Money in Excel is Now Available

The Money in Excel feature that Microsoft announced in March is now available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers in the U.S. only.

“Today, with the launch of Money in Excel, we’re embarking on a journey to simplify your day-to-day money decisions to help you stay on track of your longer-term financial goals,” Microsoft’s Arjun Tomar writes. “Managing personal finances can be a daunting prospect for most people, but having the right tools can help make it less challenging [and] we want to help make managing your personal budget in Excel a more seamless experience.”

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Money in Excel is implemented as an Excel add-in that uses the Plaid service to securely connect your bank, credit card, investment, and loan accounts to Excel and automatically import your transaction and account information into an Excel spreadsheet.

After importing your financial information, you can use the add-in’s Snapshot feature to track your spending, customize it to meet your needs and goals, and perform custom analyses using Excel’s many tools.

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Conversation 21 comments

  • wbhite

    Premium Member
    15 June, 2020 - 4:22 pm

    <p>A quick anecdote about this topic: The shuttering of the standalone Microsoft Money product years ago cut me deep. I was a die hard user and bought every upgrade from the late 90's until it's demise. I tried to jump into Quicken (several times over the years, it seems, because I've bought it over and over again), but it's a garbage product. I moved on to simpler solutions like Mint (which has since become kind of garbage itself) and now Personal Capital. Long story short, it's much easier to let those services' automatically categorize everything for me and present the reports. I don't need to spend a couple of hours every Sunday doing it myself.</p><p><br></p><p>On the other hand, this new Excel add-in might be a good offering for someone learning money management (like my 14 year old). Maybe I'll take a look at it.</p>

    • gelfer

      Premium Member
      15 June, 2020 - 6:16 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#546665"><em>In reply to wbhite:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote><em>I'm still using money… It still runs on win10, I use it to keep track of purchases, to find out when I bought or acquired or paid what, etc… </em></blockquote><p><br></p>

    • red.radar

      Premium Member
      15 June, 2020 - 7:53 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546665">In reply to wbhite:</a></em></blockquote><p>I bounced around from a few products but decided to settle on open source gnucash. Once you understand the double accounting method it’s serviceable. My main thought is that personal finance software is pretty mature market area and the open source route seems the perfect path. Why pay for something when free is just as good and more sustainable.</p><p><br></p><p>in the long run I do appreciate your points on AI doing the auto catagorization and wonder if basic tools my bank supplies isn’t good enough. I suppose it’s an emotional issue where I feel I have to manually review my transactions to feel like I am “managing “ my finances. Perhaps the real value of these tools is keeping track of receipts and taxable issues. </p>

    • chullybun

      Premium Member
      15 June, 2020 - 11:43 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546665">In reply to wbhite:</a></em></blockquote><p>Stopped using Money when MS gave it up. Use <a href="https://www.youneedabudget.com/&quot; target="_blank">https://www.youneedabudget.com/</a&gt; now – haven't looked back – it is amazing.</p>

    • Elwood P Suggins

      16 June, 2020 - 4:01 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546665">In reply to wbhite:</a></em></blockquote><p>Well, I used every version of MS Money user from Version 1.0 in late 1991 until the bitter end – then grudgingly switched to Quicken 10+ years ago.&nbsp;While I know it has its detractors (MS Money wasn't perfect either, mind you…), I personally haven't experienced any problems in using most all the features in Quicken extensively during that time.&nbsp;Not sure what you were doing with Quicken a couple hours every Sunday afternoon but, to paraphrase Steve Jobs, maybe you weren't using it correctly.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><br></p><p>In general, I still don't trust the web-based account aggragation services – but I know a lot of people are satisfied with Mint and similar.&nbsp;I tried Mint but for me it just falls too short on investment tracking compared to Quicken.&nbsp;I also had a Personal Capital account early on but they turned me off by constantly pushing their fee-based financial management services.&nbsp;Maybe they've backed off that since, I don't know.</p><p><br></p><p>I look at Quicken desktop alternatives like KMyMoney and MoneyDance every couple years – while I like the idea of cross-platform compatibility they just don't get it done for me otherwise…&nbsp;with 30 years of financial records now embedded in Quicken I'd guess I'd need something compelling to switch now.</p>

  • bigfire

    Premium Member
    15 June, 2020 - 5:29 pm

    <p>It didn't work for me. It generated a bunch of extra text code confirmations from my bank while setting it up, asked me to confirm security questions multiple times, and then after I finally got in the update didn't bring down any data. </p>

    • bradster62

      27 June, 2020 - 3:51 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546677">In reply to bigfire:</a></em></blockquote><p>The Plaid integration does not support the two-factor authentications used by my banks. I opened a support ticket with Plaid to ask them if they intend to support TFA in the Money for Excel service. We shall see…</p>

  • lwetzel

    Premium Member
    15 June, 2020 - 5:37 pm

    <p>How secure is that Plaid Service? Does anyone have experience with it? Is there cost involved to use it? </p>

  • kevvan

    15 June, 2020 - 9:05 pm

    <p>Makes me wonder and reminisce about "MONEY", Microsoft's competitor to QuickBooks. I used that software in the heyday and really liked it. I still do not know why they killed it as it was every bit as good as QB and I felt like they did not give it enough time. Money, Zune Devices – Music Subscription – Zune Software, Windows Phone, and a long list of excellent, but abandoned technologies and software sit on my shelf. The thing I really want back is the Windows Live Photos Software. That was one of the more productive tools from MS for me personally.</p>

    • derek s

      16 June, 2020 - 7:55 am

      <blockquote><a href="#546706"><em>In reply to kevvan:</em></a></blockquote><blockquote>I still use Microsoft Money (2005) and would find it hard to let it go, I'd even say I couldn't manage without it and as Money for Excel isn't yet available in the UK (and with Microsoft's track record, I wonder if it ever will!). I guess I'll have to keep using MS Money 2005 for some time to come.</blockquote><blockquote><br></blockquote><blockquote>On other products that Microsoft have wasted opportunities on was the excellent AutoRoute (or Streets and Trips in the US). Sometimes I imagine internal squabbling, which happens when organisations get too big, may be the reason Microsoft end up giving away their advantage on many such products ?</blockquote><p><br></p><p><br></p>

    • navarac

      16 June, 2020 - 9:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546706">In reply to kevvan:</a></em></blockquote><p>Another was Flight Simulator. That disappeared when it was found that the 911 terrorists used it to plot their atrocities. Although – it is on its way back and Flt Sim X is available on Steam. Microsoft has no staying power and gives up on stuff all the time just because of the fresh new thing….</p>

    • dftf

      16 June, 2020 - 9:39 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#546706">In reply to kevvan:</a></em></blockquote><p>I'll add Microsoft Publisher to the list… unlike Money and AutoRoute it is still available, but it sure doesn't get much attention thesedays (nor do Access, Project or Visio).</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft's Office focus appears only Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and (to some-degree) OneNote thesedays. The other apps essentially just seem to be "security and bug-fix only" modes, with rarely any new features.</p>

  • kjb434

    Premium Member
    15 June, 2020 - 10:39 pm

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Plaid service" – The reason to not use this add-in. May 5th a lawsuit was brought against Plaid for collecting data without user consent.</span></p><p><a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/app-users-say-plaid-collects-bank-logins-without-consent&quot; target="_blank">https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/app-users-say-plaid-collects-bank-logins-without-consent</a></p><p><br></p><p>The service requires Plaid to keep your password on file where they access your bank account multiple times a day.</p><p><br></p>

  • andrewtechhelp

    Premium Member
    16 June, 2020 - 5:58 am

    <p>Not specifically about Microsoft Money, but – anyone notice in that screenshot that that's the Windows Desktop version of Excel with the Simplified Ribbon?</p><p><br></p><p>So far the Simplified Ribbon hasn't rolled out to any of the Windows Desktop versions of the Office apps except for Outlook and there's basically been radio silence on it ever since the Outlook rollout was completed.</p><p><br></p><p>The fact it has shown up here in this screenshot of Excel is interesting. I wonder if it's going to enter the Office Insider channels soon?</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    16 June, 2020 - 7:21 am

    <p>Thanks to kjb434 for linking to a recent Forbes article about a suit against Plaid. Here's a summary for others: Users go to whatever payment/banking app they've just downloaded (e.g. Venmo, Stripe, Square, etc.) and enter their bank account credentials so they can use the app. The app is actually employing Plaid to collect and aggregate that data on their behalf. (TechCrunch describes Plaid as a fintech company that develops financial services API's, helping developers share banking/finance data similar to how Square facilitated payments). The issue is that users thought they were giving their credentials directly to Venmo (or whatever app) and were unaware that the app was actually using a 3rd party service (i.e. Plaid). Also, Plaid is in the process of being purchased by Visa, which the suit says is an example of selling consumer data without consent.</p><p>Ultimately, I think this is a case of people not fully understanding how these apps and services work. I don't think there is anything nefarious here; well, to the extent that any banking or finance service can ever be non-nefarious.</p>

  • Chris_Kez

    Premium Member
    16 June, 2020 - 7:28 am

    <p>I wonder if this will provide a simple forecast tool for the next six or twelve months. This was a request on the Mint user forums for years and they refused to acknowledge it. </p>

  • faustxd9

    Premium Member
    16 June, 2020 - 8:53 am

    <p>Hopefully you can encrypt the resulting spreadsheet as well to ensure the data is secure. I definitely want to check it out!</p>

  • tmbr

    16 June, 2020 - 10:13 am

    <p>In the 1990s, I switched between MS Money and Quicken two times. I loved the initial MS Money interface, but switched to Quicken with its larger feature set but ran into many bugs. I switched back to MS Money until one version was so radically different and bloated I returned to Quicken and found it now stable. I kept looking back at MS Money but it eventually dropped Canadian support and then wound itself down. Quicken is sprawling and somewhat expensive, but I never worry about it lacking a feature that I might like to use. With the new fintech products out there I am interested in new developments, but it might be a chore to switch and migrate everything now.</p>

  • yaddamaster

    16 June, 2020 - 10:55 am

    <p>I still wish Microsoft would just open source their old Money product. It still works, it's simple. But it's a pain in the but to have to manually download transactions.</p>

  • clrader

    12 July, 2020 - 5:31 pm

    <p>How do we get rid of the add for this? I close it each time but it keeps popping up. Very annoying to keep getting ads in a paid product.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      13 July, 2020 - 8:23 am

      I’m not seeing an ad. I do see Money in Excel listed as one of the available templates, though not even on every run.

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