosyncratic forms.
Jun 30 2020 11:11 PM
I would love to see how you have formatted your income and expense spreadsheet for yourself and how your workflow works for downloading files from financial institutions. Is that possible?
Jul 01 2020 06:56 AM
Regarding the procedure for downloading from financial institutions, the ones I use--Chase (Visa), Amex, Apple (MasterCard), Fidelity (checking), Citibank (Visa)--all make it possible to download monthly statements in XLS or CSV format. The tricky part sometimes is finding the place on their websites. A tip: Amex gives you a choice of CSV or XLS: pick the CSV. For some reason they chose to make the Excel formatted file "look pretty" rather than be functional. So not only is there totally gratuitous use of colors, but things like vendor addressses are multiple lines in a cell.....the CSV file is all you need; has all the data, and neatly fits.
Once downloaded, it is necessary to select only the columns you need for your own spreadsheet: I use "Date" (of transaction, not date of posting); "Description"; "Misc" which some cards fill with their own budget category based on vendor; and, of course "Amount". So I edit the file and get the columns in that order and then copy and paste onto the bottom of my transaction database.
Same for checking accounts and, in my case, occasional transactions from my IRA, from which I get my (retiree) income.
As for seeing the layout I use, check your messages here on this website.
Feb 14 2021 01:06 PM
I don't believe that you are limited in the number of categories and subcategories that you can create. The 'Categories' worksheet starts out with 100 formatted rows but if you happen to exceed that, you can just expand the table. The easiest way to do this is to go to the last, rightmost cell in the table and hover your mouse over the bottom right corner. Once your mouse pointer changes to the diagonal double arrow you can click and drag down to add rows. Note, you can't expand to the right which would add another column. The formulas wouldn't know what to do with that extra column and you will get an error saying that you can't resize a table that's adjacent to a hidden row or column.
Regarding your proposal for adding sub categories, I'm not sure what you mean. I was able to make sub categories exactly as you described.
I hope this helps.
Jun 28 2021 09:27 AM
Jun 27 2020 12:37 PM
Solution@Bruce_GilbertI have a similar problem with Money in Excel. The Plaid integration does not utilize two-factor authentication which I use with my bank logins.